The Truth of Yoga by Daniel Simpson

Author:Daniel Simpson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

SACRED GEOGRAPHY

Another aspect of Tantra that shapes yogic practice is the idea of the body as a miniature cosmos. Although some of its details have added significance in tantric rituals, they are named in instructions for physical yoga, connecting anatomy to sacred locations in the world.

The subtle energetic channels used in breath control are likened to waterways from Himalayan heights. As portrayed in the seventeenth-century Hatha Ratnavali (4.38–39): “The spine is Mount Meru,” the center of the cosmos, with other major bones forming ranges of peaks and the nadis rivers. “Ida is known as the Ganga, Pingala is the Yamuna [and] Sushumna is known as Sarasvati,” whose waters are said to converge at a popular pilgrimage site. Meanwhile, “the body’s constituents are islands, with saliva and sweat the seven seas.”

Other texts name different rivers: “Ida is called Varana, Pingala is called Asi. Between them is Varanasi,” the ancient city where both join the Ganges, says the Shiva Samhita (5.132–34). “Sushumna goes by way of Meru to the aperture of Brahman [at the crown]. She is celebrated as Ganga,” who is a goddess as well as a river. Millions worship her daily, joining palms at their foreheads before taking a plunge in her murky waters. Their upward gaze has a yogic variant. As taught in the Hatha Pradipika (4.48): “Shiva’s place is between the brows. There the mind dissolves.”

A related technique, which can look cross-eyed, is named after Shambhu, an epithet of Shiva. As described in the Chandravalokana (1): “When [the yogi] focuses internally with his gaze, unblinking, directed outwards it is the shambhavi mudra, which is concealed in all the Tantras.” Other points of focus have added significance. “Above there,” says the Shiva Samhita (5.191–92), “is the divinely beautiful Sahasrara lotus which bestows liberation. It is called Kailasa, and [Shiva] lives there.” Kailash, as it is known today, is a mountain in Tibet, revered by Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains as a yogic abode.

As a result of this practice, notes the Hatha Pradipika (4.37), “Shiva’s reality manifests itself. This is neither the void nor its opposite.” In other words, the yogi attains an unfiltered state of consciousness, in which all things arise and are later resorbed. This is equated to Shiva in nondual Tantra (Vijnana Bhairava 116): “Wherever the mind goes, whether outside or within, there itself is the state of Shiva. Since he is all-pervading, where else could the mind go?”

Despite their references to deities, and sometimes to doctrine, most yogic maps are ways of pointing to the infinite.

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