Practice

My engagement with the yoga sutra started more than a decade ago.  At first it was to learn the meaning as expounded by my teachers.  A few years back, it became more experiential through the medium of practice.  This was my gateway into antaranga yoga sAdhana:  Practices where one asks questions such as: With what attitude do I look at the world in this moment / what is my location?  How do I enliven myself and my context?  What are my triggers?  How does my inner being respond to these triggers? and so on.

By starting with “atha yoga anushAsanam” Patanjali indicates that he is compiling knowledge that has been expounded by a line of previous Seers.  For me, as a yoga and Dhrupad practitioner, it is always thrilling to reflect on the fact that these traditions have been passed down not through scholarship but praxis.  Every time I practice, I uphold this tradition and play a role in passing it forward.  These traditions are not unlike rivers: never the same from one moment to the next, while always maintaining their capacity to hold and carry forth, nourishing life all around.  

Yoga / Music practice takes the form of an inquiry.  It may be focussed on the body, the breath, the mind (or svar, tAla, rAga in Dhrupad).  By practicing consistently, one’s perception becomes less and less cloudy giving way to clarity in one’s being.  This, brings about subtle changes to the field created by the practitioner.  In this state, the vibration of one’s Truth is brought into interactions with the external world, thus propagating it.

Indian classical music is one of the best examples of this.  The rAga is an entity defined most fundamentally by a fixed scale of notes and characteristic phrases: something that can seemingly be learned from books.  However as anyone who has listened to the masters of the artform render the same rAga, it evokes varied responses in the listener.  In fact, it will be a different entity every single time it is rendered by the same person too.  

The learning therefore has more to do with the process of communing with the rAga.  Every conversation thus had, is unique.  Every musician who has communed with the rAga has their own way of summoning it.  It is only when one reaches this ability, that one can then teach others.  The student in turn discovers their own unique way of calling on this entity.  Practice thus becomes the only way to be part of the tradition and to pass it forward.