Tag Archives: religion

BOOK REVIEW: Sikhism: A Very Short Introduction by Eleanor Nesbitt

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Sikhism: A Very Short IntroductionSikhism: A Very Short Introduction by Eleanor Nesbitt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

 

I picked up this book before a trip to Amritsar. While Sikhs are arguably the most visually distinct religious adherents, it’s one of the least understood world religions with respect to internal aspects like beliefs and practices. And a major religion, it is. With 23 million followers, it’s between the fifth and eighth most widely practiced religion in the world (depending upon whether one aggregates traditional religions in China or Africa.)

This book offers a 150 page overview of what it means to be Sikh, and it explains it not only in religious, but also in cultural, political, and historical, terms. If one needs deep insight and great detail about Sikhism, this may not be the book for you. But it gives one the big picture quite nicely, and with a scholar’s balanced view (as opposed to that of a theologian.)

There are eight chapters in the book. The first chapter introduces one to Sikhism. Besides the basics, this chapter discusses what makes Sikhism a distinct religion, and how it has been influenced by other religions—most significantly Hindu and Islam, in that order. It also discusses what it means to be Punjabi, in contrast to what it means to be Sikh. To understand the subject of the second and third chapters, one has to know how the leadership of this religion unfolded. There were ten human teachers (Guru), and then a book of scriptures assumed the mantle of Guru. The second chapter is about the human Gurus (and mostly about the first one—Guru Nanak, with a little about the next four, and almost nothing about the last five.) The third chapter is about the Guru Granth Sahib, which is the book of scriptures that has served as the religion’s guide since the early 18th century.

Chapter four discusses Sikh religious practices–including the five K’s that serve to give Sikhs such a distinct physical appearance. The 5 K’s are: kesh (uncut hair), kanga (comb), kirpan (sword), kachh (cotton breeches), and kara (steel braclet.) While only the Khalsa (i.e. the community of initiated) necessarily practice all of these, it’s common to see at least some of these features among the community at-large. The wearing of turbans, beards (though often not completely uncut), and steel bangles are ubiquitous in Punjab. The chapter also delves into turbans, ethics, symbols, and the controversial question of vegetarianism (some Sikhs are and some aren’t.)

The fifth chapter offers a history of Sikhism over the past few centuries from the era of the Maharaja Ranjit Singh in the early 19th century to the dire events of early 1980’s (there was a massacre of Sikhs by government forces in 1982 and in 1984 Indira Gandhi was assassinated by Sikh bodyguards, leading to yet more violence.) Chapter 6 discusses the topic of Sikhs abroad. While Punjab is consider the Sikh homeland, there are Sikhs around the world—but particularly in a few areas where there numbers are sufficient to constitute a community—e.g. in the United Kingdom. Chapter 7 investigates the theory and practice of Sikhism with regards to a few key issues of life on the Indian subcontinent including: the caste system, gender, and attitudes toward other religions. (In many regards, Sikhism is comparatively progressive, but practice hasn’t always followed the scripture—e.g. high girl child infanticide rates.) The last chapter considers the future of Sikhism moving forward.

There are graphics of several types throughout the book—most notably black-&-white photographs. There are a few helpful ancillary features including a “Further Reading” section, a timeline, and a glossary of terms.

I found this book useful, and would recommend it for anyone seeking background on Sikhism.

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Blinders (Literal and Figurative) in the Martial Arts

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IMG_2553Many years ago I was training at a dōjō that had a practitioner who was a teacher for the blind. He requested that we put together a self-defense workshop for his students.  (If you’re wondering what kind of evil jackass would attack a blind person, rest assured that—sadly–such a level of jackassitude exists in the world.) The request presented an intriguing challenge. How does one adapt techniques that are premised on being able to see what the opponent is doing? Or maybe one shouldn’t adapt existing techniques but rather start from square one?

 

In preparation for working up a lesson plan, the person that asked for the workshop briefed the black belts. We learned that very few of the blind students lived in complete darkness. Instead, they displayed a wide range of different visual impairments. He even brought a large bag of goggles that simulated various impairments so that we could train in them to better understand what would or wouldn’t work with different types of impairment.

 

There were goggles that had funnels over the eyes such that one could see two little circles clearly while the rest of the world was black. There were others that had a complete field of view, but had translucent tape over the lenses so that everything was reduced to fuzzy blobs—as if one were looking through Vaseline. There were lenses that had a crackle effect such that one could only see veins of area clearly. There were goggles with no peripheral vision, and ones with only peripheral vision. He also had some goggles that blacked out the world entirely. Completely blind individuals may not be as common as one would think, but they certainly exist. Putting on any of the goggles was disorienting at first. A couple of the black belts even got vertigo or nausea when they moved around too quickly.

 

Now imagine what it would be like if one had always had the goggles on, that it was the only worldview one had ever known. Furthermore, imagine that everyone you interacted with on a daily basis all wore the same variety of goggles. You wouldn’t see it as an affliction or a limitation. To you, your view of the world would be full and complete. You would engage in behaviors that might seem odd to an outsider with unobstructed vision (e.g. sweeping your hands around in big arcs, turning your head at unusual angles, or calling out into the “darkness”), but these behaviors wouldn’t seem odd to you because you’d know it as natural behavior for someone who experienced the world as you did.  Because everyone you dealt with would see the world in the same way, it wouldn’t occur to you to think about whether there was another way to behave.

 

The preceding paragraph serves as an analogy for culture. One’s own culture is often invisible, especially if you don’t get outside of it much. All the people around you confirm your belief that you’re seeing the world as it is and behaving in the only natural and normal way imaginable. Sure, you may notice other people’s cultures—their skewed worldviews and the anomalous behaviors that result– but that’s because they do “strange things.” Still, some individuals will maintain that their culture doesn’t display any of the “odd” ways of behaving that more “exotic” cultures do.

 

But it does. Every culture is a mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly of how a people goes about living in the world given their cultural blind spots and skews. It includes collective coping mechanism for dealing with fears of uncertainty, and those are often the ugly side of culture. They encourage ingroup / outgroup separation, as well as primitive and superstitious approaches to dealing with those events, people, and behaviors that are out of the ordinary.

 

It’s easy to display double standards when one is blind to culture. I will give an example from my own life. It’s only been since I’ve been living in India (and traveling in Asia) that I’ve become aware of how many people are upset by Westerner’s secularization of Eastern religious / spiritual symbols and imagery. That’s a mouthful; so let me explain what I mean by “secularization of Eastern symbols and imagery.” I’m talking about “OM” T-shirts / pendants, bronze Buddhas, Tibetan thanka paintings, mandalas  (on T-shirts or posters), miniature shrines, or tattoos that are purchased because they are trendy, aesthetically pleasing, or vaguely conceptually pleasing without any real understanding of the tradition from which they came or intention of honoring it.

 

Granted it’s easy to miss the above issue if you’re a tourist because: a.) Many of said Eastern traditions practice a live-and-let-live lifestyle that make their practitioners unlikely to be confrontational about such things (in contrast to  practitioners of Abrahamic traditions (i.e. Judaism, Christianity, or Islam.)) b.) There are merchants in every country who are willing to sell anything to anybody for a buck, and so there are vast markets for tourists that offer up these symbols and images in droves.

 

It still intrigues me that it once caught me off guard that there were Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, etc. who were dismayed by the secularization of their traditions. I’m agnostic, but I was raised in a Christian household. Therefore, I can imagine the animosity aroused by the following conversation.

 

A: [Wearing a simple crucifix [or Star of David or crescent & star] pendant on a chain.]

B: Hey, A, I didn’t know you were Christian [or Jewish or Muslim]?

A: Because I’m not.

B: But you’re wearing a crucifix [or other Abrahamic symbol] pendant?

A: Oh, yeah, that. That doesn’t mean anything. It just looks cool. It’s kind of like the Nike swoosh.

B: [Jaw slackens.]

 

Now replace the crucifix with an “OM” shirt, and an inquiry about whether “A” is Hindu. Does it feel the same? If it doesn’t, why shouldn’t it?

 

Every martial art represents a subculture embedded in the culture of the place from which it came.  [Sometimes this becomes a mélange, as when a Japanese martial art is practiced in America. In such cases the dōjō usually reflects elements of Japanese culture (e.g. ritualized and formal practice), elements of American culture (e.g. 40+ belt ranks so that students can get a new rank at least once a year so they don’t quit), and elements of the martial art’s culture (e.g. harder or softer approaches to engaging the opponent.)]

 

The way that culture plays into a country’s martial arts may not become clear until one has practiced the martial arts of different countries—particularly in their nation of origin. While my own experience is limited, I have practiced Japanese kobudō in America (and extremely briefly in Japan), Muaythai in Thailand, and Kalaripayattu in India. I’ll leave Muaythai out of the discussion for the time being because I can most easily make my point by contrasting Japanese and Indian martial arts.  The Japanese and Indian martial arts I’ve practiced each reflects the nature of its respective culture, and they couldn’t be more different.

 

IMG_4525What are the differences between the Japanese and Indian martial arts I’ve studied? I’ve been known to answer that by saying that the Japanese martial art rarely uses kicks above waist level, while in Kalaripayattu if you’re only kicking at the height of your opponent’s head you’ll be urged to get your kick up a couple of feet higher.  What does that mean? The Japanese are expert at stripping out the needless and they work by paring away excess rather than building difficulty. The impulse of the Japanese is to avoid being showy. KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) appeals to the Japanese mind. (Except for the “Stupid” part, which would be considered needlessly confrontational and gratuitously mean-spirited.) There’s a reason why Japanese martial arts don’t feature prominently in global martial arts cinema. They don’t wow with their physicality; efficiency is at the fore.

 

IMG_2246On the other hand, Indians are a vastly more flamboyant bunch, and Kalaripayattu is extremely impressive to watch and in terms of the physicality required to perform the techniques.  The Indian art isn’t about simplifying or cutting away the unnecessary. One has to get in progressively better shape as one advances to be able to perform techniques that require one leap higher, move faster, and be stronger. The Indian art isn’t about paring away excess, it’s about making such an impressive physical display that the opponent wonders whether one is just a man, or whether one might not be part bird or lion.

 

It might sound like I’m saying that the Japanese martial art is more realistic than the Indian one. Not really. Each of them is unrealistic in its own way. It’s often pointed out that the Japanese trained left-handedness out of their swordsmen, but that’s only one way in which Japanese martial arts counter individuation.  Given what we see in terms of how “southpaws” are often more successful in boxing, MMA, and street fighting, eliminating left-handedness seems like an unsound tactic at the individual level. There are undoubtedly many practitioners of traditional Japanese martial arts who can dominate most opponents who fight in an orthodox manner, but who would be thrown into complete disarray by an attacker who used chaotic heathen tactics. Consider that the only thing that kept the Japanese from being routed (and ruled) by the Mongolians was two fortuitous monsoons. The samurai were tremendously skilled as individual combatants, but the Mongolians could—literally—ride circles around them in warfare between armies. Perhaps, a more relevant question is whether Miyamoto Musashi would have defeated Sasaki Kojirō if the former had followed all the formal protocols of Japanese dueling instead of showing up late, carving his bokken from a boat oar, and generally presenting a f*@# you attitude. Who knows? But as the story is generally told, Musashi’s disrespectful and unorthodox behavior threw Sasaki off his game, and it was by no means a given that Musashi would win. Some believed Sasaki to be the more technically proficient swordsman.

 

All martial arts are models of combative activity apropos to the needs of a particular time, place, culture, and use.  And—as I used to frequently hear in academia—all models are wrong, though many are useful. (Sometimes, it’s written: “All models are lies, but many are useful.”)

 

[FYI: to the readers who say, “The martial art I practice is completely realistic.” My reply: “You must go through a lot of body-bags. Good for you? I guess?”]

The New Acropolis Explorations Course and My Experience Thereof

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IMG_1576Last fall I attended a panel talk hosted by the New Acropolis in Bangalore. I’d never heard of the New Acropolis before, and only heard of said event because the head teacher from my yoga teacher training course was among the panelists. I found the environment at the New Acropolis to be friendly and intriguing. The talk took place amid a small library (not necessarily small for an institution of its size) and books always put me in my happy place.

 

There were brochures out for an upcoming 16-week Explorations Course. “Explorations” is the name for the introductory course that’s taken by non-members to dip their toes into the New Acropolis curriculum, and see if they’d like to continue as members of this school of “philosophy.” (You may be asking, “Hey–wait a minute–why’d he put quote marks around the word philosophy. I’ll get to that in due time.) At  any rate, perusing the brochure, I decided to enroll.

 

The course consists of 13 lectures given over a 16-week timeline. The reason there are more weeks than lectures is that there are two sessions in which one meets briefly with the instructor one-on-one, and one session that consists of exercises that one does with one’s classmates. (The latter is one of the highlights of the course.) The course is organized into three parts. The first and longest section deals with the idea of “know thyself.” That is, it presents several approaches to developing oneself as an individual. The second section expands the scope, looking at society and the role of individuals in it. The third section is about the “philosophy of history,” (there go those telltale quote marks again) or what they refer to as “evolution,” (really?) which shouldn’t be confused with Darwinian Evolution (which–as near as I can tell–has no status in their system of teachings.)

 

In my opinion, the transitions from one part to the next represent downshifts in the value of the course. (i.e. The course is at its most beneficial in the first section. That’s also the portion in which it’s presenting ideas that are fairly mainstream among the various philosophical / religious systems it studies.) As the course moves into the second section, one begins to see a few ideas that are either archaic or that depart from rationalism (e.g. the word “magic” gently enters the discussion.) By the time the third section rolls around, ideas that have no relationship to observable reality are being presented as if they were a given.

 

I was reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book entitled Antifragile the other day and he used the term “neomania.” Neomania–a term that Taleb coined for all I know–means an exuberance for the new for its own sake (as opposed to any objective improvement it represents.) Taking this cue, I will cobble together the term “paleomania”(an exuberance for old ideas for their own sake) to describe one of the main underlying features of the New Acropolis syllabus. One might easily believe that nothing of value has been learned in the past 2000 years and that modern thinkers (not to mention modern science) have nothing worthwhile to lend to the discussion.

 

This can be seen in the ideas presented from ancient Greece. Let me first say that I’m a big fan of Plato. His words “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle” is one of my favorite philosophical quotes. However, while I like Plato, the New Acropolis pretty much deifies him. I’m sure they wouldn’t agree with that statement. However, even Plato’s ideas on those subjects about which he was least in a position to write intelligently or authoritatively are presented as if irrefutable. A couple of his most ill-informed ideas are at the forefront of two of the lessons–notably the Platonic hierarchy of forms of government and the ideas he accepted [I don’t know that these are properly attributed to him, but he seems to have believed them] about astrology. (Note: New Acropolis’s teachings about forms of government seems to be one of the biggest causes of ill will toward the organization in Europe. Plato was an elitist on the subject. He distrusted democracy–to be fair they killed his teacher under [a form of] democracy–but believed that if you could just give a philosopher unlimited power he’d do the right thing for everybody–and not just himself. Plato wasn’t a believer of Baron Acton’s “…absolute power corrupts absolutely…” an idea that came later by those with a greater body of exposure to varying forms of government.)

 

The first couple of lectures I attended didn’t seem in any way untoward or unusual. The first lecture was about knowing oneself, and presented two ancient approaches to this question–i.e. Greek and Indian Vedic. The Greek three-pronged model of soma/psyche/nous, which is translated various ways–but commonly as body, soul, and reason.  The Indian approach was a seven-layered variant that also started with the physical body and moved toward more conceptual elements of being.

 

Now, it might have occurred to me that both of these approaches take the supernatural as a given, but as they were true representations of the systems in question, I didn’t find it bothersome. This raises a point that I think bears saying, I don’t think that the New Acropolis distorts the teachings that they include in the syllabus, but they do use selectivity to frame the subject. This framing gives the student a limited view philosophy and the various approaches to leading an examined life (as opposed to the unexamined life that Socrates told us was not worth living.)

 

The second lecture I attended was actually the third lecture–because I was out-of-town for a class on the Bhagavad-Gita–and it dealt with Buddhism. This session was the most orthodox and arguably the least controversial of the lectures. The four noble truths and the eight-fold path were the core of the lesson, and one doesn’t get any more fundamentally Buddhist than that.

 

However, the fourth lecture, which was ostensibly about Tibetan Buddhism, started me wondering where the course was going. One would expect a lecture on Tibetan Buddhism to refer heavily to the words of lamas, but most of the ideas presented in this lecture were attributed to a woman who I don’t think I’d ever heard of before. Her name was Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. (If you’re saying, “Hey, that name doesn’t sound Tibetan, you are correct.”) It’s not that I don’t think that a 19th century Russian woman is capable of giving informed insight into Tibetan Buddhism. However, one becomes curious when there’s not a single Lama, Rinpoche, monk or nun in the picture. While I’m admittedly a bit of a neophyte on the subject, I’ve been to hear Tibetan monks and nuns before and have visited the local Tibetan meditation center on occasion, so I’m not completely ignorant of that system’s teachings–enough to have an idea what the most fundamental ideas would be.

 

So, after the Tibetan Buddhism class, my Googling fingers got to work. I just wanted to be sure I wouldn’t be asked to drink any Kool-Aid made Jim Jones style. There wasn’t a lot on the organization besides their various websites, but there were a few negative comments and would-be controversies to be found. I wasn’t too concerned by these comments for a number of reasons. First, the claims were isolated and unverifiable. To elaborate, if a person is either far to the right or far to the left, then the middle seems an extreme way off. Therefore, when a leftist organization calls an organization a “fascist cult” one has to consider the bias of the source of the claim. (Note: the same could be said from the other end of the spectrum, but I stated it that way because that’s essentially what I read in one post.) Nothing I’d seen at New Acropolis would lead me to think they were fascist, or even particularly politically conservative (if anything, I’d guess that individual members would be more likely to be left of center, but it wasn’t really an issue that came up.) Second, most of the negative comments were directed at a couple of the European centers, specifically.

 

I will say that, despite the fact that I didn’t believe the extreme claims, I can’t say that they weren’t cause for concern. I’ve had a little experience with organizations prone to being embroiled in drama. Even if the organization has many worthwhile attributes and individuals, that inclination to attract drama will inevitably bite a member in the ass. In my experience, one can’t just sit on the sidelines and pretend the drama won’t affect you. If you do, you’ll just be all the more surprised when you feel your ass being bitten.

 

My web searches confirmed that the New Acropolis was an offshoot of the Theosophical Society. This wasn’t kept a secret. In fact, I believe it was mentioned in the Tibetan Buddhism lesson, and I know it was intimated at various junctures in the course. I was aware of the Theosophical Society, and–in particular–the falling out that Jiddu Krishnmurti had had with them. (A parting of ways that was apparently amicable on Krishnamurti’s side as well as on the side of some from the Theosophical Society’s side–though some Theosophists apparently went dark.) Krishnamurti is among my favorite thinkers, and it was a concern that New Acropolis was an offshoot of an organization whose beliefs were so at odds with his own. I don’t want to deify Krishnamurti (that would be ironic as he was explicit that he didn’t want followers and believed followers were missing the point), but many of his ideas resonated with my own–particularly those on organizations to advance personal or spiritual development (of which he [& I] are quite skeptical.)

 

Krishnamurti opposed the idea of religions, sects, and paths as means to betterment.  The New Acropolis would likely agree with Krishnamurti’s stance on religion as they’re explicit in their antipathy for the ritualism of religion. However, Krishnamurti went further to oppose entities that proposed that they had a path to guide one to some enlightened state. This is where the New Acropolis would presumably part ways. They seem to believe they have such a path. The aforementioned framing that they do seems to designed to carve out the waypoints so that future courses can work on building the path.

 

There’s  a common saying that a good education teaches one HOW to think and not WHAT to think. By that definition, I wouldn’t classify the New Acropolis’s approach as a good education, generally speaking. The course is set up for a one way flow of learning. There’s no time for discussion or refutation of the concepts presented in the course. The teacher presents concepts in a lecture format, and there are designated times in which students can ask questions (in many cases outside the class time when peers might have ideas to add or questions  to build off.) Despite the nominal homage to ancient Greece, the New Acropolis pedagogic approach is at odds with the Socratic method by which students are asked questions rather than being presented with answers.

 

What’s my beef with their use of the term “philosophy?” Depending upon how it’s used, I don’t have a problem with it. When they’re explicitly talking about their particular philosophy, (i.e. New Acropolis’s philosophy) it’s perfectly acceptable. It’s only when one uses the term in a general sense, e.g. as in “school of philosophy,” that students might expect that they’ll learn rational approaches to consider life’s big questions for themselves, rather than learning a specific ideology’s answers to said big questions.

 

The term “theosophy” would be much more honest and apropos, though I understand their reticence to use that term–given their strained relationship with the Theosophical Society–which has a corner on the market of that term. The fact that the New Acropolis takes the divine or supernatural as a given is hard for me to reconcile with philosophy, which implies an open discussion and refutation of ideas–particularly of those notions for which there is little or no evidence.  I’m not saying that philosophy can’t and shouldn’t consider the question of whether there is a god (or spirits or divinity or whatever term you prefer.)  I’m just saying that taking the existence of such ethereal entities as a given flies in the face of rationality, because the existence of such ethereal entities isn’t rooted in observation or application of logic but in emotion. Faith is the domain of theology (or theosophy, if you prefer), rationality is the domain of philosophy. A lot of the teachings in this course were couched in terms of feelings or the beauty of ideas rather than in rational investigation.

 

It might seem that I was quite negative about the experience, and that I wouldn’t recommend it for others. That’s not exactly true. There are some individuals that I wouldn’t recommend it for, but others that I might. I did learn a lot during the course, and brought away a number of ideas that I think will be of service to me. For example, we did a throwing stick concentration exercise that was eye-opening (no pun intended), and there were many ideas and stories presented in the course that provided good food for thought. There was only one class /idea that I found not only completely baseless but also potentially dangerous.

 

(FYI-If you’re wondering what idea that was, it was in the penultimate lecture on astrological cycles (yeah, I know, right?)  The lecture presented both Indian Maha Yugas and Greek zodiac cycles. Guess what? According to both mythical sets of cycles we’re currently in the crappiest of times. [FYI- If there’s anything my education and experience as a social scientist taught me, it’s that notions of determinism applied to the sphere of human behavior are inevitably wrong. The physical world may be clockwork, but the minds of men are a clockwork orange.] Why do I think these conceptions of cycles may be dangerous? Because a lot of damage is done by people who go through life thinking the world is feeding them a steady diet of shit-sandwiches. This is, of course, all perception. Nature–unlike gods and other supernatural mythical creatures–doesn’t draw targets on the backs of individuals, nor weigh them good or evil. However, now you’re going to tell people who already see the world through dung-colored glasses that your [pseudo-]science shows they were born in the worst of times. That–my friends–is not helping make a better world.)

 

I think those interested in the course should be aware of three things: 1.) a god, gods, the divine, the supernatural, or whatever you wish to call it is taken as a given by the course (you’re not going to see a Nietzschean counterpoint in this school of philosophy); 2.) you aren’t going to get a broad-based exposure to philosophy in that a.) the ideas are all from ancient traditions and b.) the concepts presented are cherry-picked to be consistent with the New Acropolis agenda (which isn’t to imply the agenda is onerous by the standards of sects or religions, but there’s an agenda) ; 3.) you should banish any expectations of engaging in rousing class discussions or dialogues with the teacher because it’s very much a one way street.  If you’re good with those three factors, you may want to give it a try. You might find it’s the right approach for you.

BOOK REVIEW: Yoga Body by Mark Singleton

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Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture PracticeYoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice by Mark Singleton

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Amazon page

I was excited to stumble across this book because it proposed fresh insights into the history and development of posture-centric yoga. Singleton’s premise is that yoga as it’s practiced in studios around the world today (i.e. practices focused heavily on asana, or postures) has almost nothing to do with historic yogic traditions and is to a large extent European (or Western) fitness practices fed back to the world with a patina of Indian-ness instilled by a few Indian fitness teachers (e.g. T. Krishnamacharya and students.) This is a bold and stunning hypothesis. The problem is that Singleton leaves plenty of room to doubt his thesis. I’m not saying that I’m certain Singleton is wrong, but after reading the book I’m no more inclined to believe his hypothesis than when I first read the book blurb.

The book consists of nine chapters:
1.) A Brief Overview of Yoga in the Indian Tradition
2.) Fakirs, Yogins, Europeans
3.) Popular Portrayals of the Yogin
4.) India and the International Physical Culture Movement
5.) Modern Indian Physical Culture: Degeneracy and Experimentation
6.) Yoga as Physical Culture I: Strength and Vigor
7.) Yoga as Physical Culture II: Harmonial Gymnastics and Esoteric Dance
8.) The Medium and the Message: Visual Reproduction and the Asana Revival
9.) T. Krishnamacharya and the Mysore Asana Revival

One can see the flow of the book in this chapter listing. It begins by describing the ancient yogic traditions (e.g. Jnana yoga, Bhakti yoga, and Karma yoga.) Singleton then goes on to put immense weight on very few voices that were speaking globally about yoga in the late 19th century—largely European but notably including Swami Vivekananda. (This, by the way, is where I noticed the most glaring weaknesses of the book. There seems to be an assumption that what the most vocal people were saying during this time was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.) One will note that the late 19th century is an arbitrary point to make the critical juncture for a study of yoga—this era’s sole importance seems to be in that that’s when Europeans started entering the scene (and documenting it in English and Western languages to a large extent.) I understand that there may have been a dearth of information previously; however, I’m also skeptical of equating the sum of truth with the sum of what is documented.

The book then shifts into the early 20th century when Singleton proposes the proto-postural yoga is beginning to coalesce with both Western and indigenous Indian influences. Singleton writes extensively about this period, and presents what he believes is the path by which postural practice evolved over a short time into modern yoga as we know it. The book ends in the mid-20th century with an extensive discussion of T. Krishnamacharya and his pack of brilliant students (i.e. B.K.S. Iyengar, Pattabhi Jois, T.V.K. Desikachar, and Indira Devi) who are responsible for a lot of how yoga is practiced today (for virtually all of modern yoga by Singleton’s reckoning.)

It should be noted that this book is put out by an academic press, Oxford University Press, and there’s all the front and post matter that one would expect of a scholarly press publication. This includes an introduction, notes, and a bibliography.

So, you might be wondering how I could have so much doubt about the veracity of the book’s central claim—a book written by a Cambridge educated scholar and published by Oxford University Press. It’s, after all, chocked full of facts that are designed to bolster Singleton’s argument. I’m certainly not suggesting that Singleton lied or presented false facts (however, I have–and will further–argue that he frames facts throughout the book to diminish those statements and facts that run counter to his argument while wholeheartedly accepting statements that validate his argument—even when the people whose statements he leaves unchallenged would seem to have their own agendas. I don’t know, perhaps T. Krishnamacharya was—as Singleton intimates though never explicitly accuses—lying when he claimed to have received his sequence and approach from a scripture he was taught by a Himalayan master. However, interestingly, he would be lying to minimize his role in the development of yoga rather than to increase his fame. This stands in contrast with the European authors who Singleton readily accepts who were seeking to build their bona fides as experts in the esoteric systems of India and the Himalaya, who arguably had a lot to gain from being seen as having a full understanding of these systems.)

The best way to understand the root of my skepticism is to tell a make-believe story. Imagine a race of aliens came down to Earth. For whatever reason, they want to understand (presumably among many other things) the Roman Catholic Church. One astute alien scholar notes that, after having reviewed not only the entire Bible but a vast canon of theologian discourse, there is scant mention of sitting or kneeling. However, when cameras came around, there came to be clear evidence of pews and kneelers in the church. The aliens conclude that Catholics had always stood during worship, but with the advent of the camera they began to sit and kneel. The aliens, having big and bulbous butts, conclude that the Catholics have become concerned that their own big, bulbous butts will be captured for posterity (pun intended) by the cameras and have, thus, opted to adopt postures that would more adequately provide cover. In the present day, sitting and kneeling are the bulk of what Catholics do with their bodies when [overtly] practicing their religion, and so it must be those postures–rather than abstract notions like achieving “grace” are now the most critical part of the practice. (Besides, the earliest photos of kneelers came from Protestant churches, so perhaps Anglicans taught Catholics how to kneel.)

If you haven’t figured it out, in my little scenario, the late 19th century Europeans who were writing the English language tracts that formed the heart of Singleton’s research material are the aliens with big, bulbous butts. I would propose that the Europeans aren’t viewing yoga completely objectively but through the lens of their own experience and desires. Furthermore, they are also only giving weight to what they see and hear (which may or may not be a full picture.) I would further argue that just like Catholics don’t devote much text to discussing sitting and kneeling in the documents of the Vatican library doesn’t mean there isn’t a long history of those practices. Postural practice is:

a.) not the critical end result that everyone is concerned with even if it takes up the bulk of one’s time in [overt] practice. It’s certainly true that there are a vast number of yoga practitioners whose only interest is in the fitness aspect of the practice. However, there are also many who spend most of their yoga reading time learning from Vedas and reading yogic philosophy even though the bulk of their practice time is asana.
b.) extremely difficult to convey via text but readily conveyed through demonstration and hands-on teaching. If you were a Catholic and wanted to teach someone kneeling, would you write them a three paragraph text description of the process, or would you just demonstrate how to kneel and correct any glaring (albeit unlikely) deficiencies in form.

At no point does Singleton get into the postural details of individual asana. He mentions another scholar that supposedly has done some of that work, but Singleton feels it’s not critical. However, it’s very hard to prove what he’s trying to prove without getting into that level of detail. Yes, there will be similarities between various systems of stretching because of the nature of the body. For example, European stretching systems had a forward bend that looks reminiscent of paschimottanasana (the body folds that way and stretching the hamstrings is one of the most important functions in any stretching regimen), and it shouldn’t be surprising or revealing if the first photograph of this posture was in a European gym (the fact that Scandinavians had cameras before Himalayan yogis isn’t a sound basis to conclude that Himalayan yogi’s learned to bend forward from Scandinavians.) A there are a lot of postures that two systems might reasonably independently discover, but one also can’t rule out that the Indian yogi taught the Europeans and not the other way around. (I know it’s hard to comprehend in the era of FaceBook, but failure to be documented does not equal failure to be true. The farther one goes into the past, the less of what happened is going to be documented, and some cultures are going to be more likely to document events than others. e.g. Would our aliens be right or wrong if they concluded that 85% of humans are females between the age of 12 and 24 years old because 85% of the selfies posted on the internet are among that group. )

Singleton’s book does have some graphics. They didn’t always help his case, however. I was struck by how few of the fine details of the European postures correspond to practice as we know them, while some of the very old paintings look almost exactly like present day asana. (If one accepts that the fact that they didn’t have the greatest grasp of capturing perspective back then isn’t indicative of how flat the postures and people were back then.) I’ll readily admit that I wouldn’t definitively count Singleton wrong on my subjective observation of the pictures, but it does leave me with a lot of room for doubt.

I suppose the next question is why I didn’t completely pan the book. Three stars isn’t a tragic rating. I thought the book contained a lot of good information and food for thought (even if it fell far short of proving its central hypothesis.) I particularly enjoyed the chapter on T. Krishnamacharya and his now-famous student body. I’ll also say that part of why I came away from the book with such a muddled perception of this history is that Singleton doesn’t hide facts that are damning to his case, but rather presents them and then tries to marginalize them. A prime example would be the Hatha Yoga Pridipika (HYP), a 15th century text that mentions a number of the asana considered classic yoga postures today (some of which form the core of a Hata practice)—though admittedly HYP emphasizes the importance of only four seated postures.

I can’t say that Singleton didn’t help give me pause to wonder about the truth of the received understanding of yoga’s evolution. I’ve practiced yoga in places as varied as India, the U.S., Thailand, and Hungary, and I found it shocking how similar the practice is around the world. This bodes well for the argument that yoga as it’s practiced today has coalesced recently. By way of contrast, there are many myths about how one martial art is the ancestor of another but the two systems often look nothing alike. (e.g. I’ve studied Kalaripayattu, which many believe was the ancestor art taken to China by Bodhidharma through Southeast Asia, but which today looks nothing like Kung fu or Muay Thai. Furthermore, Kung fu styles usually look quite unlike the Korean and Japanese martial arts that they are said to have inspired.) If the latter among these martial arts did come from the earlier, they evolved apart quickly. While the evolution into different martial art forms is quite possible, it raises the question of why yoga should be so similar internationally. A skilled yoga teacher would likely give a given student the same alignment adjustments for, say, Warrior I, regardless of whether the teacher was in Prague, Manila, Tokyo, or San Diego.

I can’t say that I’d endorse Singleton’s argument. It would take much more precise information for me to buy it (and it’s likely that said detailed historical information doesn’t exist.) However, if you’re interested in the history of yoga, you might want to check out this book. Your conclusions may differ from mine, but even if they don’t I suspect you’ll learn a thing or two of interest. Yoga Body was reasonably priced as a Kindle book when I bought it.

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The Science of Wisdom & The Wisdom of Science

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Shrine_nearRoppongi_statues

For the purposes of this post, wisdom is neither a collection of trite adages, nor is it an accumulation of arcane or esoteric scripture. Wisdom is:

1.) the ability to quiet the mind

2.) the ability to suppress inclinations to be petty in a healthy way

3.) the ability to override instinct with conscious thought when it’s beneficial to do so

4.) the ability to know when it’s beneficial to do so (see #3)

5.) mastery of (rather than being mastered by) one’s emotions

The objective of these activities is to increase happiness, reduce strife, and exercise better and healthier decision-making.

 

While these are secular objectives, the pursuit of this form of wisdom has to a large extent become entwined with certain breeds of religion or spiritualism. Mystical religious traditions are the style of spiritualism that are most commonly associated with these pursuits. (Here I use mysticism in its scholarly sense, i.e. traditions that believe in a god or gods and who believe that the space in they can interact with said god is to be found inwardly. This is as opposed to the ill-defined colloquial meaning of mysticism that has a negative connotation and is infused with judgement about hippy-dippiness.) One sees the pursuit of this form of wisdom in yogic philosophy, in most branches of Buddhism, in Taoism, etc.

 

I’m not sure why this connection should be so entrenched. Why should agnostics and atheists forfeit the pursuit of such forms of personal improvement? Maybe the scientifically-minded think that they are knowledgeable and knowledge is wisdom, and so they think they are already on the path. I can tell you that knowledge isn’t wisdom. I base this on the experience of knowing intellectually brilliant people who couldn’t get along with anyone, who perpetually said the wrong things, and whose personal lives were a wreck. Skeptics and geeks are as subject to strained relationships, stress, and unhappiness as their pious neighbors.

 

Another possible explanation is that many scientifically-minded people just don’t think that such goals are achievable because the routes to them have too often been couched in supernatural terms.   However, there’s a growing literature on how these objectives can be pursued that is rooted in neuroscience and neuroplasticity, and for which the presence or absence of a deity is irrelevant.  I’ve been reading a book called Zen and the Brain lately that offers an understanding of the effects of meditation that is firmly rooted in the science of the brain. I also recently purchased a book entitled Buddha’s Brain that takes a look at how neuroplasticity allows for a “rewiring” the brain to a healthier state. (Yes, I realize the irony of citing two books that have religious references in their titles in this post. I’d argue that this is how inexorably tangled these pursuits have become with religion. However, both of the scientist/authors of the aforementioned books, James H. Austin and Rick Hanson, have books with more secular titles if you’d prefer.)

BuddhaBrain Zen&Brain

 

I was once eating in a university cafeteria when I heard a religious man make the argument to a fellow he was trying to “educate” that went like this:  “If there’s not a God, why should I be nice to my wife–why shouldn’t I kick the hell out of my dog?” My first thought was that this man desperately needed therapy. If the only reason he wasn’t being a violent asshole is because he feared the wrath of an invisible, omnipotent entity who–by they way–would have to be showing a complete indifference to what people do to each other in real-time, then he’s an accident waiting to happen. If he either: a.) loses his fear of said deity, or b.) begins to think that the deity is telling him to go another way (since whatever the deity is “telling” him is almost certainly just his mind telling him), then his wife and dog are in great peril.

 

My second thought was, “this is the cafeteria in an institution for higher learning, how’d this guy get in without at least the rudimentary training in logic to imagine a basis of moral behavior that’s not rooted in the supernatural smiting ability of a deity [who–I might add–sees a helluva lot of smite-worthy activity on a daily basis.]”

 

If you’re considering an action that seems questionable, you don’t need to ask what Jesus would do? You can start by asking the question: Would my life (or those of my loved ones) be adversely impacted by living in a world in which everybody did what I’m about to do in the manner I intend to do it? (Implied is the idea that, if the action in question involves doing something to someone, you would be subject to being on the receiving end of same action sooner or later.)   If the answer is “yes,” don’t do it. If the answer is “no” there still may be reasons not to do the activity that have to do with what is good for you personally. (We’ll get into that a little further down.)

 

I realize that the above standard isn’t perfect, but it’s far less subject to user error than WWJD and it explains why the fellow from above shouldn’t beat his wife or his dog unless he likes rigorous and regular beatings himself. Some people might say that they don’t think they or their loved one’s would be adversely in the slightest if everyone went about walking around naked. Others might believe that they would be stressed out (or overstimulated) in such a world. However, the above approach has already gotten us to the fringe of questionable activity. Yes, some people might be traumatized if their neighbors walked around in the nude. But I suspect if everybody did it (as per the question) it would become not weird (definitely not harmful) in short order. There are those people who are so fragile that they can’t sleep knowing that a couple engaging in intercourse in privacy of a room three doors down are probably not using a missionary-approved posture. Said people need the kind of wisdom I’m talking about more than any because part of it is accepting that there may be more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in their philosophy. Now that we know how to kill stray asteroids, if humanity ever dies out it will be at the hands of people who can’t bear anyone living by rules not those that they took for themselves.

 

At any rate, I think there are two reasons why the above approach is difficult for homo religiosis (religious human.) First, there are many activities that homo religiosis wants to see universally abolished because their religion considers forbidden, but which don’t adversely impact others. (e.g. Jains are pretty easy-come-easy-go, but imagine you were told you’d have to forgo onions because of that religion’s moral belief that no food should come from a plant that’s killed by harvesting. [FYI: Let me laugh now at the religious people who say “but there’s nothing crazy like that in my religion?” That just means you are so untraveled and uneducated that you can’t fathom how completely wacky some of your “moral” beliefs / practices are. e.g. How about eating salmon on Fridays as a sacrifice in lieu of eating a hamburger? That’s just nutty on all sorts of levels.])

 

Second, many believers really do believe that they have a special place in god’s heart and, therefore, aren’t subject to the same limitations as those poor, god unloved people. The idea that said person shouldn’t commit rape because they wouldn’t like it if someone else raped them or their sister or their mother is non-sense, because their god would never let someone else get away with shit like that with them. (Yes, there are people who’ve lived sheltered enough lives to believe that god punishes others but–at most–“tries” them.)

 

Most of us must accept that when it comes to being a person, we are the same as all the other people. While one may be stronger, faster, smarter, or in some dimension more talented than others, this doesn’t endow one with a different set of rights and responsibilities. On a genetic level there are no chosen people.

 

Earlier I mentioned that the “if everyone else did it” standard might leave one on the horns of a dilemma as to how to behave or what decision to make. Here’s where we’ve got to use our brains because the hard and fast rules go out the window. Evolution has programmed us with some guidelines that were beneficial given the constraints of the world our ancestors lived in. However, this programming of pleasure and pain may or may not be great advice given the ways in which humans have changed our own world.

 

Let me give some examples. Our nervous system suggests we eat foods that are sweet and fatty. We crave chocolate and bacon, and pleasure centers in the brain light up when we consume these foods. In our hunter / gatherer existence, this was excellent guidance because a.) these foods were relatively rare, b.) these foods had dense caloric content, c.) sweet foods are less likely to be poison, and d.) we worked our asses off in physical labor (i.e. high caloric demands.) However, today these high caloric foods are mass-produced, we require almost no caloric expenditure to obtain them (or to do most anything else in our cubicle-dwelling work lives), and in some cases people are literally (I don’t use “literally” lightly) killing themselves with such foods.  So part of the wisdom I’m talking about is developing the capacity to exercise conscious control over decisions about whether to eat such foods, how much of such foods to consume, and what activities to do to counter act the flood of empty calories. Our biology is a harsh mistress, and it can require intense efforts to keep such impulses under control.

 

We are also programmed with love, a trait which has served us well over all. I know some of you are cringing about the idea of “evolutionarily programmed love”–so unromantic. It’s simple. Those who could build connections with others disproportionately survived to pass their genes on. This further fed into our species’ rise because, while we think of ourselves as the planet’s dominant species, we produce the most vulnerable 1 year olds (or 8 year olds for that matter) of any species on the planet. A human three-year-old is good for two things–learning and food. It takes a lot of love to make sure its the former and not the latter. An extremely intense experience of love is essential to our species’ ability to not just wander off and let our pain-in-the-ass children get eaten. This gives us plenty of time to teach kids more than just how to elude a saber-tooth tiger. We have time to teach kids language, social niceties, and trigonometry.

 

We can, therefore, use our gigantic brains to noodle out whether a given action is best for us,  in addition to whether it does no harm to those around us. The complexity of our brains allows us to rewrite our rule book in unprecedented ways. Some of the religious “morality” that seems vacuous (e.g. don’t eat shellfish, but feel free to own as many people as you can afford) probably had a logic in that time (e.g. people were getting sick from eating shellfish because they didn’t yet know how to prepare it.) The problem is that one has to be ready to jettison obsolete advice, and that’s hard to do once it’s entrenched as dogma. This is where being Homo sapiens, the thinking human, comes into play.

 

 

DAILY PHOTO: Namdroling Temple

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Taken in March of 2014

Taken in March of 2014 at Bylakuppe.

The large photo is of Pema Norbu Rinpoche, the 11th head of the Palyul Nyingma Buddhist tradition. He passed away (achieving Parinirvana in the lingo of Buddhism) in March of 2009. At the end of July of 2014, the new Rinpoche will be enthroned.

 

DAILY PHOTO: Padmasambhava Buddhist Vihara

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Taken March 29, 2014 at Namdroling Monastery in Bylakuppe.

Taken March 29, 2014 at Namdroling Monastery in Bylakuppe.

IMG_1497

Namdroling Monastery is the largest teaching center of the Nyingmapa sect of Tibetan Buddhism in the world. It is located in Bylakuppe in southern Karnataka. Bylakuppe is a series of settlements that constitute one of the largest collections of Tibetans in Southern India (about 20,000 Tibetans live here.) This monastery was established by the Penor Rinpoche in 1963, after the Tibetan diaspora of 1959. The original monastery was a small bamboo temple, from that it has grown to a large campus of buildings.

This, the “Golden Temple”, is a must stop visit for travelers in southern Karnataka. For those with interest in Tibetan Buddhism, one may want to arrange a longer stay. Be aware that there are certain permitting requirements for visits longer than day visits.

BOOK REVIEW: Don’t Kill Him by Ma Anand Sheela

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Don't Kill Him! The Story of My Life with Bhagwan RajneeshDon’t Kill Him! The Story of My Life with Bhagwan Rajneesh by Ma Anand Sheela

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Amazon page

There are some nonfiction books that one reads because one wants the objective, unvarnished truth about events. This is NOT that book. Some books you read knowing they are going to contain a mix of truth and falsehood–fact and fiction–and you read them believing you can gain insight from both the truth and the falsehood–if you consider the words analytically in light of known facts. This is that kind of book.

Don’t Kill Him is an autobiographical account of Ma Anand Sheela’s (a.k.a. Sheela Ambalal Patel’s) life as the secretary / spokeswoman / project manager / Pepper Potts for Bhagwan Rajneesh (a.k.a. Osho.) As such, while it is about the life of Sheela, the central character is the Bhagwan Rajneesh. This is indicative of the narcissistic but charismatic cult leader—who must be the center of attention—and the infatuated cult member for whom the “guru” is everything. What one really gets in this book is insight into the mind of a person prone to join a cult.

Chances are you know of the Bhagwan Rajneesh in one of two very different ways. As Osho, he’s an enlightened guru who penned over 600 books on spiritual topics from Taoism to Tantric sex, who attracted a vast following of wisdom seekers, and who to this day has a centers globally in his name—despite having died in 1990. As the Bhagwan Rajneesh you may know of him as a petty narcissist who built a stunningly successful cult of personality, and who in all likelihood green-lighted a salmonella attack on a rural populace in Oregon in an attempt to sway a local election so that certain dodgy practices could be carried out at his commune.

Sheela comes across as quite reasonable in the book. Gone are the days when she made replies to questions such as “tough titties” or a horrifying Holocaust joke. She claims that her former outlandishness was part of a role that she played on behalf and at the behest of the Bhagwan, but playing the victim in the face of entire world that conspired against her in her selfless virtuousness is a prevailing theme throughout the book.

Read carefully, there is plenty of evidence that all is not right with the author’s mind. She barely addresses criminal charges for which she was given sentences in total of 64 years (though, because they were to be served concurrently, the most she would have served would have been 20—and in reality she served less than two-and-a-half.) She talks more about the least of the charges–visa fraud then the attempted murder and assault convictions. She merely asserts that there was a vast conspiracy involving the German government (who extradited her), the U.S. criminal system (which indicted her), and at least two different factions of the Rajneeshee cult (one being exemplified by the Bhagwan, himself, and the other by David Berry Knapp, the mayor of Rajneeshpuram (the incorporation of the cult compound) who not only dropped a dime on Sheela but also implicated the Bhagwan)

While it’s fair to say mistakes are made in the American criminal justice system now and again, the scale of conspiracy that would have to be involved in Sheela’s case strains credulity. Her suggestion that a criminal justice system that protects defendants as much as anywhere in world is completely corrupt comes off as a bit sad and pathetic. Here and there she points out that there were one or two good people in the jail or justice system, but one soon suspects that these are just other deluded cult-prone individuals ready to drink the Kool-Aid themselves. Interestingly, while she claims there was not a shred of evidence against her, she made an Alford plea. (You’ll be forgiven for not knowing what an Alford Plea is, as it’s something only the mind of a lawyer could come up with. One pleads guilty while asserting one’s innocence. In essence, one says, “I’m really not guilty, but there’s enough evidence to convict me so I want to make a deal to get less prison time.” Of course, she makes paranoid-sounding claims that the American criminal justice system as justification for not standing up for her own innocence.

The only bad decision of any note that the author ever admits to making is slapping one of the followers, an act for which she claims both Bhagwan Rajneesh and the commune forgave her. These repeated claims that while her life was falling apart it was because almost everyone else was wicked while she was a victim wear a little thin. She claims that all the accusations against her resulted from her decision to leave because of her guru’s latest decision to bilk wealthy followers to pay for more Rolls-Royces. There may be a seed of truth in this. The Bhagwan also claimed that she embezzled money, a charge that was not covered in the charges for which Sheela was convicted. It’s as likely as not that any shortage of funds resulted from the Bhagwan’s own materialistic addictions. Whether his accusations about the bioterror attack were spurred by being spurned by this assistant cannot be known. Of course, it could also be that he wanted to separate himself from the felony indictments that were becoming increasingly inevitable.

The title, Don’t Kill Him, comes from Sheela’s repeated suggestion that, while the Bhagwan was a madman, one shouldn’t destroy the legacy. It’s this back and forth between deifying and castigating the Bhagwan that gives one insight into the mind of a cultist—but also leaves one scratching one’s head at what the author’s point is. When she suggests that he was a petty, narcissistic, greedy drug addict who should be exalted, it’s a bit dumbfounding for the average individual. It seems to be a textbook case of infatuation with the charisma of an otherwise deplorable human being. There is this widespread confusion of charisma with enlightenment that is intriguing. Early in Chapter 4 and later in Chapter 5, the author suggests that the Bhagwan set up her imprisonment as part of her education. That level of delusion is astounding.

There are those who’ll say that Sheela is right and others who’ll tell you that she is just trying to bash the Bhagwan—albeit in a very ambivalent way. I’m here to tell you that this book leaves the reader with one logical conclusion, and that’s that both Sheela and the Bhagwan were coo-coo for Coco-Puffs.

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DAILY PHOTO: Seaside Shrine

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Taken in January 2014 in Patong.

Taken in January 2014 in Patong.

Taken January 2014 in Patong

Taken January 2014 in Patong.

From this little shrine one could view Patong Beach across Beach Road. It’s a small but very active shrine at the North end of Patong Beach. There was often someone burning incense or making an offering.

 

BOOK REVIEW: The Equanimous Mind by Manish Chopra

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The Equanimous MindThe Equanimous Mind by Manish Chopra

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

Imagine going to a meditation center and living by the following rules:

1. You may not have access to any reading materials.

2. You may not have access to any writing materials.

3. You must leave behind cell phones, tablets, laptops, watches, radios, and other portable electronic devices.

4. While there will be other people around, you are only allowed to talk to your instructor/mentor, and mustn’t acknowledge or interact with others. You will scarcely hear a voice unless you are in meeting with your teacher or listening to the taped lessons in the evening.

5. You will be segregated from the other sex. They will have separate living and meditation spaces.

6. You will eat only the vegetarian meals provided by the center.

7. You will spend your days mostly in meditation—meditation of a rigorously prescribed nature.

8. You have to live by these rules for ten straight days. You are strongly discouraged from attending if you don’t believe yourself capable completing of all ten days.

Could you do it? If your response is, “Sure I can, piece of cake,” you are either an exceptional person or a little deluded. And it’s probably more likely you are like the person who imagines they will be a hero in a bank robbery or mugging, but who ends up catatonically cowering in a puddle of their own piddle. Maybe it shouldn’t be a tough proposition, but it is.

The ten days described are the basic course offered at Vipassana meditation centers around the globe. Except your travel costs, there’s no cost to attend, and you aren’t even allowed to tip the staff–though you can make a donation at the end of the course to assist others. If you happen to be near a center, there’s nothing but will and 10 consecutive days of freedom to keep one from taking the course.

The Equanimous Mind charts Manish Chopra’s personal experience with the course. I bought the book because I intend to attend the course myself, and I craved insight into what the experience is like.

For those who are unfamiliar with Vipassana meditation, it’s nominally a Buddhist method, but practitioners are quick to point out that it’s actually areligious. One need not be Buddhist to attend. One could be a Hindu, a Methodist, or an atheist and get the same value from attendance. Adherents believe that this is the meditation method that Buddha himself taught. For those who thought this sounded awfully cult-like when I described it above, in many ways it’s the antithesis of a cult. There is no central guru to worship. The closest thing to the overarching guru, S.N. Goenka, passed away last year. You don’t have to join a group or swear allegiance. And not only don’t you surrender your life-savings, you don’t have to surrender one, thin dime to have the experience.

Chopra doesn’t write at all about the background of Vipassana, nor much about its philosophy or method. Instead, this book is a retelling of Chopra’s personal experience with the camp. There are many books that deal with those aforementioned topics, and so it’s no loss that this book doesn’t. It does give the reader a first-hand look at what it’s like to live in the camp and what prolonged meditation is like, and thus meets a valuable niche in lending comfort to those who are considering the course–but who are leery of what they will go through.

It’s remarkable that the author had the detailed recollections necessary to construct an entire book. The organization of the book chapters is by day, and so there are ten core chapters. (This is a good way to arrange it as there is apparently some universality to experience day-by-day. Not only are people being taught the same methods, but it seems most people who quit do so on days two or six—indicating many people hit “walls” at the same point.) One will remember that notebooks and writing utensils are prohibited. The last chapter informs the reader that Chopra began frantically outlining the book on his way home. It’s surprising that an entire book sprang from memory. The author does claim that the clarity gained through the course improved his memory.

One can’t help but wonder what the book would have read like if it had been compiled day-by-day as a journal. In other words, how much was the book was framed by the euphoria of just having completed the course? Chopra does mention some low points of the course, but, overall, the picture he paints is rosy. It may be that his experience was just overwhelmingly positive, or he could have been on a high from completing something quite difficult.

Chopra suggests that by the end he had greater mental clarity, decreased vice, increased mental capacity, and was living an idyllic life. I don’t want to sound like I’m treating the account as suspect, and I certainly wouldn’t suggest that Chopra is being blatantly dishonest. However, I worry that Chopra might have oversold the course. It almost reads like he’s been imbued with superpowers (mental, not physical–think Professor Xavier, not superman) at the end of the book. (He doesn’t suggest anything magical, but the claims are pretty impressive.) Maybe this is genuinely his experience, but it sounds a little too good to be true.

I’d definitely recommend this book for people who are considering taking the course. I’m not sure it would be of much interest to a more general reader. As I indicated, one isn’t going to learn a lot about the philosophy or history of Vipassana. One does learn a little about the methods from Chopra’s description, but it is fairly cursory. There is a fair amount of mundane information that people interested in the course will love to know (e.g. what kind of food was served and what it’s like to have to sit through one’s body aches), but which will be less than thrilling for someone who has no interest in taking the course.

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