Class Two: Looking for the Self **1) Towards the end of the fifth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna says that “those possessed of knowledge take no pleasure” in pleasures which are born of the senses—when they have a beginning and an end. Explain why there could be a higher type of pleasure that the wise would take pleasure in.** The point of this verse is not, as it is often read, to say that pleasures that we enjoy through our senses are somehow evil. It would be foolish to claim that an honest pleasure which did no harm to anyone were not…pleasant. The problem comes up when the things we enjoy change and end, despite every effort that we make. By mentioning “those possessed of knowledge,” Lord Krishna is implying that there is a solution to this problem—a solution which is available to those who understand where things are really coming from. A wise person who does possess this worldview turns it upon both the negative experiences in their life, and the positive as well. That is, we have learned enough by now to know that a yelling boss for example is coming at us because of seeds within our own mind, planted there when we yelled at someone else earlier on. And we know that it is in our interest not to perpetuate that seed by yelling back. This knowledge though should not be restricted to shutting off the negative events around us; we need to learn to use it, even more frequently, to consciously sustain the good things. If we don’t, then we will constantly be the victim of disappointment as we lose the loved ones and honest pleasures that we enjoy. As a people, as a global family throughout human history up to this point, we have sadly come to believe that good things cannot be sustained—to be wise, in this world so far, means only to learn to accept this disappointment with graceful resignation. What Lord Krishna is suggesting here is a radically different approach. We need not simply spend our lives perfecting the ability to cope with apparently unsolvable problems and losses. Rather, we can simply plant the seeds which assure that these problems and losses never occur in the first place. With a pleasure which we enjoy through our sense organs—say, for example, the sound of our boss enthusiastically describing a new assignment of great interest to us—we can consciously sustain the experience by reflecting, again, on the seeds which we originally planted for this to be happening to us. Perhaps we went out of our way to make sure someone else had an interesting job to do. In order to sustain the experience then—to prevent it from becoming what Lord Krishna calls a “source of suffering” because it has an end—we simply sit down quietly and consider some more seeds of the same type that we can plant now, to assure an interesting and productive future both for ourselves and others around us. **2) In an encouraging verse in the fifth chapter of the Gita, Lord Krishna says that “the nirvana of the Pure One is close,” if we “know what self there is,” and are self-controlled, free of liking and disliking. How would a knowledge of the self lead to self-control, and being free of these two feelings? How would that lead to nirvana, and who is the “Pure One”? And lastly: Would we want to be free of these two? List also the Sanskrit for “knower of the self,” and English cognates for it.** A “knowledge of the self” here is not simply an awareness of how we personally work, as we normally think of this idea. Rather, “self” or *atma* refers here to the true nature within all things, whether animate or inanimate. Paradoxically, the true nature within all things is simply the fact that their nature doesn’t belong to them; rather, it is being supplied by our minds, as seeds ripen within them. These seeds were planted in the past, according to the degree to which we have taken care of others. We can take the example of our favorite song. Its true nature or “self” is that it doesn’t sound beautiful from its own side. If it did, then everyone would have the same favorite song. This simple observation is actually a profound proof for what Lord Krishna calls here “the self there is,” meaning the nature that things do have, rather than the one which they don’t have (which is being one way or the other in and of themselves). If we realize that the beauty we hear in a song is coming from ourselves, then we are saved (or “free,” as Lord Krishna puts it) from the extremes of liking or disliking any particular piece of music *in an ignorant way.* (As we’ve noted before, there’s no problem with the *informed* version of these two emotions: we can and should like to see others happy, and dislike seeing them suffer, for example.) We won’t get angry if a friend riding in the car with us reaches over and turns up a rap song on the radio that annoys us; rather, we’ll calmly reflect that if we had been less aggressive and insensitive in our speech in the past, then we wouldn’t have to hear the song this way now. This leads, as Lord Krishna notes, to a higher kind of self-control. It is much easier to control our negative emotions if we realize that the negative events which come to us have been planted by ourselves. Ultimately, this control reaches such a deep level that we actually have no further experiences of the negative emotions. And this in fact is the very definition of the word “nirvana.” In time then we become a “Pure One” (in Sanskrit, “Brahma”). The word is being used here not in the sense of a worldly deity, but in its wider sense in Indian philosophical literature, as meaning someone who is completely enlightened, knowing all things in all times and capable of emanating countless bodies to assist countless living beings. The Sanskrit for “knower of the self” is *viditatmana (vidita#tmana). Vidita (vidita)* here means *knowing,* and comes from a root we’ve seen before: √*vid (vid),* meaning *to see* or *to know,* with well-known English cognates such as *video* or *wisdom.* *Atman (a#tman)* means *self;* it derives from a negative initial *a-,* meaning “not,” and then *tama* meaning “set apart” or “divided off.” The latter is found in the word *temple,* meaning *a sacred area which is set apart,* and the combination appears as *atom,* meaning *that which cannot be further divided.* The point is that the kernel of the self was perceived as a tiny indivisible thing within each person and thing. **3) How does Lord Krishna link our spiritual liberation to practices of yoga which address the breath, and the inner winds or vayus of the body? What is the Sanskrit term for the point of focus which is mentioned at this point, and what are some English cognates?** Towards the end of the fifth chapter of the Gita, Lord Krishna advises us to turn our eyes and our attention to the “spot between the eyebrows.” We actually focus on a point which is an inch or more *into* the head from this spot, and many of us will find that this focus deepens as we move the focus slightly upwards from here. On the outside, a person engaged in this practice might seem as though their eyes are turning up under the eyelids, so that the whites of the eyes show—although this will come naturally with practice, and need not be forced. Because our thoughts and the inner winds or prana move in tandem (as expressed in the famous Tibetan phrase, *lung-sem jukpa chikpa,* “our thoughts and our prana move in tandem”), prana will be concentrated around the chakra of the forehead by focusing here. Lord Krishna is saying that this in itself brings a balancing of two important inner winds, or concentrations of prana, within the body: the *prana vayu* (life wind) and the *apana vayu* (downward-moving wind)*.* This balancing or joining of two important forces within the body is often referred to itself as “yoga.” It enables us, as Lord Krishna goes on to say, to control our senses, our thoughts, and our mind, because it brings the inner winds or prana into the heart chakra within the central channel, the locus of knowledge and compassion. With this comes an increase in these two high qualities: we are able for example to overcome our old feelings of desire, fear, and anger, in that we now understand clearly that the objects of these feelings are coming from ourselves. We become “lost to the pursuit of freedom,” and by this path are released from our negative emotions, from suffering, and from death itself. The physical object of focus here is the “spot between the eyebrows,” actually within the head from this point. The Sanskrit term for this point is *antara bhruvoh (antara bhruvoh%).* The word *antara* means both *within* and *between,* and the word *inner* itself is an English cognate. *Bhru (bhru#)* means *eyebrow,* and obviously is the source for the word *brow* itself. This spot is also more commonly known in Sanskrit as *bhruvor madhya (bhruvormadhya),* or *the middle of the eyebrows.* The Tibetans have a separate word for this spot, called *mintsam* {SMIN MTSAMS,}. **4) We often think of yogis as renunciates: people who have given up the worldly life, to practice under difficult circumstances in isolated caves or forests. In the opening lines of the sixth chapter, however, Lord Krishna challenges us to think of a higher form of renunciation which makes us real yogis and yoginis. What thing does he say then that we should renounce? What is the Sanskrit for this thing? How does Master Patanjali express the same idea?** In order for our practice to be called “yoga,” says Lord Krishna, we must be a renunciate—but what he says that we need to renounce is, surprisingly, simply a certain way of thinking about things. In Sanskrit this way of thinking is called *sankalpa (sam*kalpa),* where the first part is *sam- (sam),* meaning *altogether* or *highly,* as reflected in the English *summit* or *completely.* The Indo-European root *√kelp* means *to hold,* or *to grasp,* in the sense of holding in fact to a wrong idea about something. The English *halter* and *helm* (in the sense of holding a rudder) are cognates. The idea here is that we are holding to things, grasping to them, in a way which is completely wrong. If we can renounce or give up this mistaken way of seeing things, then we can achieve yoga, or our spiritual goals. Let’s look at what it would mean to *sankalpa* or grasp for example to our own physical practice of yoga. We might have a sore elbow, and think that if we do one yoga pose or another then this will “fix” our arm. Notice how the word “think” feels here in the English; as in “He *thinks* he’s a really smart guy.” The implication is that this is just a wrong idea, and that’s exactly the feeling of the Sanskrit word *sankalpa.* Almost of all of us go to a yoga class because we *think* there is something about those particular movements of those particular parts of the body that will help us physically in some way. To really do yoga though we have to give up this wrong kind of thinking. There is of course nothing “inside” a pose that will help us any more than something else. We know that a decent number of people are actually injured, rather than helped, by the very same pose. Whatever we might *think,* the degree to which the pose does help us depends upon something else entirely—upon, for example, how much we’ve helped our parents with their own physical challenges. If we give up our old way of thinking about the effectiveness of yoga and follow this new kind of understanding, then—says Lord Krishna—the yoga that we do can actually be called “yoga.” This is because if we “load” our yoga practice with the power produced by the seeds of helping others, then this practice will actually *become* yoga, it will become something which can help us physically and in other ways as well. If though we continue to approach our yoga practice as something that contains within it something that can help us, then we simply are simply continuing to take ourselves down the path of disappointment and unpredictable results—the source of untold pain and frustration for millions of us, all around the world. This then is the primary form of renunciation we must seek. This doesn’t mean though, of course, that we shouldn’t engage in other more familiar forms of renunciation to help us gain the clarity of mind required to renounce *sankalpa.* As such we should, in keeping with our Teacher’s instructions, renounce for example overcrowding our lives, so that we can more easily detect it when we are misunderstanding things like our physical yoga practice. Master Patanjali has of course defined the word “yoga” in very similar terms. In the opening lines of his Yoga Sutra, he states that “Yoga is where we stop how the mind turns things around” (*Yogash chitta virtti nirodhah*); meaning again that we have attained yoga when we have stopped thinking that things work in a way which they don’t at all. **5) Lord Krishna, elsewhere in the sixth chapter, states that action is the means by which we “climb to yoga.” Once we get there though, he recommends that we turn to “peace” as a means. What is one way that we can interpret this advice which would lead to a happier and more peaceful life, day to day?** Remember that Lord Krishna has just finished telling us that—whatever we might be doing on the outside—it’s not yoga unless we have renounced our habit of looking at things in the wrong way. This change in our worldview though is no easy thing: we are working against the tide of thousands of years of human history; in essence, we are working against every single action done by every living creature on this planet, for the whole time that life has inhabited this world. Correcting this tendency in ourselves, even as we are immersed among others who don’t in any way perceive any need for a correction, is going to take a tremendous amount of *action:* of effort. Just in our physical practice of yoga, as we’ve noted above, we’re going to have to strain mentally to see that it’s not the movements that help us. They are simply the instrument through which our past good deeds towards others in need are expressed—the medium through which our karma comes back to us. It’s all too easy though to slide back into grasping (*sankalpa*) to the idea that it’s this or that pose that we need to master if we want to fix a sore back, or lose some weight. If though we *act,* in the sense of working hard to maintain our new worldview, then at the other end of the tunnel—once we have become what Lord Krishna calls “someone who has succeeded in climbing to yoga,” meaning climbing to the *worldview* of yoga, then we can look forward to a whole new way of living in this world. And this whole new way is one of “peace.” That is, rather than making random hopeful efforts which may or may not accomplish what we are looking for, we are now planting mental seeds which *always* have the effect that we desire. Working with understanding, we now simply plant these seeds properly, then sit back and relax, just waiting for them to ripen on schedule. Try to get a sense of how this feels now. No more struggling, no more decisions to make, no more agonizing over the question of whether or not our actions will succeed in bringing what we seek. By climbing now to the yoga of our new worldview, we can finally simply sit back and observe things happen as we want them to. This in itself is an extremely satisfying state of peace, which as Lord Krishna notes becomes our way of life at this point. **6) Early on in this same sixth chapter, Lord Krishna makes the statement that “The self is indeed the self’s best friend, and the self is surely the self’s true foe.” How are we to understand these words, utilizing a very famous verse from a sutra spoken by Lord Buddha?** We gain much insight into Lord Krishna’s statement by referring to a very similar verse from Lord Buddha; this is found in many sources simply quoting “a sutra,” and also in works by the likes of Master Chandrakirti. Here is the English translation of it: The self is the self’s savior; And the self is the self’s enemy. Whether we do good, Or whether we do evil, We ourselves are our own witness. There are two levels on which we can understand both of the quotations. On a surface level, it is we ourselves who can either, as Lord Krishna puts it, raise us up or tear us down. If for example we are able to maintain the worldview that we’ve been talking about in this section of the Gita, then we become our own savior. How this happens is as follows. The idea is that even a savior or Teacher who appears to help us is, like everything else, a product of the seeds that we have planted in our own minds, by the degree of kindness which we show to others. The particular seed which ripens into the perception of someone coming to save us spiritually would for example be planted through what in Buddhism is referred to as *bodhichitta,* or the Wish for enlightenment. This is a high spiritual experience linked to the opening of the heart chakra through practices such as the physical postures of yoga. During the experience, we have a direct perception of faces of every living being, not just in this world, but living on countless worlds of the universe. And we know that we will love and care for each of them directly, as a mother does for her child. If we undertake the study, meditations, and yoga postures that help bring on this unique experience, every separate effort contributes towards planting seeds to see our own personal heart Teacher and Savior come to us. In this way then “the self is the self’s savior.” The tendency that we have now, of reacting for example to angry people with anger of our own, is a case where the self acts as the self’s own enemy. That is, we create another episode with the same type of enemy or angry person through our anger towards one who has hurt us. And it is only we ourselves, ultimately, who can judge how good or bad we are being, for only we know our motivation. On a deeper level, we can say that our wrong belief in a “self” to things is our own selves’ enemy. In the example above, we sincerely believe that the angry person whom we encounter is coming from their own side, and not from us. In a sense, we can say that we believe that they are “them”-selves, and not coming from “our”-selves. There is though a “self” to ourselves which really does exist, and this is the self that will be helping us as our savior. If for example we have any trouble truly appreciating the ideas being presented at this point in the Gita, then we can plant seeds for a deeper understanding by trying to help, for example, friends who are having trouble with an angry boss by helping them understand how this boss could actually be coming from them. We are thus creating a “self” to ourselves who is more able to grasp the ideas that will save us: a self that really does exist in the way we think it does. And this is the self that becomes the self’s savior. *Coffeeshop assignment:* Please meet with one other member of the class (preferably someone you didn’t know before the course started) to talk a bit about this class, before the next one—and to collaborate on filling out your homework. *Meditation assignment:* 15 minutes per day, analytical meditation on some problem going on in your life right now, and how you could deal with it simply by using mental seeds for the opposite. *Meditation times and dates* (homework without this section completed will not be accepted):