Class Three: Meditation is Yoga **1) How and why does Lord Krishna describe the place which we prepare for our daily practice of meditation? What are some other physical preparations we can make for this space? What is kusha, how can we find it, and what qualities is it said in scripture to have? Why is an animal hide mentioned in the verse? How finally does the wording here reflect another famous Indian classic?** Lord Krishna says first of all that the place in which we are living—the place which includes our meditation space—should be “clean.” This is also said in the Buddhist tradition to be an important quality of a good meditation space. The point is that the neatness of our usual surroundings is a direct reflection of the neatness of our own mind. They share a symbiotic relationship which we can utilize, in the same way that the inner winds and our thoughts share a relationship. That is—because the inner winds (or prana) and thoughts always ride in tandem, like a horse and a horse rider—then we can use our thoughts to direct our winds (the rider telling the horse where to go), or our winds to direct the thoughts (the horse going where it wants, and the rider necessarily following). A clean and tidy room has the same effect on the state of our mind. The clarity of the space creates a corresponding clarity in our mind; while the clear state of mind makes us *want* a clear space to be in. The symbiosis of the two is reflected as well in their movement: if we start to allow our meditation space to be “junked up,” then our mind as well becomes more cluttered, and our meditation less clear. This causes us to be more careless in leaving clothes hanging on chairs and the like, which in turn drags the mental clarity down further…and we begin to ride on a downward spiral. The same happens if, when we get up in the morning, we undertake the very simple but profound spiritual practice of walking around even for just a few moments, picking up things and putting them away. It becomes the first step of an upward spiral. Lord Krishna next describes our meditation seat. He first says that “the seat should be steady.” The Sanskrit here is exactly the same as in the Yoga Sutra of Master Patanjali, in a line which describes the physical practices of yoga: *Sthira sukham asanam,* which can be translated as *The poses bring a feeling of well-being which stays with you.* The word for “poses” here is the same word as “seat” in the Gita: *asana.* And the expression *which stays with you* is the same as *steady: sthira.* This similarity reminds us of the original purpose of the physical poses of yoga—to strengthen the body and allow us to remain seated for increasing lengths of time. Steadiness of the seat can mean a meditation cushion which is shaped in such a way that we can remain completely still during our session. But the “seat” in a wider sense can refer even to the type of floor on which we are seated for our session: a floor which is grounded directly on the earth, as opposed for example to a wooden floor raised up on floor joists off of the earth, has a corresponding effect on our state of mind in meditation, making us feel more grounded and steady. With some personal experimentation, you’ll also find that natural materials for the floor might make you feel more grounded than artificial ones: say, sitting on an earthen floor of adobe, rather than on concrete. There are many other physical considerations behind selecting a meditation space. We choose an area of our house which is completely quiet, and try to stick to the same place over the weeks and months, building up a special feeling of quietness there. The space is free of drafts that would make us cold over the length of an extended session, and equally free of heat or stuffiness that would make us dull. The light of the room, natural or artificial, is such that it inspires us to our best concentration; like so many things to do with meditation this is a personal preference, some people preferring a bright and upbeat space, others requiring a darkened, somnolent atmosphere. Again, experimentation is best. The orientation of the room is important. The earth is spinning towards the east, and some people find sitting facing the front of the motion, like a dog with his head out the car window, inspires them most. Other traditions say that there are special sacred places behind to the west, and it’s best to face that way. North is associated with inner growth, and south often with death—although in the northern hemisphere this can be where the most sunlight is coming in to reach us. Many meditators find the ordinal directions (such as northeast) a little confusing in energy. Then again it’s always a safe bet to face in the direction that you know your Heart Teacher to be located in, at any given time. Another help regarding the physical space is to try to remove any common sources of small, irritating sounds: a humming refrigerator, a lightly ticking clock, a stray cricket. Go through the other senses as well and remove any possible sources of distraction: loud colors or sources of motion (for people who keep their eyes half closed); smells (proximity to a kitchen—impossible to meditate near French fries being cooked); the feel of a fan blowing on the skin. *Kusha* is a type of long grass found in India which is considered to be conducive to meditation and other spiritual undertakings. Pabongka Rinpoche (1878-1941), for example—the teacher of the teacher of His Holiness the current Dalai Lama—describes it in a separate verse saying: Kusha has purity, and goodness; It is what the gods themselves Use to clean. It is the purest essence Of all green things which spring From the earth, and pleases the holy. Using it prevents all obstacles, Bringing peace and good fortune too. Kusha grass is used in India to make long hand-brooms, which can be found in most Indian grocery stores and disassembled to obtain the loose strands. It was traditional in ancient India to seat oneself on the hide of an animal—such as a tiger—during extended meditation sessions outside in the wild or in a cave, where the scent of the skin would discourage the presence of wild animals and poisonous snakes. The logic of killing an animal to assure ones personal protection is dubious. **2) What is the Sanksrit word for concentrating the mind “single-pointedly”? How do we put this into actual practice? What is the single most effective way to accomplish, as Lord Krishna advises, the “restraint of the thoughts and senses”? How could this affect our physical yoga?** The Sanskrit word for “single-pointed,” in the context of meditation, is *ekagra (eka#gra).* This consists of two parts: *eka* (meaning *one*) and *agra* (meaning *tip* or *point*). It can be a little confusing imagining trying to form the mind into a single point, like the tip of a dunce cap, until we realize that the expression refers to keeping the mind *on a single object.* In actual practice the process here is easier than it may sound. The human mind, left to itself, seems to enjoy the stimulation of multiple objects of attention: witness the popularity of cell phones, email, and television. To reach single-pointedness in our meditation, we simply work at *simplifying* our meditation session. We go through the traditional preliminaries, yes, because they give us the energy we need to conduct our meditation—but then when we go into the actual meditation, we work hard at restricting ourselves to a single object. This could be the image of a holy being, or our breath, or a single deep concept such as ultimate reality. We hear lots of advice on the best method of preventing our mind from being distracted, either out the doors of our senses, or to other thoughts within the mind itself. Here in the Gita though we’ve been learning though what it is to take a “true” action, and we know why some actions work and others do not. The fact is that the objects to which our mind might be distracted are *coming from ourselves,* from seeds within our own mind. These seeds of course are planted by the degree of concern which we show for others. If for example we have been loose with our speech, constantly complaining or criticizing, then we can expect irritating thoughts to fill our mind and distract our attention during meditation to someone who bothers us during the day. If instead we have been peaceful and quiet around others, considerate of their feelings and needs, then we can expect the condition of our own mind during meditation to reflect the same. The point then is that we work on our degree of concentration not by attempting to manipulate circumstances within or without us at the present moment, but rather consciously plant seeds throughout the day for a quiet and undistracted state of mind during our meditation sessions. Lord Krishna states in this same verse from the sixth chapter that our degree of single-mindedness should be used to “apply ourselves to our yoga.” This is of course a pun, as he has used two Sanskrit words (*yunja,* meaning *to apply ourselves,* and then *yoga*) which have the same root: √*yuj,* meaning *to join.* He is here speaking of the practice of meditation as yoga, but the same single-pointedness is equally important in our practice of our physical yoga exercises. The point of this physical practice is to direct the inner winds or prana out of the two side channels—the *ida* and the *pingala*—into the central channel (*sushumna*). Doing so has effects such as increasing our degree of concentration, which we then focus upon high spiritual truths, such as the question of where the world around us is really coming from. Our yoga asanas thus give us an opportunity to initiate an upward spiral of deep focus. We select some point to concentrate upon—for example, our breath, or a friend in the hospital to whom we are sending our energy—and try to maintain it throughout the length of our asana session. If we are able to maintain even a small degree of concentration, this helps direct prana into the central channel. This in turn increases our focus, which allows us to direct more prana there, and so on, in self-perpetuating focus. This encourages the smoother flow of prana throughout the entire body, benefitting even just its physical processes such as digestion, blood circulation, and glandular activity, since these are accomplished through concentrations of prana known as the five functional winds, or *vayu*s. With a healthier body, our concentration further increases, guiding us to breakthroughs in our understanding of the very workings of reality. **3) What are some points that Lord Krishna advises us to observe with regard to our physical posture during meditation, and how are these expanded upon in a famed list from the Buddhist tradition?** Lord Krishna, in another verse from the sixth chapter, gives us a short list of pointers for our physical posture during meditation, which are expanded upon in a famed instruction from the Buddhist tradition known as the “eight-point posture of the Angel of Appearances” (we’ll track the numbers here from this list). Lord Krishna first mentions that our body, head, and neck should be “equal.” Keeping our body “equal” refers to (3) keeping a straight spine during our meditation practice—it is said that the vertebrae should feel like a straight stack of coins. This said, we should note that the spine has a natural curvature to it that we should consider during meditation; for example, we might want to experiment with slightly tucking the tailbone to lengthen the lower spine during meditation, rather than “kinking” the flow of prana in this area by what we might normally take to mean a “straight” back. Keeping our head “equal” means that (5) it should be held in a perfectly vertical position, again considering the natural curves of the spine. This means without the chin too far up (which promotes distraction) nor down (sleepiness). Keeping the neck equal means that we watch the position of the area of the neck, in the sense that (7) neither of the shoulders is higher than the other. (1) The legs should be arranged in a way which allows the meditator to sit for a long period of time without discomfort or, as Lord Krishna puts it, to remain “steady and unmoving.” This could be one of the more standard postures, such as a half lotus or a full lotus, but it’s important to appreciate that the main thing is comfort and ability to stay unmoving for the entire session—and so a good straight-back chair without arms, keeping our feet flat on the floor, with an erect spine, is fine. (6) The eyes, says Lord Krishna, can be lightly focused on the plane of the nose (and not crossed, as the wording might be misunderstood to mean). If we avoid centering the focus on anything, then we’ll be able to honor Lord Krishna’s advice “not to look elsewhere.” The idea is actually that the eyes are “spaced out” and we’re not focusing on anything at all. As with the entire body, the ideas is to “park” the eyes so that we can leave them there and go into the inside of our mind. The eyes can either be closed but, if that tends to make the practitioner sleepy, can be left open a tiny crack with the eyes turned downwards. This can often cause the head to tilt downwards and we have to watch that this doesn’t happen. (2) The hands can be left in “chin mudra,” first finger and thumb lightly touching with the palms either up or down on the knees, or else in the traditional Tibetan gesture of left hand down first, palm-up, on the lap, followed by the right hand, palm up, and the thumbs lightly touching. In either case, prana flows more smoothly due to the light contact of the fingers. The former position also allows heat to dissipate from the body in warm weather, while the latter retains this heat in a cooler room. (4) The mouth should be closed but without any strain at all in the lips and jaw. Lips, teeth, and tongue are kept naturally; if the tongue touches the palate lightly behind the teeth, it is said to prevent thirst or the need for a lot of swallowing, which can be distracting. (8) The final point of posture concerns a “warm-up” for the meditation, much like an athlete who is stretching before a foot race. This involves watching the breath as it moves out and then in to the nostrils. To calm the mind, we see if we can count ten breaths without thinking of anything else during this time; if the mind does wander from the count, then we start it over. After a reasonable amount of time spent in this attempt, we shift the focus of the mind to our actual object of meditation. **4) Now that we have finished the physical preliminaries to a meditation session, how do we see Lord Krishna describe the mental preparation, in four different steps? And how does he describe the ultimate thing to meditate upon?** Here are four mental preliminaries which Lord Krishna recommends, still in the sixth chapter of the Gita. First we are to (1) “live quietly,” meaning that our entire lifestyle outside of our meditation sessions is one of mental peace and contentment. It might be argued that by definition we cannot live quietly, and that’s one reason why we’re meditating in the first place. But here it’s important to go back, one more time, to our worldview, which informs us of where everything around us is coming from. On a superficial level, we can reduce the amount of activity and stimulation that we expose ourselves to, and gain some measure of quiet. As we all know, this may or may not work. So we turn to work on a seed level. We purposely do whatever we can to bring different kinds of peace to other people. This might be the absence of war; it might mean mediating between fellow workers in our office who are struggling with each other; it could perhaps simply be playing a soothing song for someone who is nervous. As a result then we experience our surroundings and our daily life outside of meditation as something peaceful—we are truly able to “live quietly.” Lord Krishna secondly encourages us to “release all fear.” If we think about it, just about all the fear in the world comes from the fact that there is no way that we can know what’s going to happen to us in the future. The theme of the Gita is true action, because all of the actions that we’ve been taking up to now are continually fraught with uncertainty. With Lord Krishna’s instruction though we can now undertake an action with a certain aim and know with certainty that this aim will be accomplished. We’ve already seen in this course that we can free ourselves from *dvandva:* from the pairs of opposites, from all the decisions we ever have to make in our life. No more agonizing, no more choices. We simply decide on what it is that we want, and we plant the mental seeds for it by providing the same thing to someone else first. If there is something bad going on in our life, or we know we have a certain negative seed from the past, then we go about cleaning it from ourselves by resolving to watch ourselves closely and not engage in similar actions from now on. Our future is set, no more fear—and this is the *only* way to free ourselves from fear, forever. A third preliminary practice which Lord Krishna suggests to us is “maintaining our vows of purity.” The Sanskrit at this point, *brahmacharya,* most often refers to maintaining a code of sexual purity, whether it be complete abstinence from sexual activity, or being very careful not to hurt others’ relationships. In this case though we can take the meaning more broadly, as observing codes of conduct which avoid any harm to other living beings at all, and undertaking to do all that we can to help others. Lord Krishna is here recognizing what all the great Teachers of the past have advised: that if we hope to be truly good at meditation, then we need to plant the specific seeds for deep focus. And this is avoiding harm towards others, and paying them constant kindness. As a final preliminary, the Lord lists “watching over our thoughts.” This is a very simple, basic, obvious skill of listening to our own mind as it talks, and keeping an eye out for things that it’s saying that aren’t so nice. It’s amazing how much progress we can make this way, simply listening in to the train of thoughts going through our own mind, and saying “whoa whoa\!” when this train goes off on thoughts that aren’t healthy for us. Keeping a spiritual diary which we check at regular times through the day is a good way of maintaining this state of watchfulness. As for the ultimate thing to meditate on, Lord Krishna states the case perfectly when he says simply, “Think of me.” Meditation is not to be thought of as simply an exercise in observing a neutral object such as our breath, although this is a great way to calm the mind down initially. Rather, our choice of a high meditation object is crucial: this object will be burned into our mind, and create massive amounts of seeds in the subconscious, good or bad. Bad, if all we do is sit in our meditation and think about the last person who hurt us. Good, ultimately good, if we lay our thoughts upon the holy form and conduct of our Heart Teacher, and thus allow Their blessing to pour into us. **5) What are the three goals that Lord Krishna describes as the reason for our practice of meditation?** Lord Krishna sets for three different goals for our meditation practice. The first is “peace.” This is a scriptural code word for what we can call “ordinary” nirvana: the permanent ending of all of our negative emotions. That is, just try to imagine a future in which there is nothing which can ever upset you; no one who can ever make you angry; no one of whom you could ever be jealous. This goal can only be achieved if we come to understand “true” action, as we are learning it here in the Gita. We need to learn to see that nothing is coming from its own side; in the example of anger, the person who makes us angry is only a reflection of how we ourselves have been acting. Truly recognizing this fact on a minute-by-minute basis requires an extremely quiet state of mind—one which we can only develop through a steady, modest practice of meditation. And so we see that meditation is not a goal in itself. The second goal is what Lord Krishna calls “highest nirvana.” This is where, on top of ridding ourselves of our negative emotions, we expand the mind to its fullest potential. We are able to see all things, in all times; and we can simultaneously see both the ultimate nature and the apparent nature of all these things as well. Physically, we have the capacity to split off infinite copies of ourselves—emanations, avatars—to serve the needs of infinite others, all at the same time. Again, all of these require a perfect ability to meditate, which makes the mind quiet enough to see the true nature of things: the fact that they are coming from us, and nowhere else. The third goal is the highest: as Lord Krishna himself puts it, “you will come to union with me.” This is where, because our meditation practice has quieted our mind sufficiently, and because we have grasped how the world really works, we are now able to be with our own Lama, together with Them, standing above the world, saving and serving it. **6) How, according to Lord Krishna, can our “yoga become a thing which clears away our pain”? What is the meaning of the word most repeated in this context, and what is its root?** Lord Krishna gives an interesting formula for our yoga to work as something which will clear away our pain. He gives us the same famous advice as the Greek poet Hesiod: “Moderation in all things.” Lord Krishna tells us that “Yoga is not the habit of eating too much, but neither is it only refusing to eat.” These words address a phenomenon which the Tibetans call *epsar tsapo:* the original excitement about the novelty (here, of a spiritual practice), which tends to push us to excess and then, shortly after, to dropping the practice altogether. We know as well how it can be common in the practice of physical yoga: two hours a day for the first few days of the week, followed by a few skipped days, and then perhaps a single hour after that. And so the point with our diet is to eat reasonably, to avoid extremes, because extremes don’t tend to last. Lord Krishna continues on to say the same thing with our rest: don’t overdo it, but be sure to take enough. We are told, as with everything else, to do our resting “to the proper amount.” The Sanskrit word which Lord Krishna repeats here for “to the proper amount” is *yukta,* which of course is a play on words as it comes from √*yuj (yuj),* the same root as for *yoga.* But Lord Krishna doesn’t end his call for moderation here. He also applies it to “the amount that we stir ourselves to action.” Here we are being asked to observe moderation in our worldview, the key to “true” action. If on one hand we take things as coming from their own side, then we will “stir ourselves to action” too frequently, and in the wrong way: if we think that a yelling boss is coming from their own side, then we are inspired to the wrong sort of action—yelling back at them, which only brings them yelling back to us later. If on the other hand we fall to the other extreme—if we are too excited in our discovery of the key to true action, and decide that if things are coming from our own mind then they can’t be completely real—then we may be tempted not to act at all, to think that nothing matters anymore. Here too we are to be “moderate in all things”: things are not what we thought they were, but neither are they non-existent. We must act, but only with the knowledge that what we do in the present moment cannot have an effect until the seeds we have planted ripen within the mind. *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, examining whether you have prepared your meditation place properly, and observed each one of both the physical and mental preliminaries; then simply place your mind on your Heart Teacher before you. *Meditation times and dates* (homework without this section completed will not be accepted):