BarefootAndUpsideDown

Yoga Sutra 2.39: aparigrahasthairye janmakathamta sambodah

One who perseveres on the path of noncovetousness gains deep understanding of the meaning of life. (trans. B. Bouanchaud)

I DO pray for aparigraha to blossom in my life like a spiritual flower showering me with the clarity and buoyancy of a saint. T.K.V. Desikachar suggests the five yamas are attitudes we need to develop. Bernard Bouanchaud asks whether we use the precepts as practices, mental vigilance, or (and I love this) progressive discovery? He also suggests we keep centered on the yogic principles when teaching yoga.

These approaches help soften the perfectionistic spirit that pervades so much of our life. Attitudes are not perfect, right? They are a way of turning the mind. This yama, suggests we relinquish that which we hold onto. We need to lessen our grip. It’s a manner of looking at the world, our selves, our relationships, and of course, our STUFF.

This late December season which holds my birthday as well as the Christmas potlatch does tend to stoke the fire of WANTING. This wanting always throws me off a bit because I’m usually  contented with life and feel the need to GET RID of stuff in life-simplifying gestures.

from my journal:

Aparigraha—nongrasping—there is so much that we all grasp after…being poor is a blessing…It’s easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

As I grow older, less becomes critically important for me to own/do.  The years teach us what we can do without.  When Mike’s grandmother was in her nineties, she used to tell us “less is best.”  The year we lived in a small apartment in Bombay taught the whole family how little we could live on/with—and still have a happy life. It was a blessing that we didn’t always appreciate. After we returned to the states, our life in India took on a special radiance that we realized came from simplicity and a lessening of the grip STUFF has on us.

A poem from my collection Barefoot & Upside Down:

the crumbling bark café

beneath an overcast sky

I lean against a tamarack

and spy the red-shouldered

hawk’s eyes on me

there is nowhere to hide

from her keen sight

we both keep still and watch and breathe

eventually her mate circles and cries

I feel so big and my body

growing earthen

overhead the clouds fly like planes

two red-breasted nuthatches in a dead jack pine

poke their beaks in decaying wood

it’s lunch at the crumbling bark café

I imbibe the tender wind

the moist air

splash in the ditch singing in overflow mode

wonder if I’ll see the garter snakes this year

a ball of glorious reptilian copulation

surprised me once before

seeking the specials du jour

I find a young sapsucker

tapping holes on a cottonwood bole

a chestnut-sided warbler intently feeding

in the old sap wells where insects

swarm to sugar

and a female oriole

so sophisticated  in yellow and black

explores hole to hole along a horizontal ring

slipping her slit tongue again and again

my belly growls

why do I never have enough?

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Bouanchaud takes us deep into the heart of this Yama: ” When the mind no longer worries about acquiring and keeping goods, we understand where we come from, where we are, and where we are going. We discover the meaning of existence….”

I do want my children to be happy—I guess that’s a form of grasping—maybe there is a good side to the grasping mind.

What forms does grasping take in your life, especially now, during the holiday season? Do you have practices that help aparigraha develop?

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This entry was posted by carolyn aka LaughingYogini on Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 at 11:16 pm and is filed under Poetry, Sutra, Yamas & Niyamas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.