Bhog Blog
I'm typing out this note with an unusual mixture of hope and dread coursing through my system. In Toronto, where I reside, the virus case numbers are spiking, leaving the house feels less and less easeful, and I'm saddled with the dread that my daughter may never return to in-person school for months. Yikes. It's...a lot. And I'm sure it's manifested as 'a lot' for each of you reading this, though your individual circumstances likely differ from mine.
My mental and emotional response to circumstances can feel all consuming and often, they supersede my ability to remember that they are temporary. If I’m graced with a glimmer of awareness, I remember my tools: Can I use any of the stuff I study and teach to decode this predicament? The answer is almost always ‘YES’. Yoga philosophy, or the 'view of yoga', can be likened to a useful pair of glasses that I peek through every now and again.
What am I seeing?
In Samkhya philosophy the world is divided into two: there is the unchanging permanent You and there is everything else— ‘everything’ refers to this life as we know it. The everything that isn’t You is always changing. It is temporary and fleeting. And most interesting, it’s insentient. The only sentience is You - your ability to witness it all, to experience it all and, ultimately, to hold it all.
Let’s transfer this worldview to the commentary we’ve seen around ‘2020,’ the most infamous and, dare I say, disparaged year there ever was. Popular sentiments place blame or anger upon this thing: a unit of time that we named ‘2020’. A unit of time is temporary and certainly insentient. It fits into the constantly changing half of the relationship that Samkhya frames for us. Where am I in this relationship?
My experience as framed by Samkhya-
2020: the changing everything
Its components included: a global pandemic; my daughter starting JK; a collective awareness shift and action on racial justice; shifting my work to the online world; lockdown after lockdown after lockdown; my emotional and mental responses; a glass of wine; watching The Crown; etc etc.
me: the constant one who experiences it
2020 was neither out to get me nor to inspire me because it’s not sentient! 2020 is just a part of the fleeting and temporary world that I get to encounter. I will not place blame or toss anger towards something that has no capacity to plot against me. The only actions I am responsible for in this relationship are MY OWN.
With my Samkhya glasses on, I am reminded that I’m here to observe, to experience and to engage with all of it. In Sanskrit, the yogis described the whole of life’s experience (both good and bad) with the word bhog. In fact, Patañjali says that all of this ‘everything’ exists for us to experience. And it’s through this experience that we can bring about our liberation. (Sutra 2.18)
Whoah — so how can I experience this era in a way that makes me free-er?
Every moment is an opportunity to learn, to grow, to remember. This sounds like a very lofty concept, but it’s as simple as taking one breath and asking yourself, what is my constant?
If my awareness is the only constant, then I will use it as a tethering post to ride out this storm. Perhaps I can set an intention that my ‘constant’ is to abide and to continue to love hard.
What’s the constant you are bringing with you into this new month, new year, new era?
And how can I help?