Sutra Sunday

nimittam-aprayojakaṃ prakṛtīnāṃ varaṇa-bhedaḥ tu tataḥ kṣetrikavat

nimittam – skillful means/cause; instrumental in bringing about a desired transformation
aprayojakaṃ – not directly affecting a change; indirect cause; facilitating change through subtle means
prakṛtīnāṃ – to transform one’s fundamental nature/prakṛti
varaṇa – dikes, dams or walls/obstacles (blocking the flow of water)
bhedaḥ – removing, breaking open
tu – but, however
tataḥ – as a result
kṣetrikavat – like a Farmer or Master Gardener, who both knows how to work the land and do the work required to produce desired results

Translation
The skillful means of transforming our fundamental natures comes as a result of [a masterful Teacher], who like a Farmer, tends to their plants [students] by skillfully removing what blocks the flow of water to them. The Farmer [Teacher] is instrumental in facilitating this transformation, but does not directly bring it about.

Gardening during the Pandemic
As we move into Spring, many of us are starting to garden again, sometimes for the first time in years. One of the gifts of the pandemic has been an increase in gardening as a means of creating food security for our families during uncertain times. Gardening stores can’t keep up with the demand. Seeds have been flying off the shelves. Gardening is thriving in our communities, one of the silver linings of this pandemic experience.

Garden Bay Gardening
I, too, have had the great fortune of being able to garden again during the pandemic. After a quarter of a decade of living in small apartments in Vancouver, Canada, my husband and I have fortuitously ended up in our newly built home on the Sunshine Coast to work remotely from the safety of our forest dwelling in Garden Bay, British Columbia. With this sudden transition to country living last Spring, we also felt drawn to working the land, and getting our hands dirty in its rugged soil. Vegetables and flowers surrounded us by the end of last summer with my first garden in 25 years. We are looking forward to an even healthier crop this summer, but the experience has not been without its obstacles to overcome!

The Lessons of Gardening
Gardening has many lessons for us all. It takes planning, patience, and consistent effort to get results like a long-term Yoga practice does. Pruning the old and weeding the unwanted are just as important as planting new seeds, and caring for them with both water and fertilizer, all at the right time, in the right amounts. Preventing obstacles like deer who come at night to eat all of our efforts is also essential through establishing strong boundaries such as the fences that my husband, Walter is now building for us. Saying yes to new habits and mental patterns must be balanced with saying no to old ones for our continuous whole-person transformation (see Yoga Sūtra-s I-12 to 16).

Yoga as Gardening
In Yoga Sūtra IV,3, Patanjali compares personal growth to farming. In order to thrive, grow and transform, a Teacher can be instrumental in removing the blocks that are holding us back and stopping the flow of prāṇa (vital energy) to where it is needed for healing within bodies, breath and minds. Like a Farmer removes weeds, rocks, and pests to allow for growth, a skilled Teacher can be instrumental in helping us cut away that which is blocking our personal transformation. Like a skilled Farmer removes knots from an irrigation system to allow nourishing water to flow to their fields, practicing what our masterful Teacher has taught us can subtly facilitate change. This transformation can ultimately break us open to experience our spiritual essence, naturally overflowing with endless Joy as the walls that used to confine us are deconstructed. As the obstacles are gradually removed, the Prāṇa that lies hidden in our Heart of hearts starts to release step by step (see YS, I-17). We start to radiate like the Sun, becoming fully established in the power of our authentic Self, our Draṣţa (see YS, I-3).

The Fruits of our Gardening
This personal growth happens of its own accord indirectly through the healing and spiritual practices of Yoga supported by our Therapeutic Relationships. Yoga Teachers do not cause this growth directly but nurture it subtly as they tend to their students like small seedlings growing into independent plants capable of bearing extraordinary fruit. In the end, we must do the work if we want to become Free. Our Teachers can only point the way through their teachings and examples.

Happy Inner & Outer Gardening this Spring!
Happy Spring Equinox, Passover, Easter, Holi and Ramadan as we all tend to our personal transformation and growth during these uncertain times.

Yoga Sūtra Contemplative Meditation
What obstacles are holding me back from personal grow and transformation? What Yoga practices and Therapeutic Relationships can support their removal, including my relationship with my Yoga Teacher, Yoga Therapist, and/or Counsellor?

The fourth route to Yoga through śraddhā (faith, trust, enthusiasm, interest, motivation), can be fanned though never taught. The more intense the śraddhā, the faster we arrive at our heart’s deepest desires, so fanning the fires of faith should be a priority for teachers, encouraging their students’ transformation.

Patanjali’s Yoga Sūtra-s (YS) I-21

Tīvra (very high)-samvegānam(speed) āsannaḥ (be there – arrive)

The more śraddhā we have, the faster we will arrive at our goal of samadhi (enlightenment).

Patanjali’s Yoga Sūtra-s (YS) I-22

mṛdu (low) madhya (medium) adhimātra(high)-tvāt tatō (that)’pi(further) viśeṣaḥ (differentiates)

Śraddhā can be further differentiated by these three levels: low, medium, and high.

Faith is Taboo

The word “faith” immediate triggers ideas of being controlled and manipulated by a belief system that is not based in logic or science. In the West, we left the Dark Ages, the “Age of Faith”, in the 11^th century with the early medieval universities, and later with the rebirth of art, culture, and humanism during the Renaissance. This culminated with the Age of Enlightenment/Reason, which questioned the authority of church over state and religion over science. Even though during the postmodern era, philosophers started to question our addiction to science and discursive logic, with its clearly defined subject-object relationships, most of us still revert to a modernist Enlightenment viewpoint that claims reason, logic, and science reign supreme over superstition, faith, and ignorance of the facts. If faith is equated with intellectual laziness and naïveté, why would we want to fan these fires of faith?

The Universe is Friendly

Contemporary metamodernist philosophers such as Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker in Notes on Metamodernism are trying to bridge the gap between reason and faith as well as absolutes and relativism with an informed naïveté. They offer a bridge between the modernist faith in science and the post-modernist mistrust of it. They present a way to believe that life has meaning and purpose without falling back into superstitious belief systems. Chaos is tempered by knowing that there is an intelligence that pervades the whole.

This cultural shift can be seen in rhetoric from politics to sporting events. Barack Obama’s 2008 speech to Democratic Assembly asserted “Yes, we can change.” The 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics’ motto for Team Canada was “I believe”. Both point to an optimism that was made mechanistic by the modernists and naïve by the post-modernists. Metamodernism bridges that schism of world views, restoring our faith in a life that often feels uncertain.

Trusting that the Universe is friendly, that our Life has a certain logical flow, and that we are on Earth to learn, can all help us live happier lives that feel safe to embody. In order to move forward in our lives with any goal, we need a good dose of faith. We would not even wake up in the morning if we didn’t have faith that the Sun would come up and shine on us again. To some extent, we need to believe that most things will continue to flow as they did yesterday. We need to believe that things are semi-permanent to survive the constant flux of life events. Depressive realism is a labeled as a psychological abnormality for a reason. We have to have faith and hope to survive our lives, which are constantly challenging us with unforeseen changes.

The Mind is Not as Smart as the Heart

As my monk friend Matthew used to say to me in India, “The mind is just not sharp enough to penetrate reality.” According to the Yoga tradition, practicing being present is the only way to bypass our addiction to thinking that the mind will free us from our suffering. We need to find ways to create space for our Hearts to be heard away from the daily grind of obligations and tasks. With that practice, we will start trusting (śraddhā) the wisdom of our Hearts, our intuition, and our deepest sense of Self. This faith will bring us much more comfort than a harsh intellectualism that refuses to believe in the impossible or the unseen worlds of the mystic.

Believing in your Self and your Life

When we have learnt to trust our Hearts over our heads, we have developed a level of wisdom that cannot be taught but can certainly be encouraged by our teachers and friends. As that trust deepens, the innocence (from Latin “to not harm”) of our presence expands. We start to radiate an authenticity that others can feel. We feel less fear about outcomes and more certainty that Life will provide us with exactly what we need at any given moment. As my Yoga Sūtra-s teacher, DV Sridhar once said to me over 10 years ago, “Live as if everything in your life is perfect and see what happens!” Now that is Faith!

Yoga Sutra Questions What do you believe in? Is your level of faith high, medium or low? Is it enough to motivate you to transform your life into the one your Heart is asking for? If not, how can you fan its fires to inspire such change?