For a little over a month now, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time in front of a computer screen, composing short essays on yoga-related topics. And in a way, this feels like a fairly natural, easy and mostly-enjoyable thing to be doing: I love to write, and have been exploring Yoga (in its Taoist, Buddhist & Hindu varieties) for long enough that finding aspects of these practices ~ or their related philosophies ~ to present in this way, is not a problem. Yet there’s also a feeling of strangeness about it … this little gnawing sensation in the pit of my belly … something which seemed to be asking for its own “exploration” … and hence, this essay!
So what makes writing about Yoga “strange”? For one, I am ~ by inclination, passion & profession (in the sense of dharma) a poet. It is in writing poetry that I find the deepest joy, ease, and openness … A feeling that I’m doing what (at least for now) I am “meant to be doing,” that I’m offering out into the world what I am uniquely qualified to offer, that I’m “doing my job.” Though I also very much enjoy writing prose, there is, for me, a palpable difference in the experience of the two forms. The writing of prose, for me, almost always carries with it a certain sense of tension, of anxiety. I am, in the context of prose articles, making affirmations, assertions; I’m arguing for this or that point of view; I’m proposing and defending. I place myself in relation to a specific discursive “field,” having in mind a particular “audience” whose attention, and approval (or disapproval!) I’m wishing to attract.
When ~ on the other hand ~ I’m writing poetry, the “relationship” is much more between me the “objects” of my inspiration (which for me tend to be trees & rivers & mountains … and other members of the “natural world”), than it is between me and my (projected) “readers.” The writing of poetry, for me, is primarily about “listening” and then, with as much delicacy & integrity as I can muster, “translating” what I’ve “heard” into the sounds, images, and evocations of a poem … Whether or not someone else approves of the poem really never enters my mind. Which isn’t to say that I don’t value the work of other poets, and feel happy when my work is appreciated by them. I read widely among other poets who I hope to be “influenced” by, and am happy to have that effect myself, on others. Yet this is secondary to the process of simply listening … of allowing my perception to be “naked,” my senses “virgin” to what they’re perceiving … en route to birthing the next poem. So in relation to my practice of writing poetry, writing any sort of prose feels ~ in this way ~ “strange.”
What’s also strange, in this particular (“virtual”) context, is that it is only through some strange combination of intuition and projection, that I can pretend to “know” my audience. So I’m writing about practices which, for me, are associated with the deepest forms of intimacy … in a context which is about as “impersonal” as can be! Now whether or not “in-person” relationships are necessarily any more “real” or “intimate” than virtual relationships, is an interesting question. In either case, intimacy would seem to depend upon ones capacity to see or feel beyond whatever “text” it is that’s being presented, as the “first level” of contact. That “text” might be words on a computer screen, it might be spoken words, it might be a person’s physical appearance … Whatever the text, my “knowing” of the person at any level beyond the most superficial, will depend ~ it seems to me ~ upon my capacity to augment intuition (knowing-from-inside, at a feeling level, and connecting at the level of Spirit/energy), and turn the volume way down on my projections (habitual associations I make, based upon that first-level “text”). But this is a topic for another essay (or, perhaps, a poem) …
To write about Yoga is also to be involved in an attempt to “speak the un-speakable,” which is definitely a strange (and perhaps really arrogant?) undertaking! Yoga as a path (sadhana), as a set of techniques, instructions, philosophies, is something than can, and must, be represented in the form of words & images … Otherwise, how could anyone ever begin to practice? How could anyone ever do this thing called “entering a path of Yoga”? And how could anyone ever “practice” if there were no “forms” being practiced? Yoga as fruition (siddhi or samadhi or citta-vritti-nirodha ), on the other hand, is by definition beyond all forms (including thought-forms), beyond all language … It is a state of Being in which all (conventional, conceptual) “knowing” has been dropped, including our “knowing” about Yoga! Yet what’s also true is that most yogis & yoginis who have accessed this “fruition” of Yoga choose to “return” to the world of speaking & thinking & moving about within a human body … which, in a strange way, brings us back to the place where this essay began: poetry …
For it is often (though not always!) in poetry (of thoughts, words, and/or physical movements) that such Beings then choose to express themselves … for it seems that sometimes a poem (or dance) is ~ via its gentle “listening” ~ what has the power to tease out of this Yogic silence a song … a way of using language which points back to its origins, it Source, that un-speakable Silence …
So for now at least, I will continue to write essays on yoga-related topics. And let myself feel curious about bringing the energy of poetry into my prose. It feels like the right thing to do. Though it is strange business indeed!
Elizabeth Reninger, M.S. (Oriental Medicine) has been exploring Yoga/Qigong – in its Daoist, Buddhist and Hindu varieties – for upwards of twenty-five years. She maintains a private acupuncture practice in Boulder, Colorado, and is a published poet. For more of Elizabeth’s writing, on related topics, please visit http://taoism.about.com
