Love Minus Zero / No Limit

Yoga Sutra I.2

Yoga is the uniting of consciousness in the heart.


Yoga Sutra I.33

To preserve openness of heart and calmness of mind, nurture these attitudes:

Kindness to those who are happy.

Compassion for those who are less fortunate.

Honor for those who embody noble qualities.

Equanimity to those who actions oppose your values.

The brain, thought to be the provider of thoughts, develops much later than the heart. The heart remains independent in its rhythm until near the time of birth, when the central nervous system takes over the regulation of the heart. From then on the heart is reliant on the brain, and subsequently feelings seem to combine with thoughts and become virtually indistinguishable.

(from A Woman's Guide to the Heart and Spirit of the Yoga Sutras: The Secret Power of Yoga, by Nischala Joy Devi)

Listen.

What I love about yoga is what I learned from my first yoga teacher, that yoga is not a competition and that it does not matter how flexible one is, but it does matter that one experiences where one's limits are and explores them.

OBOE WITH SOME BOOKS I'M KEEPING

The thin blue book in the lower center of the photo is a well-worn copy of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali that I bought after my mother died in 1994, at which time I made a deeper commitment to my yoga practice. This translation and commentary by T.K.V. Desikachar is titled "PATANJALI'S YOGASUTRAS: AN INTRODUCTION.

Here is what T.K.V. Desikachar wrote about Yoga Sutra 1.2, which in Sanskrit is written:

yogascittavrttinirodhah

"What is Yoga? It is a word with many interpretations and connotations. Patanjali defines his understanding of the word."

-- Yoga is the ability to direct the mind exclusively towards an object and sustain that direction without any distractions --

"The object can be a concrete object either external to ourselves or part of ourselves. It can be an area of interest, a concept, or something beyond the level of the senses, such as God."

Although I had bought of copy of B.K.S. Iyengar's translation of the Yoga Sutras sometime in the 1970s, it was not until the 1990s that I was able to read the Yoga Sutras without being annoyed by any mention of "God" or anything that might be what I considered a code word for "God." What helped me with that was the comment of a Tibetan Buddhist teacher, "There is no God and there is no not-God." Since 1994, I have bought and studied five other translations, all as different as are the numerous translations of the Tao Te Ching.

Now that I think of it, it was my mother who introduced me to yoga sometime in the 1960s when she bought this book by Richard Hittleman:















Interesting that the cover design uses the yin/yang symbol.

As my mind goes back to those years, I am recalling that the first time I heard about yogurt was from Jack La Lanne (the "intro" made me laugh with delight) who, along with Richard Hittleman, had a TV show during the time I was growing up.