“Every man possesses the Buddha-nature. Do not demean yourselves.”
~ Dōgen
Good morning friends, and what a hazy day we apparently have on tap. Not too much of a sunrise to share!!
Last night I watched the movie Captain Phillips. And the movie is a perfect demonstration of the yogic principle of Tapas, or self-discipline, that we talked about yesterday. Captain Phillips is Hollywood’s take on the real life hijacking of a US cargo ship by pirates off the Somali coast in East Africa. The captain himself is played by Tom Hanks, who demonstrates the exceptional ability to maintain grace under fire.
The story begins with Hanks ordering strict security precautions on the vessel and carries out practice drills. His crew half-heartedly go through the drills. But as luck – or misfortune – would have it, the drill soon becomes the reality. And just like in the TV show Survivor, when shit begins to hit the fan, some of the crew begin to balk. One of the men is overheard saying that “he didn’t sign up for this crap”. Captain Phillips replies back: “OK then. I’ll write up your dismissal paperwork, and you can get off the ship as soon as we dock. But in the meantime, get the F with it!”
Life is like this. There often will be times when we think “I didn’t sign up for this crap”. But guess what: Whether we like it or not, we’re in this game called life. And just like the drills that Captain Phillips mandates, the practice or discipline of Tapas prepares us to meet real-life, challenging circumstances with better agility.
We force ourselves to get to our mat, to sit in meditation, whether we like it or not, want to or not. This is how we learn to stick it out. To not let our emotions get the better of us in tough situations.
But on a spiritual end, what is all this “sticking it out” for ??
The next jewel of yoga is Svadhyaya, or self-study and self-inquiry. It is coming to understand ourselves, not as our physical being or our ego-ic mind, but as our true nature, the observer, or our spirit-self. I like to think of it as the spirit that will move on when my body has expired. Who is this self ??
The older we get, we become like one of those Russian dolls. We become more and more encased in another layer of being-ness. This is life: It brings more and more experiences. And if we aren’t careful, we begin to completely identify with our experiences, and the shell or doll that’s been molded by them.
Debra Adele writes: “The yogis teach that we, as human beings, are packaged much like the Russian Dolls. We are, at the core, divine consciousness. Around this pure consciousness,we are packed in “boxes” of our experience, our conditioning, and our belief systems. These boxes are things like how we identify ourselves, what we believe to be true, our preferences and dislikes, our fears and imagination. All of these boxes are informed by country, culture, gender, town, ancestors and family history, groups we belong to, and our personal experience.”
This packaging is portrayed in a story told in the East …
It seems God had just created human beings. Realizing that *He* had made a terrible mistake, God calls a council of the elders to get some help. When the elders are gathered, God reports, “I have just created humans and now I don’t know what I am going to do. They will always be talking to me and wanting things from me and I won’t ever get any rest.”
Upon hearing God’s dilemma, the elders made several suggestions telling God he could hide on Mount Everest, or the moon, or deep in the earth. God responds hopelessly to all of these suggestions saying, “No, humans are resourceful; eventually they will find me there.” Finally, one elder walked up to God and whispers something in his ear.
Then God shouts in delight, “That’s it! I’ll hide inside of each human; they will never find me there!”
We suffer, the yogis tell us, because we forget who we are. We think we are the layers of Russian dolls we are wrapped in and forget that we are really the Divine “hiding” inside.
In another writing of Yoga’s Upanishads, humans are referred to as “God in a pot.” Understanding this simple statement is the goal of self-study. As long as we identify with the “pot” (our bodies and our minds), we suffer in our limitations. When we shift our identity from the “pot” to the Godself within, we rest in our true Self.
“Svadhyaya, or self-study, is about knowing our true identity as Divine and understanding the boxes we are wrapped in. We can find clues about our boxes by watching our projections, by the process of tracing our reactions back to a belief, and by using Tapas to courageously look at life as it is. This process of knowing ourselves, and the boxes that adorn us, creates a pathway to freedom.”
So today, I’ve shared with you the philosophy that you have the capacity to wake up. It’s pretty heavy stuff! Use Tapas or self-discipline to truly contemplate on it for a few moments today ….
This Godself within is called the Atman in Yoga, Buddha nature in Buddhism, and Christ consciousness in Christianity.
Do you think it’s absurd that you too could go out into the desert for 40 days and 40 nights, and come back, awake, declaring “I am God” (or a part of God, or have his divine spark in me) ??? Maybe this philosophy will offer you hope! Personally, I think this is why there has not yet been a “Second Coming of Christ”. No one in modern times has woken up. If we did, we’d be hauled off to the loony bin. We are too afraid looking up to the sky for him, instead of realizing he is right here hiding within us, all the time.
Namaste.
If you enjoyed this post, you can find the beginning of this series,
Exploring the Yamas and Niyamas: The Yogic Code of Ethics, here:
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