LOOSE NOTES ON WOMAN & YOGA

2005-12-08T20:57:00.000+08:00

Man is so weak that he needs the protection of a woman's desire (Lawrence Durrell, Quinx, 1985).

THE ART OF YOGA appears to have existed as a near-exclusive male endeavour since a remotely distant period in history. Well, be this as it may, it is interesting to note that the Sanskrit word yogin (Hindi, yogī) has its feminine correspondent, yoginī. The existence of the word yoginī alone is evidence that distinctive feminine forms of yoga once existed. This also shows that in the pre-historic past, it was not only men that were masters of yoga. Since the tragic disappearance of its feminine forms, the History of Yoga has been blindly groping through a long Dark Age. The authors of its treatises, its teachers and its saints have almost exclusively been men. But today there is a light at the end of the tunnel. There is a way forward.

If You Haven't Noticed

In the Sri-Yoga-Tantra of Guru Chod of Thailand (1900-1988), sexual proclivities are not only discerned but actively, honestly and explicitly explored. What is more, the basic approaches and aims of this meditative art are not the same for men and women.

Not only in the West but right around the globe, unqualified people have long been dabbling with the Eastern esoteric sciences – "like children playing with fire." This is easily witnessed in the broad scale attempt to apply the prevalent gymno-yogic techniques to men and woman equally, without consideration for basic sexual differences.

"If you haven't noticed," Chod said one day, "a woman's body is different from a man's – especially her emotions and inner energies. So you have to adjust the application of yoga according to the sex because certain exercises that are effective for a man might harm a woman if she tries to do them. In short, you have to treat men and women differently."

The basis for this rule is that yoga exercises have a strong affect on the endocrine system; that is, the pancreas, thyroid, parathyroid, suprarenal, pituitary and sex glands. These glands in turn have direct effect on the body's sensitive hormonal balance and therefore the person's emotions. It is hazardous to tamper with this delicate system, especially for women who risk becoming unattractively hard and losing their natural feminine softness. To countervail this industrial tendency Yoga ought be seen as a gentle meditative dance.

The Epistemology of Beauty

Aesthetics are essential to the Art of post-Classical Thai Yoga-Tantra. Its principles of beauty are based on an inner exfoliation. It taps the font of elegance and health. When practiced correctly, one readily observes the enhancement of ones natural inner grace. As awareness of the aesthetic process increases, so does the vastness of a newly sourced potency. The senses get revivified with sudden alertness and assertively cut to the core of the matter.

But don't be deceived over "mind" versus "matter" – over what is termed "physical" and what is termed "spiritual," as if they were dichotomous points of contention. This will never lead one to the heart of beauty.

There is no honest means of defending the notion of an absolute gulf between the world of matter (mater/māyā) and the world of spirit; nor between reality and make-believe.

Here we have the Epistemological School of Beauty where the person's social being, his gender – his sex! – can never be abstracted from the natural responses and inclinations that weave his mystic zone of expanse. We are men and women living to be beautiful, one for the other and each for ourselves. To know the beautiful, one must be beautiful. To be beautiful, one must feel. Or as Nijinsky wrote somewhere in his Diary: "I am Beauty, and Perfection. – I Feel." Yet with "yoga" and "sensation" being infinite bed friends, the problem becomes that you can't rest. Time for a little pillow talk?

Woman As Ultimate Spiritual Vessel

India is truly a land of living saints. By 'saints,' I suppose, I am speaking of people that abandon family and social status and wander where they will, sustaining themselves through the kindness of devotees. Yet due to the idealized roles ascribed to woman as housebound daughter, wife and mother, there have been sparing few women saints in India. Still, those who manage to attain liberation are accorded great reverence, and even deified.

In the centuries, indeed, the long millennia that followed the extinction of the ancient forms of feminine yoga, many new male forms of ascetic technology appeared on the scene. These highly masculinized modes of asceticism laid great store in the esoteric interpretation of prāna (breath) as the Universal life force. These designers were part of a wide-ranging religious movement generally designated by the term tantra. Such tantric yogins were comparable to sorcerers who practiced varieties of internal alchemy with the aim of evolving an immortal "diamond body."

But the ancient yoginī or "female yoga adept" appears to have had no hand in the drafting of the medieval Tantric texts. She was not, however, excluded from their theories. In fact, the yoginī was explicitly acknowledged for her saintly demeanour and otherworldly powers. She was accorded the monumental role of Devi, the Great Goddess Śakti and adored as the ultimate manifestation of nature's mysterious life-giving force. She was no longer viewed as an obstacle, but became instead the supreme spiritual vessel for the tantric yogin's emancipation. This engendered an ennobling super-sensual view of sexuality that sought to engage the action of the libido and the subconscious human instincts. The tantric yogī was said to be able to transcend the plane of gross sexuality and thereby align his yoga-fied being with the loftiest realms of saintliness. But these tantric disciplines always seem to underscore that the "amorous coupling" is never to involve the flow of semen. Why? Are the parties involved in these mystical approaches not to be regarded as sexual beings?

No. They are. But more important still, they are "sensual" beings. Though it needs be understood that this particular mode of sensuality is beyond what is normally held as "physicality," to the extent, for one example, that it does not have the underlying procreative urge. So their sex is wholly "astral," to use a terribly misleading term. It is sex without pregnancy, sex without VD. And so yes, such beings might even be regarded as "purely" sexual in so far as they have cast aside their foreign robes of flesh. In fact, it might even be stated that these yogīs and yoginīs constitute a "variant gender role," a variant Third or even "Fourth" sex, vis-à-vis Serena Nanda (2000).

Foreign Robes of Flesh

You are living in a body: This is a fact. You have an intimate relation with a human body. But you are not the body. It is a curious conjunction – you in the body – costumed undetectable in foreign robes of flesh as you stubbornly continue asleep in the body: profound amnesiac lost in the shadow play of a consciousness entombed in a brain in a body; as you persist oblivious to the luxury afforded you otherwise only through the process of death.

Feel free to explore these fathom-long bodies joined by the rarefied currents running through you. Dilate the vein in a buoyant sense to traverse dour brainwave and pointillistic image. Bore to the unoccupy-able space and dissolve in the mystic zone of expanse: meta-current lovers on private jihād, brilliant in the body: insurgents of creation.

Affirmation: I am a house in the wind. My windows are all open.

Community

As a wandering teacher, I travel a great deal around the globe. I never stay in one place very long. In the winter of 1996-97, I stayed in Taiwan and conducted an intensive month-long seminar at a certain Buddhist monastery near Taichung. My students were all young nuns. It was a smashing success.

But it's a fact these days that yoga is far more popular with women than it is with men. This goes not only for the physical Hatha-yoga, but for the more abstractly meditative practices as well. These appeal to women more than men. I wonder why? Maybe it's because in order to learn yoga one has to be open, vulnerable, and somehow flexible already.

Well whatever the reason, I always feel privileged to be able to educate women. And I learn a great deal from them in return. I recently heard an evocative phrase: "If you educate a man, you develop an individual. If you educate a woman, you develop a community."

Feminine Realms

There is a question often asked of me. This question expresses a common concern about the possible conflict between so-called Buddhist vipassanā meditation and yoga. But it's always men who ask this question. I wonder why. Are men less able to let go of structures? Maybe this proves that in spite of its history, yoga endures as a feminine domain. Which suddenly reminds me of a rather sensationalist topic: the semi-legendary "female-realms" that were known in ancient India as Strīrājya.

Like the ancient Greek legend of an Amazonian kingdom, the Indians recognized Strīrājya. These were countries entirely ruled by women and where men were only used as labourers. There are several ancient citations of these states in Sanskrit, Chinese and Arabic literature.

But only two classic writers make important mention of Strīrājya. Let me first mention Vatsyayana, the celebrated fourth-century author of Kāma Sūtra. Vatsyayana notes two Strī-rājya thought to have existed variously in Afghanistan, Orissa, Assam, Nepal, Tibet or on a distant island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. In his famously explicit manual of eroticism and social conduct, Vatsyayana describes these "matriarchal countries" as places where "violent practices and brutal sexual behaviour are required" to satisfy the women, where "dildos are much employed," and where women often hide young men in their apartments for sexual use (Kāma Sūtra, 2.5.27; 2.6.45-46).

According to modern researcher Benjamin Walker, 'the women of these states were possessed of extraordinary beauty and seductiveness. They were adept in magic and the ability to lure men into their domains, and to extract their seed without having intercourse. They then used the seed to impregnate themselves. They gave birth to girls or boys. Girls were for keeping a stable female population and boys were for doing manual labour and providing a fresh supply of seed. These women were also "full of impetuous desire" (Burton 1883). Their passions could not be gratified by normal sexual intercourse with men but rather in a sort of communal orgy with a number of men and women devoting themselves to the orgasm of those females who were in the grip of passion (oestrum) and ready to make love. The men indulged with one woman after the other or collectively. In the words of one Hindu text (mentions Walker), 'One man holds her down, another unites with her, a third massages her lips; a fourth man kisses her all over' (see also Saletore 1974, 155-71). 'Sometimes the women had themselves thrashed till they bled, some favoured sapphism' (Walker 1968, 2: 432).

Wandering Nuns and Erotic Ascetics

The mere indication of Strī-rājya alone demonstrates that women in ancient India had, for various reasons, sought out gender-role variants counter to the customary 'secluded virgin, wife and mother' as prescribed in the time-honored Dharma-sūtras (ca.7th-5th century BCE), ancient India's Legal Code.

Walter Penrose has shown great interest in the subject of female homoeroticism in South Asia. I will sample bits of his excellent article, "Hidden in History,"(2001, 3-39), wherein the author examines prevailing "gender-role variants" particular to ancient India. One such role was the wandering mendicant (yoginī, sādhin, parivrājika, ect.) who appears throughout Sanskrit literature, sometimes in quite surprising situations. By becoming ascetics, ancient Indian women were choosing a lifestyle independent of men. Commonly recognized by their shaven heads, they moved about freely through societal structures, as would widows, actresses, musicians, and 'experts in affairs of love.'

Kautilya

Now, the second and probably more important ancient writer to cite Strī-rājya is Kautilya (though also popularly known as Chanakya), the fourth-century BCE key advisor to the great emperor Chandragupta Maurya who ruled in the area of the present-day Ganges plain. In his Arthashastra, a classical treatise on government and security, Kautilya makes note of female mendicants that served as royal messengers. He even gives instructions on employing them as agents and spies:

A wandering nun may be a Brahmin (parivarāika) or from another sect (vrshala) with their heads shaven. Such agents shall be recruited from poor but intrepid widows, who need to work for their living. They shall be treated with honor in the palace so that they may go into the houses of high officials freely (Kautilya, 1.12.4-5).

But they could also be used to test the loyalties of the king's own ministers, writes Kautilya:

For the kāma (or "passion") test, a wandering nun shall be used to gain the confidence of a minister in order to convey the suggestion that the Queen is in love with him. Much wealth and a meeting with her shall be promised. If any minister refuses to be tempted, he is clean (1.10).

Thus by adopting the role of a wandering ascetic, these independent women who had renounced married life acquired a "safe haven" in the status of a variant gender role, plus access a viable economic support system. But she also gained the chance "to adopt some features of androgynous dress (hairstyle, in particular)," states Penrose, "and to have homoerotic relations with other women" (21). And to this point, Vatsyayana, too, makes mention of wandering female mendicants who serve as go-betweens to arrange secret trysts between adulterers (Kāma Sūtra, 5.4). But he also lists these "female ascetics" as potential teachers of adolescent girls in the arts of love (1.3.14).

So this really does suggest, as O'Flaherty remarks, that "asceticism" was defined very differently in ancient India than it was in the West. Because it is

...not entirely clear that "ascetic" women always refrained from having sex with men, and it is even less clear that they refrained from having sex with other women. To the Westerner, this may seem confusing, since we expect "ascetics" to have sex with no one (O'Flaherty 1973).

Why Did Women Found "Women Only" States?

Perhaps in spite of ancient India's ostensible tolerance to a comparatively complex system of gender variances – marked, in particular, by broad acceptance of male-male marriages – there seems to have been nearly no social status conferred on woman-woman relationships. For instance, while both male-male and male-female marriages are mentioned in Kāma Sūtra (1.1.3, 2.9.36), there is no citation of woman-woman conjugality. However in Yashodhara's ca. twelfth-century Kāma Sūtra commentary, one gains a glimpse into the conflicting attitudes towards male and female homoeroticism in early India.

[Male] citizens behave in this kind of inclination, who renounce women and can do without them willingly because they love each other, get married together, bound by a deep and trusting friendship.

"Do this to me and afterward I will do it to you." Arranging their bodies in contrary positions, they are indifferent to everything in their moments of passion. They are of two kinds, according to whether they are together openly and without complexes, or [secretive]. Women behave in the same way. Sometimes, in the secret of their inner rooms, with total trust in each other, they lick each other's vulva, just like whores (Yashodhara Jayamangala Commentary on the Kama Sutra, 2.8.36).

So while men could "marry" and live together openly, same-sex relations between two women were apparently restricted to the "secrecy of their inner rooms." But even more revealing – though of what, I don't know – is that the women are likened to "whores" who lick each other's vulvas. But indeed, this is an area that calls for more study.

I shall now to return to more hetero-normative issues.

Buddha Versus Yoga

When addressing men's concerns about the possible conflict between so-called Buddhist meditation and Yoga, it is important that I to speak to them with soothing diplomacy. I need to play the role of nurturing mother (I am sometimes known as Kali Tantra).

"Yes, yes," I gently assure them. "You can practice meditation and yoga together. But if you practice meditation very effectively, then you don't need to practice yoga at all!"

At other times, I tell them: "All right then. If you're already practicing 'Buddhist' meditation, then put it up high on the Buddhist altar. If you still want to add some yoga to your practice, then place it at the bottom. Put yoga down!" I plainly encourage them.

In Thailand – where I have lived off-and-on for many years – I am continually confronted with a seemingly perennial, though certainly ridiculous conflict between Buddhism and yoga. I have seen huge temple murals where in the lower portions of the compositions, ascetics known vaguely as yogins or rishis are depicted with erect penises bulging beneath their garments. I know one mural that groups such an ascetic with a clutch of masturbating rabbits. Needless to say, the higher portions of these stylised paintings are reserved for the reverend members of the Buddhist clergy. This is only to illustrate how over the centuries Indian (non-Buddhist) asceticism has been derisively objectified in the Thai collective consciousness. This also accounts for why the Thais have been so culturally induced to believe that yoga is a corrupt and depraved occupation, while the generically 'Buddhist' [yoga] regimes such as satipatthāna and vipassanā are held as hallowed and inviolable practices. But one really needs to know that these cultural convictions have been very deeply inculcated over many generations. One further need to know the Thais are above all a very traditional ‘Buddhist’ people with genuinely unique ways of looking at the world. What is more, these views are worthy of respect, and no less study.

"Yoga is the high school of Buddhism," I tell them, "meditation is the University. But how many people can go to University without first passing through high school?"

It is the nature of yoga to assume supporting roles.

Where To Place Your Bottom

But before meditation (or "reflective trance"), you have to learn āsana. Āsana is basic to the practice of yoga. Āsana means a "seated pose," it means how to fold your legs and where to place bottom. But few of us can sit in pūrna-padma-āsana, the "full-lotus pose." More common is ardha-padma-āsana, the "half-lotus pose." But whatever the pose you happen to adopt, you must not forget that that alone comprises a basic form of yoga practice. But let it also be mentioned mention that in India – as in Thailand too – āsana refers to more than just the way you perch your bottom. Āsana also means 'the thing you perch your bottom on.' And so the platform, seat or rug an ascetic sits upon is also called his āsana. Āsana is something that gives firm support and might even, as Patañjali avers in sutra 46, denote "enduring bliss" (sthira sukham).

Anyone that hopes to practice meditation (L. meditatio, from meditatus, "to think over, consider," cf. Gk. medesthai "think about," and Skt. midiur "I judge, estimate") should be able to sit with ease and comfort. Your posture should also be firm and stable. Sitting like this, you are practicing yoga. So you can never separate yoga from meditation, neither meditation from yoga. For just this reason it is rightly said that Siddhārtha Gautama, the Historical Buddha, achieved Supreme Enlightenment while actually practicing yoga. As according to the legend, the Buddha was sitting in the full-lotus pose when he gained his renowned Liberation.

Hatha-yoga

The most prevalent form of yoga is the West is known as Hatha-yoga. But it is often criticized – both rightly and wrongly – as a physically indulgent discipline that neglects the development of the mind. This is because Hatha-yoga employs a wide variety of āsanas that go far beyond the seated meditative pose. But understood properly, these āsanas are "attitudes" designed to make the body strong and flexible, balanced and graceful, healthy and fit. Āsanas also increase the body's reservoir of subtle energy. This accumulated charge can further be used as a focal point in the yogī's meditation. So we are speaking here of yoga as a body meditation.

It would be well worth repeating, then, that a fundamental principle of (particularly Buddhist) yoga is that everything we need to know is contained within our "fathom-long body." Doctrine is not necessary. Rites and rituals are also not at all necessary. Everything is contained within this very body. This is unequivocally affirmed in the hallowed tradition of satipatthāna-yoga where especial attention is placed on the body and where the yogī becomes conscious of "all those physiological acts he had previously performed automatically and unconsciously" (Eliade 1964, 168). Stated succinctly: contemplation of the corporal structure has always been the basis of Buddhist Yoga (cf. Mahā-Sattipatthāna Sutta). According to the scriptural words of the Buddha,

It is within this fathom-long body, my friend, with its impressions and ideas that you will find the world, and the cause of the world, and the end of the world, and the strategy that leads to the end of the world (Anguttara-nikāya II. 48).

The Pristine Source

Apart from yoga āsanas, or physical postures, a somewhat more advanced and important study is the respiratory discipline called prānāyāma. Prānāyāma means to regulate the breathing and control the vital energy called prāna. At first one learns to relax ones breathing. One learns to breathe slowly, long and deep. The breathing should be gentle and smooth as silk. Or better yet, smoother than silk. One should never hurry or force ones breathing: this is the most important point.

In the beginning, just learn to lengthen your breathing. Imagine you are breathing in the energy of the sun as the universal source of light. Let it flow freely wherever it wills. Such breathing will help to clear away blockages in your circulatory system. You may also visualize drawing it in through the crown of the head, the space between the eyes, or the heart. As you draw in generous amounts of prāna, consciously guide it into every nook and cranny of your body; allow it to penetrate, open, suffuse and enliven every cell.

Later, as the pristine source takes over, you will slowly be drawn to the threshold of the mind; you may even be able to seize upon its power. Just recognize this spirit as living breath – that most subtle life force which yogīs call prāna. Prāna seeks to bond itself with corporeality and thereby engender stability of light, which is also the basis of sukham (bliss). Now as your journey deepens, you may notice in your mind's eye the archetypal myth of Goddess Psyche.

Goddess Psyche

With regard to the myth of the Goddess Psyche, as abducted by the Jailers of Engineering Science (vis-à-vis Aristotle), it is interesting to note that in the ancient Greek language, words with the Greek root phys, as in "physical," stem from the Ionian-Greek physis, "the spark of Nature," "the spark of Life." We may thus see the real implication of physics, which originally indicated an inquiry into Nature. Later it formed the concept of psyche, initially as the anthropomorphic "Goddess of Soul" then later the actual "soul-itself" with its amorphic dream-life beyond the delimiting physical body. Later still this ethereal, all-nature-pervading element of "soul" became intensively masculinized and narrowly conceptualised into an intellectually plausible "mind." Hence its devolution to the theoretic "psyche" as scientifically studied in our departments of psychology. Correspondingly, physics has virtually succeeded in ousting Nature from the entirety its sterilized structures and thereby descended to a contemptible form of intellectual mechanics.

Nonetheless, by an expedient transcultural contextualization it is here worth noting that in the Indian traditions of Yoga-Tantra there are "Mother Goddesses of Knowledge" known as Mātrikās in Sanskrit. Surprisingly, Mātrikās correspond closely to the ancient Greek Goddess Psyche. A simple etymology of the Sanskrit term shows that māta (as in L. mater) means, "mother." It is by no means however a purely Indian word as it comes from the remote Indo-European root māyā, meaning "illusion" or "deception," but also "creation." Now this same morphemic root is also contained in the Latin root mens "the measuring mind."

Thus again, in support of what was previously stated: There is no honest means of defending the notion of an absolute gulf between the world of "matter" (mater or māta=māyā=creation=illusion) and that of "spirit"; nor between "reality" and "make-believe." When a person is found endeavouring to enact this otherwise inexplicable bipolar drama of inside versus out, we clinically term the native psychotic, i.e., one who projects his internal dreamscape out upon the world of objective verification. "He turns his pockets inside out," as it were, in attempt to re-impregnate a sterilized nature. And do we stand to steal a peek here of the earliest intention of the Latin idea of "reincarnation": to denude oneself of fraudulent personae, taking earth for shoes and sky for robe. But the equivalent Greek term, "metempsychosis," perhaps expresses this subtler yet, with its connotation of a spirit/soul/mind momentarily disencumbered of its carnal frame. But this is not to extol bizarre states of mind, neither mental disorder nor disease; far from it. For the chief aim of yoga is to quiet the mind: yogash-citta-vritti-nirodha.

To conclude these notes, I shall only add further that, according to the lore of Yoga-Tantra, those Psyche-like Goddesses known as Mātrikās are sure to gather round the steadfast yogī who unwaveringly clings to the meditative solitudes. But till then be content with breathing deeply...the tummy's rise as the air flows in...But it's better if I show you in person.

References

2005-12-08T20:20:00.000+08:00

Anguttara-nikāya II. 48.

Burton, Sir Richard. Translation. Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana: The Classic Hindu Treatise on Love and Social Conduct http://www.sacred-texts.com/sex/kama/kama205.htm, 1883.

Danielou, Alain. Translation of Vatsyayana's Kāma Sūtra in The Complete Kama Sutra: The First Unabridged Modern Translation of the Classic Indian Text. Rochester: Inner Traditions International, 1994.

Danielou, Alain. Translation of Yashodhara's Jayamangala (Commentary on the Kama Sutra), in The Complete Kama Sutra: The First Unabridged Modern Translation of the Classic Indian Text. Rochester: Inner Traditions International, 1994.

Durrell, Lawrence. Quinx: or The Ripper’s Tale. New York: Viking, 1985.

Eliade, Mircea. Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, 2nd ed., tr. Willard R. Trask, Bollingen Series LVI, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969.

Kautilya. Arthashastra. Translated by L.N. Rangarajan. Kautilya: The Arthashastra. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1992.

Mahā-Sattipatthāna Sutta, Dīgha-nikāya http://www.mahindarama.com/e-tipitaka/Digha%20Nikaya/dn-22.htm

Nanda, Serena. Gender Diversity: Crosscultural Variations Illinois: Waveland Press, 2000.

O'Flaherty, Wendy Doniger. Siva: The Erotic Ascetic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973.

Patañjali. Yoga Sutras.

Penrose, Walter. (2001) "Hidden in History: Female Homoeroticism and Women of a 'Third Nature' in the South Asian Past." Journal of the History of Sexuality, 10.1: 3-39.

Rangarajan, L.N. Translation. Kautilya: The Arthashastra. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1992.

Saletore, R.N. Sex Life under Indian Rulers. Delhi: Hind Publishers, 1974.

Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa: A Biography from the Tibetan Jetsun-Kahbum. Edited by W.Y. Evans-Wentz. Reprint. First published in London, 1928. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 2000.

Walker, Benjamin. Hindu World: An Encyclopedic survey of Hinduism. London: Allen and Unwin, 1968.

Yashodhara. Jayamangala Commentary on the Kama Sutra. Translated by Alain Danielou in The Complete Kama Sutra: The First Unabridged Modern Translation of the Classic Indian Text. Rochester: Inner Traditions International, 1994.

loose notes on woman & yoga

LOOSE NOTES ON WOMAN & YOGA

References