I wholeheartedly recommend Alex Medin’s summary of the principal Yoga Upanishads included in last year’s Namarupa (starting from this issue http://www.namarupa.org/volumes/1402.php). As well as being a straightforward interpretation of these works, they have been studied and explained by a yogi with a remarkable practice of both the physical and more esoteric aspects of this discipline. I strongly recommend reading Alex’s articles in Namarupa yourself and looking into these Yogopanishads on your own, but there are a few ideas that have stuck with me and keep on coming back. One is the introduction to the Mandala Brahmana Upanishad, in which the sage Yajnavalkya travels to the sun to receive learning on the truth of atman. “Since this knowledge is not possible to gain with mere words, Lord Narayana conveys to him the eightfold (ashtanga) path of yoga, together with jnana.” (pg. 4, Issue 14, Vol. 4) It’s a beautiful root cause for the origination of the practice of ashtanga yoga: ashtanga offers a direct experience of understanding atman. The root reason of why something came into being is often sought and/or explained in Sanskrit texts, and though this one may seem obvious to some people, I can totally visualize this sage making his voyage to the sun like some yogic Jules Verne character to discover why we have ashtanga yoga.
Another image from one of these Upanishads would be an excellent starting point for a short animated film and bounces in and out of my head now in some yoga practices. The first Upanishad that Alex summarizes is the Varaha Upanishad. Within the physical yogic practices described toward the end as pranayama practices and exercises to lift the prana using bandhas, it’s mentioned that the pranava (OM) should be visualized in different places within the body. Sure thing, my next asana practice after reading his article (which was a led class), I was imagining the OM all over my body, in my elbow, resting on my wrist as I reached up in utthita parshvakonasana, nestled in my hip in that tight sore spot in the back. The pranava is everywhere, all-encompassing, imperishable, but I had never considered that it’s in my body beyond when I utter the OM. I had only imagined the OM in the zone where sound emanates (this is what pranava is by definition, this vibrational hum), from the diaphragm and up through the lungs, the sternum, the base of the vocal chords, reverberating through the head and out the mouth and nose. Just as one can experience the breath as a representation of Brahman moving throughout your body, so one can imagine the OM throughout your being, and not only in a still practice of meditation and/or pranayama as suggested in this Upanishad.
This should come as no surprise, as the breath is commonly conceived as universal and our link to the gods and the Vedas (see below). Really, the OM is one and the same as Brahman, so visualizing an OM (the visual symbol or the sound) inside your body or it moving with the breath or residing in any location anywhere should not be a strange thing. Brahman is the OM, it is the Vedas, it is the breath of the divine (the utterance of the Vedas); it is also prayer (hence the name of the Brahmin caste, the priestly ones whose office it is pray for everyone and everything). The root of Brahman, br.h बृह् (also seen in Br.hadaranyaka Upanishad or Br.haspati), is a verb meaning to grow, to rise high(er), to expand, to swell, in limited contexts to sound or to shine. The breath is one form of this swelling of the spirit (dictionary definition of Brahman), this expansion which in the Vedas can be viewed as something akin to an outpouring of the heart in worship of the gods.
This is something I had understood the breath to be in my ashtanga practice but I had never imagined it taking on the physical appearance of the Omkara before (ॐ). Now I had a new way for my mind to wander while Sharath was counting to five and fellow yogis were panting and struggling their way into asanas: mentally seeing the Omkara in different spots all over me. It hasn’t been a hindrance to the practice; it is a further realization of what the practice is and we all are. People walking around everywhere with their bodies and insides covered in Omkaras, but not spotted like milk cows or cheetahs; OMs are packed in every inch and millimeter, leaning up against each other and stacking in 3 dimensions, even folding in on each other like fractals. This is the universe. As I imagined it in an animated short, the OMs would have to be the visual version (ॐ), rather large on characters’ bodies and something like how lotuses and cakras sometimes decorate gods’ bodies in Hindu iconography, as auspicious lakshmana marking hands, feet, shoulders, cheeks, eyes, etc. The animated short I already made in my mind with OM-flowered people may have been tangentially inspired by the 2009 animated film Sita Sings the Blues (check it out – it’s very sweet and a nice post-modern interpretation of the Ramayana story). http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/
Returning to the breath and Vedas above, an examination of the Upanishadic treatment of breath is fundamental to an understanding of asana yoga practice. First, from a physical point of view, breath is the involuntary entrance and exit of air into the vacuum created when we move muscles and bones, enlarging or shrinking the space inside our bodies. When we consciously breathe, we don’t really inhale or exhale, we extend and contract muscles to move bones (ribs, etc.) and then air fills the newly-enlarged vacuum or leaves the space. We don’t actually pull air into our bodies or push it out. We are not responsible for the breathing process, and only are initiators of changing the size of the vacuum when we are actively “controlling” our inhalation and exhalation. One portion of the Upanishadic view (according to Daddy Advaitist Shankara) is that 1.) the Vedas are the breath of God because they were “breathed”/uttered by Brahma, the highest (because when speaking, air is exhaled). 2.) The breath of Brahma (the Veda, Om, the imperishable) is like the breath of purusha.
Purusha can be alternatively defined as man or God and in fact is both man and God in Advaita Vedanta as envisioned by Shankaracharya. So when Daddy Shanky says that the breath of Brahma (the Vedas, Om) is like the breath of purusha (and curiously the comparison is not the breath of purusha is like that of Brahma), both man and God are implied in the comparison, but Shankara is especially distinguishing that this element of man (breath, breathing) comes from Brahma (=Veda = the Om that is omnipresent). Your breathing is similar to the utterance of the Vedas; the Om is similar to your breath. Your breath is reminiscent of the Vedas, which was the breath of Brahma. Concentration on your breath in asana practice is like focusing your mental energy on the Veda or on Brahma, the universal Soul, itself. An awareness of breath in your yoga practice is an awareness of this presence and that this element of us comes from the Om.
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| This image of Hanuman revealing Sita & Rama enshrined in his heart was painted by a member of the Patua Caste in 1880. I'm sorry this image has nothing to do with my post but I love it so much I had to include it! |
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