A few days ago, I felt inspired to take
down a book that has been sitting unopened on my bookshelf for many years,
although I read it from cover to cover when I first received it as a gift (thanks,
Tess and Will). I opened it at random, and fell upon a passage about the yogic
concept of kriyas, defined by the
author as “powerful spontaneous releases of physical energy” associated with
rapture:
Through
concentration or other techniques of practice one often experiences a buildup
of great energy in the body. When this energy moves, it produces feelings of
pleasure, and when it encounters areas of tightness or holding, it builds up
and then releases as vibration and movement. (p123)
The book was Jack Kornfield’s A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the
Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life, and the chapter was entitled, “The
spiritual roller coaster: Kundalini and other side effects.”
Over the past year, I have become much more
familiar with kriyas, thanks to the
teachers at Kundalini House in North Fitzroy. They use the term kriya to refer to the series of
exercises practiced in a kundalini yoga class, with each series promised to promote specific, often
extraordinary benefits. When I turned up for my first class, I had completely
forgotten ever encountering this exotic word. But perhaps Kornfield’s
discussion of kriyas sowed a seed
that, tended by a lovely and inspiring yoga teacher called Onkartej, has now shot
up suddenly and somewhat unexpectedly into the practice of holding my breath
and pumping my stomach (many times) while listening to a Punjabi chant that
translates roughly as “Wow! dark-light!” usually at ungodly (or as many
spiritual traditions would have it, particularly godly) hours of the morning. As
part of a communal yoga “challenge,” I have committed to practicing this kriya each day for the rather Biblical
period of forty days. We’ll see if any dramatic releases have taken place by
the time I emerge from this meditative Punjabi desert…
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| Thar Desert, Punjab-Haryana-Kathiawab region, India |
(While searching for images of the Punjabi desert, google kept asking if I would prefer to look at Punjabi desserts, but I resisted this temptation.)
Kornfield points to two basic attitudes
toward the unusual states that can be provoked by such practices. Some schools
see them as states of transcendence essential for true spiritual awakening or
transformation. Consequently, they encourage students to do what it takes to
induce altered states of consciousness: Kornfield mentions techniques involving
repetition, intensity, pain, powerful breathing, narrowly focused concentration,
koans, sleep deprivation, visioning. To this list, I would add the use of entheogens
such as ayahuasca.
Other schools promote an immanent rather
than transcendent approach to awakening. In Kornfield’s words, they “do not set
out to climb the mountain of transcendence, but set out instead to bring the
spirit of the mountaintop alive here and now in each moment of life.” (p120)
They teach that the divine is already present in each moment, only our
distracted and grasping mind keeps us from recognising this. To open to this
reality, it is necessary to resist the potentially addictive attraction of
extraordinary experiences, instead recognizing that altered perceptions and
visions are illusions, impermanent phenomena. In the words of Ajahn Chah, founder
of the forest tradition in Thai Buddhism, they are “just something else to let
go of.” This approach is associated with meditative practices of “bare
awareness” or “just sitting,” which encourage a profound opening to what is happening
in the present moment.
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| Ajahn Chah |
Kornfield takes a conciliatory middle way
between these positions, suggesting that transcendent and immanent paths are
both expressions of the Great Way, each able to lead to liberation.
Transcendent states can be profoundly healing and transformative, while an
immanent approach can infuse our whole life with a sense of the sacred. Alternatively,
either approach can become mired in complacency, hubris and self-deception if we
become overly attached to the effects of these practices and blind ourselves to further possibilities of transformation.
These reflections reminded me of a conversation
I had recently with a friend about the value of mindfulness as it is taught in
the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course developed by Zen roshi Jon
Kabat-Zinn. Tim was somewhat skeptical about whether this immanent, integrative
approach to meditation and awareness could lead to authentic mindfulness. He
argued that in the Buddhist tradition, particularly as it is explained in a
book he’d been reading by Alan Wallace, an American expert on Tibetan Buddhism,
mindfulness properly refers to states of mind cultivated by meditative
practices designed to produce highly focused and sustained concentration – in
Kornfield’s language, transcendent states. As a consequence, Tim felt it might
be a mistake to identify the more readily accessible forms of attention and
openness to experience cultivated in the MBSR course with the Buddhist concept
and experience of mindfulness.
As the time, I responded by speaking about
what Bhikkhu Sujato has called the “two wings of mindfulness,” that is samadhi, a state of absorption or one-pointed
concentration, and vipassana, or
insight, based on a broader sense of awareness, directed to observing the
processes of the mind. My idea was that mindfulness as it is taught in
contemporary psychological settings might be more closely aligned with investigative
vipassana than with deeply
concentrated samadhi. However, Tim accurately
pointed out that both these meditative “wings” involve intensive practice and highly
cultivated states of consciousness. In that sense, they are both transcendent
approaches to spiritual practice, and belong to the same bird, as Bhikkhu
Sujato’s metaphor implies.
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| Eurasian Eagle Owl (scientific name: bubo bubo) |
Similarly, MBSR involves both practices
designed to calm and focus the mind, and practices designed to enhance
awareness (as well as acceptance and appreciation) of what is present to consciousness
in a given moment: in this sense, it also displays the “two wings” of
mindfulness. The difference is that rather than requiring seclusion and
intensive meditative practice to invoke the marvelous, soaring flight of this
bird, the emphasis is on encouraging it to swoop rapidly but repeatedly in and
out of ordinary moments, like a swallow before the rain, transforming the
experience of worldly life without withdrawing from it.
While the swallow of secular mindfulness
may seem a small and distant relative of the great eagle owl of samadhi and vipassana, the beauty and skill of the swallow’s flight should not
be underestimated. I suspect that to swoop so close to the surface of worldly life
without crashing into it may involve a form of mindfulness just as demanding
and powerful as that involved in soaring or hovering motionless, far above. After
all, to maintain mindfulness amid the pressures and distractions of worldly
life can be more difficult than attaining deeper states of concentration under
retreat conditions specifically designed to support them. Even on retreat, or
in monasteries, interactions with others, and ordinary tasks like preparing
meals, can prove more clearly testing of mindfulness than long periods spent
undisturbed in meditation.
But this contrast may be misleading: if the
mindfulness attained in deep meditation is not illusory, it can be expected to
increase mindfulness in worldly interactions; conversely, the cultivation of robust
mindfulness in everyday life makes deeper states of concentration more
accessible. Perhaps mindfulness is a shape-shifter, appearing now
as a swallow, now as an eagle owl, now as a laughing kookaburra kriya, now as a dove carrying the promise of new life… but regardless of form, always the same in its capacity to arouse pleasure and wonder.
