DAY 39: JUNE 20
Samadhi
समाधी
Samadhi is the 8th and final anga (limb) of ashtanga yoga. It means; Perfect absorption, bringing into harmony, bliss, oneness. According to TKV Desikachar it is complete integration with the object of understanding. Our ego disappears and our mental activities are integrated with the object and nothing else.
“Yoga is awareness, a type of knowing… Yoga will end in awareness. Yoga is the arresting of the fluctuations of the mind, as said in the Yoga Sutras: citta vritti nirodha. When the mind is without any movement, maybe for a quarter of an hour, or even a quarter of a minute, you will realize that yoga is of the nature of infinite awareness, infinite knowing…
The word citta in the Yoga Sutras means mind. The mind is present twelve angulas (finger-widths) above the navel in the region of the heart. The mind exists in that location like a bindu, like a pearl of light. The Prana, individual self, and the Divine all exist there. To know this, the fluctuations of the mind must be arrested.”
~ T Krishnamacharya
Here is the passage from the Bhagavad Gita that Gandhi and his community would meditate on to find peace and harmony:
Living in Wisdom
The Bhagavad Gita
Arjuna:
Tell me of those who live in wisdom,
Ever aware of the Self, O Krishna;
How do they talk, how sit, how move about?
Sri Krishna:
They live in wisdom
Who see themselves in all and all in them,
Whose love for the Lord of Love has consumed
Every selfish desire and sense craving
Tormenting the heart. Not agitated
By grief or hankering after pleasure,
They live free from lust and fear and anger.
Fettered no more by selfish attachments,
They are not elated by good fortune
Nor depressed by bad. Such are the seers.
Even as a tortoise draws in its limbs,
The wise can draw in their senses at will.
Aspirants abstain from sense pleasures,
But they still crave for them. These cravings all
Disappear when they see the Lord of Love.
For even of those who tread the path,
The stormy senses can sweep off the mind.
But they live in wisdom who subdue them
And keep their minds ever absorbed in me.
When you keep thinking about sense objects,
Attachment comes. Attachment breeds desire,
The lust of possession which, when thwarted,
Burns to anger. Anger clouds the judgment
And robs you of the power to learn from
Past mistakes. Lost is the discriminative
Faculty, and your life is utter waste.
But when you move amidst the world of sense
From both attachment and aversion freed,
There comes the peace in which all sorrows end,
And you live in the wisdom of the Self.
The disunited mind is far from wise;
How can it meditate? How be at peace?
When you know no peace, how can you know joy?
When you let your mind follow the Siren
Call of the senses, they carry away
Your better judgment as a cyclone drives
A boat off the charted course to its doom.
Use your mighty arms to free the senses
From attachment and aversion alike
And live in the full wisdom of the Self.
Such a sage awakes to light in the night
Of all creatures. In which they are awake
Is the night of ignorance to the sage.
As the rivers flow into the ocean
But cannot make the vast ocean overflow,
So flow the magic streams of the sense world
Into the sea of peace that is the sage.
They are forever free who have broken out
Of the ego-cage of I and mine
To be united with the Lord of Love.
This is the supreme state. Attain to this
And pass from death to immortality.
The Bhagavad Gita, the “Song of the Lord,” is India’s best-known scripture.
This passage has been translated by Easwaran for meditation.
The Art of Sitting
"Proper alignment is the RESULT and the CAUSE of becoming centered"
~ BKS Iyengar
Below are alignment cues from BKS Ieyngar himself in Light on Pranayama:
The head and neck are held erect and perpendicular to the floor in meditation and chin lock for pranayama.
Spine upright and back ribs and muscles firm and alert. The breastbone, naval and pubic symphysis are in alignment.
Eye brows, ears, tops of shoulders, collarbones, nipples, floating ribs and pelvic bones at hip joints should be kept parallel to each other.
Press thigh bones down into hip sockets.
Rest both buttocks evenly on floor.
Stretch the skin from quadriceps toward the knee.
Bring hamstrings closer together - this will lift anus and genitals off of floor and the spine begins to stretch up from here.
Torso vigorously active, and legs and arms dormant.
Neck and head are in a pure state of alert calmness.
Torso will collapse if spinal or intercostal muscles lose their grip or if vertebrae are not fully stretched.
Remember that extension cultivates the field which brings freedom, freedom brings precision, which in turn creates purity and this leads to divine perfection.