Embodying Happiness
Dear Friend,
Hoping you are well, enjoying all the beautiful colors of Autumn and ready to shift energetically to the shorter days of winter. It's always nice to reminding oneself that the darkness of the sky does not necessarily reflect the luminosity of the heart. There is an internal metaphorical sun in all of us that can always shine bright (sorry for the cliché).
The topic I want to discuss here is how to embody happiness. This is a long one!
If we need to summarize what yoga is in one line it would be - A method for increasing happiness.
Happiness is a big topic, it can be misleading or confusing, it can also be somewhat loaded.
If we zoom out we can identify a very troubling phenomena - the quality of life in 2024 has never been so good, particularly in the richer developed countries, and yet there is much data that shows that the level of happiness, particularly mental health, is declining rapidly. Many people suffer from conditions like depression, anxiety, grief, fear, stress, and even trauma, many are in a deep state of anger or hatred, hopelessness, or loss of trust. There could be some explanations as to why so many humans seem to be so unhappy these days, how this super safe and abundant life that most of us live, full of opportunities and leisure, is bringing so much internal turmoil and distress.
The question that is relevant in this context is how yoga can help in these circumstances.
We would first need to define what happiness is, because we may have different ideas about what it is exactly and how we can experience it. Very often we associate happiness with transient experiences, things we want or even things we have, usually things that bring us pleasant experiences, very often sensual pleasure (good taste, smell, sight, sound, etc.), or even ones that satisfy us on a deeper emotional level such as relationships, good status, approval, or recognition, or even intellectual pursuits.
The Dalai Lama has famously stated that it is our purpose to be happy.
He probably didn’t mean to suggest that if we all go out and grab a beer we will find this purpose.
So, how can we apply the philosophy of yoga to everyday life so that we can increase our sense of happiness?
In order to apply it in a way that has real effect we would have to integrate it into our body, heart and mind.
Side note: Heart is a symbol used often in the traditions of yoga and Buddhism to describe an embodiment of mental states (thoughts, emotions, moods, states of mind).
In order to understand happiness according to yoga we need to first understand its opposite - unhappiness or suffering.
The starting point of most of these teachings is the first noble truth (the essential teachings of the Buddha) which is Sarvam Dukham - everything is suffering.
The term "suffering" is a bit too generalized and can easily miss the point of what the Buddha described as dukkha which can be explained as the condition in which there is never contentment with what is, an underlaying feeling that something is missing, is not enough, a belief that sometime in the future when things are just right we will be happy. A better term to describe what dukkha is is probably unsatisfactoriness. This tendency is deeply ingrained in the human condition and according to these teachings is a primary source of unhappiness.
In the yoga tradition there are the Kleshas, which are the torments, or causes of this kind of suffering (dukkha).
Avidyā means misperception, not seeing what’s really going on. From that arises asmitā which is the function of ego, the “I-am-ness”. From that we get rāga, wanting, craving, desiring, and dvesha which is rejection, aversion. And the last one is abhiniveśa which is often translated as fear of death, a sort of a biological aversion to danger or death, but can also refer to fear of letting go, holding on to the physical aspects of our being, or even a fear of the dissolution of our ego and mind which is frightening at a very deep level since they feel like the core of who we are.
Avidyā, the first klesha, is probably the most profound or important one.
“vid” - to know
"a-vidya” = the opposite of knowing (not exactly “not knowing”)
This is a state of deep misunderstanding of what’s going on in reality, referring originally to internal reality, but can also be a cause of suffering when we misperceive external reality. It is most harmful when we're not seeing or accepting impermanence and not seeing or accepting interconnectedness, when we are living as though all things are permanent and we are separate entities from everything around us.
It starts when we confuse name and form.
Name or word is just a code, just like an IBAN. It is a representation of something but not what it is. When we emphasize names so much we also tend to create narratives or concepts that we then believe are reality whereas they are simply very limited and often biased ways of interpreting reality. They keep us at a significant distance from knowing the truth which is very complex and nuanced and often cannot be understood with only words or labels.
The biggest problem we have in this regard are the codes we use to define ourselves and the deeply ingrained identification we have with these ideas. We hold an identity which is really just a bunch of codes! We live our life being entangled with this false sense of “I” that drives us to perceive reality through this prism and then act, react, and also interact, accordingly.
Misidentification of reality can get much more tricky in situations like looking at the mirror, when we feel that the image we are seeing is us, whereas it is just light reflecting on a glass. This example represents a more elusive yet common problem of misperception that we can easily get trapped in.
Another issue that this misperception of reality can cause is that sense of individuality isolated from the world.
In reality we are all, to simply put it, interconnected! There are no separate entities existing in the world without being connected to everything else in one way or another. Our own body is not made of separate parts that do their thing in isolation, it is a network of billions of cells and many tissues and organs and all sorts of things working together in symbiosis (hopefully) in order to for the organism to function. This pattern of looking at others (and ourselves) from a divisive point of view leads to all sorts of harmful patterns, to different kinds of conflicts, and even war and violence on a larger scale. We can see this pattern on an individual level but also in large groups or societies.
We can notice that all these patterns or tendencies are mental constructs.
Mental constructs are vital in many ways, we need them to survive and prosper. We need to have some sense of where we begin and others end, or where we end and others begin. Realizing that everything we thought is real is nothing but mental constructs and yet they do have an important and even necessary function can feel quite paradoxical. Through the practice of yoga we can start embracing paradoxes and see where these mental constructs serve us and where they lead us to suffering. We can learn, through good practice, to hold two opposing ideas or understandings simultaneously, for example that we are simultaneously separate and not separate entities at the same time!
Asmita can be a wonderful thing!
In some schools of thought it is even considered a divine function. This ego function can lead one to extraordinary creativity, using words and images to come up with wonderful ideas and stories and many kinds of creations. It can be a great source of joy unless we identify with it in which case it leads to all sorts of trouble.
Going back to what is happiness
Happiness is often perceived as getting something that we want, or achieving some goal, or being in a situation that is desirable, but from the yoga perspective we have a much bigger potential for happiness that is significantly more fulfilling and rewarding, one that is not dependent on external events going our way. This potential can only be fulfilled internally and relies on what is already available at any given moment in time. It is essentially a state of being in tune with our true nature, ridding ourselves of layers of misperception as to what we need in order to be happy and who we are at the core, and then simply abiding in this state of embodied truth.
This kind of happiness requires us to look inward or in other words to live a more contemplative examined life, being interested in what’s going on internally much like an astrophysicist who is interested in exploring more and more corners of the universe. However, to gain this type of happiness this exploration cannot be an intellectual pursuit, it is not an inquiry into content or any kind of code or concept. It requires us to develop a skill that is commonly called mindfulness, a self-reflexive examination of things as they are at the raw level, just like looking at an image in a mirror while at the same time knowing that this is just a reflection.
This kind of contemplative experience can also be described as embodying wisdom.
What does it mean to be embodied?
In this context it means the awareness of the physical-body, the mind-body, and also the heart-body. Being able to connect to all of them directly through awareness or consciousness. They may feel separate or divided at first, but then with some practice we start to experience them as a unified continuum. We can see that they communicate with one another. We may also discover that we can feel their connection to one another through the breath. The correspondence between our thoughts and our breath is really continuous, moment by moment.
By breath we really refer to two levels:
One is the actual air going in and out of our body, the inhale and exhale, prana and apana. But we can also refer to sensation which much like hearing and seeing, or tasting and smelling, or even touching, is a direct all encompassing experience in our entire system of body.
There is an immediate experience in sensation patterns, all over the body, every time we think (or feel)!
When we really practice or simply pay attention to sensation patterns, one of them being the actual breath going in and out, and then notice that related to the breath going in and out there are sensations all over the body, we realize breathing is a whole body experience. We can then see, perhaps on a more subtle level, that every story that arises in the mind corresponds with a sensation pattern. When we observe these sensation patterns we may start to understand that we can let go of the corresponding storylines. We can release things at the level of the body which is much easier to do.
Our mind is always connected to the physical body, when it recognizes some sensation pattern, for example shortness of breath, it interprets it based on some past experience as something such as being pissed off at someone, or being frightened, or something like that. When we can see these sensation patterns in real-time we can simply identify them as what they are, whether they are familiar or not, and let them move through us without reacting to them. This doesn’t mean we attempt to stop the thinking process, quite the opposite. It means that we are attuned to the experience of thinking and from that we start to develop a capacity for discernment, for seeing the deceptive and even seductive qualities of thoughts and how we easily can get lost in their content or in automatic reactivity to them, and then with practice we can clearly notice which thoughts have positive value, contribute to our wellbeing, or enrich us in any way, and which thoughts are causing us distress, tension, or dukkha.
This kind of happiness that yoga suggests we can experience cannot be found within the content of thought.
We can not bring ourselves to it through thinking, or rationalizing, or any other form of conceptualization. We need to experience it which means we need to embody it. It requires us to keep looking even when the mind is making theories, sometimes even excellent theories, and make conscious choices to stay with what’s really happening in the immediate experience. This takes a certain skill, a practice. There is an interesting term in Sanskrit - pratyaksha, that which is right in front of our eyes! We tend to ignore things that are too close.
What can make me pay attention to the actual thing that is happening, to the sensations in my body and not be lost in theories revolving around it?
Some schools of yoga interpret the teachings as learning how to "kill the mind" or how to eliminate thinking altogether. To that I would say good luck! This attempt tends to manifest as aggressive suppression of thoughts. The more practical and intelligent approach is simply learning how to pay attention, what in classical yoga is called dharana which literally means to hold the mind, or direct awareness at will.
It works quite well when we play with the already existing tendencies of the mind. It could be something wonderful that we like or uplifts us, maybe some image or idea, it could even be a tree. Things that we love tend to be very easy objects of meditation, the state of being awestruck at something naturally brings us to that state. We’re basically using the nature of the mind to formulate or create associations to hold attention and then we can start going deeper into a state called dhyana when we are actually taking a look at something beyond all theories or concepts. They are still there but they no longer alter our perception. In this state our interest in paying attention becomes much greater than our interest in the theories that the mind produces.
Occasionally, not through any technique, we may be “slipping into the stream”.
The mind is doing its natural dialectic, and then all of the sudden, often with a kind of sense of humor, we simply see through all of that, we slide into what is called samadhi, a state when the mind softens into the heart, into the core of the body, the boundaries dissolve, experience becomes unified and infinite at the same time.
And so..
Awakened embodiment is working with the direct experience of everyday life in a way that makes us able to stay attuned to our physical body, astute with the mind, staying spacious and open so we can notice where truth resides within our own body.
What often happens to most of us when we face difficulties or hardships is a feeling of being fractured or broken apart (common example: broken heart). When we conceive ourselves like that we cannot really be who we are, we cannot live attuned to our body as it is. Difficult circumstances, or trauma, or any kind of suffering constricts us, it leads us to be misaligned with our core-self. In a yoga class, because we are so focused on the body (doing all sorts of crazy things with it), we very often forget about our troubles. We may even have moments that can be called samadhi or bliss when there are no worries and we are completely absorbed in the present, in our body, things become aligned. It often feels as though we are home, we are resting in our natural state. We want to take these moments and see if we can have them outside of our formal yoga practice, moments of true embodied happiness in which we are completely aligned with the direct experience in our body at that moment.
The temptation to identify with the story in the mind is always there, always seducing us.
We may even feel a strong urge to take this story and post it on our Instagram account 😉. This selfie dynamic of trying to capture the story in the mind and project it outwards is an expression of avidyā (misperception), it is a disembodied experience, being out of touch with our central channel, with the core of our being. When we practice sincerely we start noticing when this happens. We're not judging or beating ourselves for it, we simply stay open with the intelligence of the observation itself. Making a "mistake" in perception is just a part of the stream of direct experiences we can notice with awakened embodiment.
When we are feeling more integrated and unified rather than separate or fractured we usually get profound clarity into what is called dharma, what gives us real joy and fulfillment, what gives us meaning or purpose. A sense of who we are becomes very clear and that makes us capable of seeing what’s really important in our life. Being dysregulated or disembodied prevents us from being in touch with our core essence, it is all just a conceptual thing, we produce some ideas or stories and then try to engineer ourselves or others to fit them, or we spend much energy playing the part of the character we perceive as “me” instead of abiding as who we really are.
Yoga offers many techniques and methods to develop this capacity to embody happiness, most of us are already practicing it to some extent. An easy place to start is to pay attention to your body when you feel these experiences of disembodiment, look into what it is really about. Very often just noticing by itself can have a profound impact.
If you find yourself curious about these kinds of topics - join a workshop, a retreat, or any other event on offer.
Looking forward to sharing yoga with you in November.
Wishing everyone peace and happiness,
Oren
♡
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