Latest / Sutra Squad / Ep. 17 - Sutras 1.15-16 On the Nature of Detachment
Transcript
- Seth Barron: Without non-attachment, there cannot be any kind of yoga. Non-attachment is the basis of all yogas. Hello and welcome to the Sutra Squad podcast brought to you by One Deep Breath. My name is Seth Barron and I am joined by the superstar Sutra Squad, Sally Moore. Hello, welcome. And Sarah Page Hall. Hello. And Sarah Page, what is one word that describes how you feel right now? Still joyous. Amazing. Sally, how about you? Proud and grateful and... I am going to interrupt our previous programming for one second because I have to a two year old. My granddaughter Cooper asks me every day when I pick up from school, E, could you change that to the podcast where you're talking? And are you talking about me? And so I said, okay. And then I said, do you want me to say hi to you on the podcast? And she said, yes. So hello, and I love you, Cooper, Henke, and Bodhi. Hello, Cooper Hinky Bodie. Hi, Cooper Hinky and Bodie. ⁓ Yeah, those are some lucky grandkids. It's an auspicious birth, for sure. And it's an auspicious birth that I have the privilege of calling you my friend. ⁓ definitely. ⁓ my word. ⁓ Yeah, my word is like, I'm trying not to repeat, I'm trying to think of a synonym, but I'll just go with joyous too. Like, this is really, you know, I think, For those of you listening, we are not making this podcast for the money. We're not doing this to become a creator in that internet economy sense. We are now, obviously. ⁓ But this started as a real passion project for us to just be ⁓ in our study together and try to offer it as part of the good we want to be, see, and create in the world. ⁓ It's just an unbelievable joyous thing that we get to do this and we make this time together. And if one single human being out there in the world finds benefit from it, then it's worth it. Okay, so where we last left our heroes is in the first chapter. There's the opening trilogy that describes the presence of the present in yoga. That the definition and its most essential is the yoga. The state of yoga is when the mind is brought to stillness or when the swirl is restrained. And then so that the true self shines forth. And then we're given this like formula about nine verses later in Sutra 112 that teaches us, abhyasa varagya viham tan nirodha. The means by which we achieve that restraint is like two sides of a coin, abhyasa and vairagya. Abhyasa varagyabhi ham tan nirodha. And last week we talked about abhyasa, about practice, and the nature of practice. And it said that practice is to be sustained and uninterrupted with, ⁓ to create like a steadfast presence in practice, like pratisthayam, like the root there in the Sanskrit, stha, to stand, like samasthiti hi, ⁓ like ervasthasana. extended mountain pose, and that it's to be sustained over a long period of time. Right? Like a lifetime or many lifetimes. And, you could say that in, the literal or the metaphoric sense, depending on your own belief system. Like, if you believe in, like, the Hindu cycle of reincarnation, then, like, it's probably not the first time, if you're hearing the sound of our voices, if you've found an attraction to this yoga, like, you're probably a yogi and have been before. But even if you think about, like, I think about my own life just in this... corporeal ⁓ frame of my awareness, that I've lived a couple of different lives. None of us are kids on this podcast. ⁓ We've all been around the marble several, many, couple of times, and we've all lived a bunch of different lives. especially even the last 10 years of my deep practice of yoga, I think of lifetimes I've lived and... ⁓ continue to live and reinvent and recreate. that practice is that commitment to it, to sustain it and to be in it and to have it be uninterrupted. that yoga, and the deeper we go, there's like, the mat is like a welcome mat to everything else. It's the beginning of yoga, as least as how most of us experience it in the West. You go to an asana class, asana is the physical seat or practice and then like something gets under your skin and you start going back for more and then you go for more and then maybe you do a training or you discover that there's this like whole body of text and in this case like we focus on this text the yoga sutra because it's such a beautiful distillation of so much wisdom and it's and it's so powerful and it's so accessible like it's relevant and fresh in our lives now like no matter how many thousands of years old this is. So that's practice, that's apyasa, that's like the idea of just like, you know, whether you want to or not, whether it's like, it feels easy or not, you get on the mat or you stay in practice, right? And the more you get into that practice, the more practice there is. Like everything is yoga. I also have a job in the secular world and it's yoga. Like I'm just doing a different yoga. But like, I've really like, the more I, the more I've actually tried to break that barrier between yoga and everything else, actually the more richly it informs everything else, the better the everything else gets. That's my experience anyway, so far. So now let's talk though, today we're gonna talk about the other side of this coin, which is Vairagya. ⁓ Vairagya is usually translated as detachment. And as is always the case, Maitreya Patanjali doesn't leave us hanging. He doesn't make us wonder. We get to really, we get two verses of text to really explore what that means. And the first is Sutra 115, and the Sanskrit is a little bit of a mouthful. So I'm just gonna read it once and let's see if I can get through it. It's drsh, mm, yeah. Drshtanushravika vishaya vitrishanyasa. Vashikara Samyana Samya Vairagyam I'm gonna try that one more time. It's a mouthful and I like it. I practiced this. But this one is a mouthful because there's sounds that we just don't usually make in English together. okay. Drsthanushravika Vishaya Vetrishinasya Vashikara Samnya Vairagyam, the work in progress. And what it means in one translation from Sri Swami Satchidananda, the conscious self mastery, excuse me, the consciousness of self mastery in one who is free from craving from objects seen or heard about is non-attachment. Consciousness of self-mastery in one who is free from craving from objects seen or heard is non-attachment. So let's put a pin in that idea. So it's the sense that like the transcendence of craving for sense gratification is non-attachment. And then the next verse, 1.16, and this one I'll chant because it's a little bit more approachable. Tat param purusa khyater gunya vaitrishanyam. Tat param purusa khyater gunya vaitrishanyam. And before I chant the sutra, I'll just take a moment. Sit up maybe if you're in a place where you can do so and you wanna join me for one moment of presence. Maybe find a little bit of length in your spine. You can close your eyes. Notice. Whatever you notice right now, notice what you notice right now. And without any judgment of it, just take a moment and observe. Take a deep breath in. Breathe it out. And if you'd like to join me for om, inhale. chanting Yoga Sutra 1.16. Tat parampurusa kyater guñjavaitreśnyam Tat parampurusakhyater gunyavaitrisnyam. Tat parampurusakhyater gunna vai trishanyam So from Sri Swami Satchitananda, this translation, when there is non-thirst for even the gunas, constituents of nature, due to the realization of purusa, true self, that is supreme non-attachment. So let me just quickly speak to a few big ideas in this one. I'm gonna try to give a brief overview of like, the gunas and then the dualism of prakriti and purusa. So the material world in the Sankhya and the yoga philosophical system is prakriti, is the term in Sanskrit. And that means like material energy, like the world that we can see or hear or feel or experience with our five senses. The material world. And it said that all of the material world has three modes of nature, the gunas, which are sattva, rajas, and tamas. Okay, pop quiz, what is tamas, the guna tamas? Tamas is more dark. It has a darker, ignorant sort of energy to it. Yeah, the mode of ignorance is one way of saying it. What is rajas? I have it as overactivity, busyness. Yeah, the mode of action. And then what is sattva? That's ease, that's evenness, balance, sattvic, it's... Yeah, it's light, it's purity, it's holiness, goodness. Good is like a little tricky, I don't... But like, because the gunas aren't good or bad, but there's a difference, right? So there's this like the mode of goodness and spiritual purity, sattva. The mode of action and movement in the material world, rajas, and the mode of darkness, inertia, ignorance is tamas. Kind of like Goldilocks, right? Yeah, It's kind like Goldilocks. Yeah, yeah. And one of the reasons for an Ayurvedic cuisine, for example, that consuming the flesh of animals is said to be tamasic. You're literally putting something dead into your body, like dead flesh. Fun fact, I didn't realize this until like last year or two, but ⁓ mushrooms are not very common in Ayurvedic and Indian cuisine. But yet there's like so much vegetarian food and so you might wonder why. And the answer is because to the Ayurvedics, mushrooms are tamasic. Cause they feed off of dead stuff. So it's like dead stuff on dead stuff. So they're thought to be like a tamasic food. As opposed to like, eating prasadnam, eating food that has been prepared with love and that is offered to a deity or to the divine is said to be sattvic. that by making the food as an offering, are purifying its nature, maximizing the sattva, because all three gunas are in everything in the material realm. There's just one that is often, sometimes. more predominantly present, they're said that they're in constant mutation. They're constantly moving through these three modes. Okay, so when there is not even a thirst for the gunas, like when we transcend that, due to the realization of purusa, so now let's talk about this word purusa. ⁓ Its counterpart is prakriti. like prakriti is the material world, purusa is the spiritual world. Sometimes that's translated as like the true self, capital T-S, like true self, like it's divine energy. I've heard one beautiful framing of this that like prakriti is the external manifestation of the divine. Purusa is the internal manifestation. Sometimes it's said that it's the soul, is purusa, or it's like it is the cosmic collective consciousness of the divine. ⁓ The nature of the divine is in purusa. It's beyond rational material understanding. So that like, the first of these verses teaches us that like, the renunciation of the craving for sense gratification or sensory objects is this idea of detachment, like letting go of outcomes, because an outcome is like a sense gratification. Right, it's the classic yoga teacher cliché, it's my favorite. What happens when you can do a handstand? Nothing. Nothing. It means you can stand on your hands, which to be clear is like dope. It's a cool flex. Not knocking it, I'm working on it, right? know, Adho Mukha Vrikshasana. ⁓ Like, fascinating. But if you're showing up to asana and you're deep in the arahapastha of the practice and what you're doing is like showing up to be able to do a handstand. You will get the handstand and then nothing will happen. And it will be empty. Right? It's a funny thing to live in New York City where everybody's always constantly striving to get more, get more, get more. And like, there's always somebody who has more. And I don't know about either of you, but like some of the most miserably unhappy, the most miserably suffering people I've known are outwardly the most abundant. Like they're the wealthiest. And it's because like, it's like, like too much is never enough. And we've made a very conscious decision not to talk about politics on this podcast, and so I'm just gonna leave that there, but that cycle is a pretty sure path to suffering. And so instead, what we're presented with here is that there's the practice of the practice of sustained, uninterrupted, dedicated over a long time. And then there's the letting go of its outcomes of sense gratification to the point where it's even possible that we perceive purusa, like spiritual truth, as the supreme highest level or the deepest expression of that non-attachment. So... Sarah Page, is there a translation of either or both of these verses that really calls to you or that you really found resonant? Yeah. Yes, thank you. Yagunath Korea, Reverend Yagunath Korea. ⁓ I love this. He gives his definition, which is fine, but what he does is he offers another person's, ⁓ definition that I like even better. says, without non-attachment. there cannot be any kind of yoga. Non-attachment is the basis of all yogas. And that's from Swami Vivekananda. I really, without non-attachment, there cannot be any kind of yoga. And that's sort of like doing the handstand in the middle of the room. That's a big attachment, right? You get very attached to being able to do something and then you do it and then it's, oh, know, poof. So I love that. And then also he says, be aware, he goes, the highest non-attachment arises when the purusa is correctly discerned as the true self. This realization ends all craving and the compulsive urge to find lasting satisfaction from any sense experience that can be provided by nature. Then he has another person's definition, he be aware of the ephemeral nature of material things. Lose your attachment to them. I love it when they go just, Very concise. that's all pretty, be aware of the ephemeral nature of it, but then it's just bam, lose your attachment to them. And I love that. What about you, Sally? Was there a translation of these verses that really like resonated meaningfully to you? So I'm going to go with Carrera also. This one's from Inside the Yoga Sutras, two of his books. ⁓ And he says, non-attachment is the manifestation of self-mastery in one who is free from craving for objects seen or heard about. So that's what I really like is below. was ⁓ discussing it more. Actually, this might be from the other book, Inside Potongeli's Words. ⁓ When talking about self-mastery, he said mastery should bring about delight. or by love, and I'm very much into the heart space stuff this year. And Jagannath Carrera dives into self mastery or to master by love. He says mastery should not be understood as being born from brute willpower, but from love of liberation. It is the feeling of oneself, it is freeing oneself from attachments by cultivating love of liberation until it is greater. than the craving objects of attachment. This love is nurtured through practice, discernment, and introspection. Zeal for liberation gradually eclipses attachments. Mastery should bring delight to guide the mind's transformation in order to maintain steadiness so that life is delightful. And I just thought that was brilliant. And then he goes real straight and this I've sort of abbreviated some of this from the book, but ⁓ he offers seven key manifestations of non-attachment. And it's non-attachment brings fearlessness. Fear is found on concern over potential loss. Non-attachment expresses as service. Those who harbor no selfish desires in their actions naturally bring benefit to all. They experience joy in every act, not as a result of gain from their actions. Non-attachment frees us to love purely. Non-attached love seeks to increase the welfare and wellbeing of everyone. Non-attachment includes taking care of ourselves. If we are interested in being useful, we should take good care of ourselves. Rest, recreation, and rejuvenation can all be part of service to others. Number five, non-attachment brings skill. Freed from the anxiety born of selfish expectations, the full power of mind is available to engage in the project at hand. Non-attachment cultivates nirotaha. Attachment compromised the major source of distractions that prevents steady mental focus. And then number seven, non-attachment opens the door to wisdom. Non-attachment frees the mind to rise above the self-centered notions of the way of life so that we can glimpse the divine plan. All right, well, we're done here. ⁓ This is one of these like really big media ideas. that it's like easy to say, it's interesting to note too that pretty much every faith and religious tradition has a practice of like extreme non-attachment that you could call like a monastic kind of approach, right? That there's- Renunciation. Monks, there's renunciates, right? Like in, there's monks in many Christian traditions. ⁓ Like there's the ⁓ Sannyasis, you know, in many practices of Sanatana Dharma of Hinduism. There's Buddhist monks, like there's people who decide that they have to go to like a super deep non-attachment and like disengage from the world. But I also want to make sure that we don't lose sight of the fact that as as Master, as Reverend Carrera said it so beautifully, like we can we can figure out how to navigate and engage with this idea and still be in the world. That's not to say that it's not like a beautiful thing to decide to go further and really go that deep in terms of like being a monk or like a serious renunciate. But it also doesn't mean that like we don't have to, it means that like we can still try to navigate that even out here in the material world as as householders, so to say. So I think one of the questions that this whole, this idea brings up for me is like, I love, I forget where I first read it, but in one of the more ancient commentaries around some of this idea of getting present to sense gratification, there's this analogy given of the senses, sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, as like wild horses. And like, A horse in the wild, here's something bolts off toward it, away from it, for it, what, right? There's this very short distance between stimulus and response. And if you were to just take those five horses and try to put them together and have them pull a chariot, they would just like go apart, they would pull the chariot apart, and the whole thing would be chaos. And in a lot of ways, like that's how we live. So many of us, we just go from like one sensory stimulus to the next, and like that's what often insects the the chitta vritti, the swirl of our mind, it's just like the senses are just going off. And then if you think about what it takes to like yoke horses together to become effective at driving a chariot, you have to train them. You have to physically harness them, and that takes time and effort and intention and practice. And there's something about that as a beautiful analogy in the sutra that like... that this idea of detachment is to harness the senses. so that they can pull us in an intentional direction. I wanna go here. So horses like take me here, as opposed to just letting them run wild. And I think that, to me that like the way that we could think about this is like, how do we start pulling apart the stimulus of desire? And like, wait, before we just like respond to fill the desire, because more than ever in human history, we live, we have compressed that cycle of stimulus response or like craving to satisfaction of craving. Like, you know, that's like Amazon Prime. Not that I don't have an Amazon Prime membership, I do. I live in the world and sometimes I need something delivered tomorrow. Or I believe. I believe that sometimes I need it. And it is very convenient. And I have thoughts about Amazon, like I'm working on it. So I'm not, no, you know, not, I'm not a, I'm not a renunciate. I mean, I want to be honest about that. So like we live in a world where like so much of the technology at our fingertips and so much of our culture even is that we've like lost this value of delayed gratification. We, we are so hooked on instant gratification. How do we start to like, Pull apart. stimulus. and not just immediately look to fill it. Instead, look at the space between the stimulus and the response of our choosing to try to understand what's underneath that stimulus. I think I want this. Do I want that? I don't know, Sally or Sarah Page, feel free to come in. Like, what's that space look like for you? You know, it's funny, I've really been thinking about it. And I think it's, for me, pause, practice, get clear, begin again. And I was sharing with these guys... Pause, practice, practice, get clear. So that's we're looking for. That's what the episode's say the word for me, the tranquil clear satvik, yeah, tranquil, clear and focused mind. And begin again. I mean, the thing is, all of these things are practices. And the more we practice, I don't have to think I talked about brushing my teeth last week, it clearly still thinking about the dentist, but you know, there's practices we practice so often. And even with that, like I have to remember to change my toothbrush head or the angle of the brush. Even with things that I think I know, it's important to check in now again, but I have a better example. Last weekend, I got triggered. And the trigger sometimes has nothing to do with the situation. And then after I was triggered, I realized it was the three-month anniversary of my mom passing away. And it was so interesting because I was able to watch my mind. I didn't gain control of it. Swirl. And these thoughts were building and building. And I was just like, she was unkind to me and I was caring for her physically and she didn't like her physical design and I cared for the best I could and she blamed me for aging and I should go shopping because that's what we did together and I should honor her anniversary by going buying a pair of shoes. And I wish that we had a different relationship. I wish she was still here. She was hurt by losing so much in World War II. I think I'll make red cabbage, German red cabbage in her honor. She was a good cook and on and on and on. Like this all was happening. Something reminded me that it was the anniversary of her death. And then my mind took off. And I did actually run over to North America and buy myself a new pair of shoes in her honor, which is like kind of funny. And I did go to the market and get red cabbage and made really good red German red cabbage similar that she did. But after feeling sorry for myself for most of the day, I suddenly, my mind began to calm and become clear and maybe little bits and pieces of all that swirling. were so called true, like my experience. But the more than this world, like the mind started adding, like, she did a lot of really great things for me. And a lot of the things I'm proud of, my unique talents, they come a little bit from her, you know, she taught me and she is very creative. was an interior designer, like she shared this with me. And then suddenly, everything kind of settled and I started to breathe. And to me, that's the practice. It's to sit, to stay, to watch, to bring in love and then accept what is. Yeah. Well, and the detachment is to not fixate on what it should be. Right? Like the detachment is to just like in that pause, notice where like that the sense gratification is toward fixing, right? Or toward like changing it somehow. Or making it wrong or making it right or yeah. I just gonna say, this is, do y'all remember or do you have this experience where when people, when we talk about, you know, attachment, non-attachment, whatever, people go, You shouldn't be so attached to attached. Why are you so attached? It's like such a, it's like for me personally, when I hear somebody say you're too attached to it, it really makes me mad because it's sort of like, don't you, you don't know what I am or am not attached. Don't, don't put what you think on me, you know, because I don't think that I'm attached. You know at this moment, so don't there's this whole thing, but I don't know about y'all It's just something I was thinking about a lot because I'm like, I don't know why I Get activated when we talk about non-attachment people will say you're too attached You're so attached to this Like it's a really bad thing. I have such a pristling to people telling me who I am or what I am. It's like oh Yeah, that's where all my namaste just goes away. ⁓ Do not like. Something that ⁓ such a dhānava says that I really like here, he says, non-attachment, I love this, should not be misunderstood to be indifference. Yeah, this is like equanimity is not neutrality. Continue. Exactly. And that's what he says. He ⁓ says, every desire brings its own color to mind. And I like that because I'm very visual. The moment you color the mind, a ripple is formed. And just as when a stone is thrown into a calm lake, it creates waves in the water, which is sort of what you were going through, Sally, right? It was just one little thing, your mother's, and God bless you, Mazel Tov, that's the thing. And then it just created this huge ripple. ⁓ And when the mind is tossed by these desires, one after the other, there won't be peace or rest in the mind. And with a restless mind, you cannot have a steady practice. Boom. So, I mean, to your question, Seth, I am convinced I have adult onset ADHD. My mind just swirls and swirls and swirls at all time. Like I'm thinking, okay, I need to feed the cats and I'll be in the middle of it. And it's like, oops, I need to make coffee. And then I'm making the coffee and it's like, ⁓ I need to go get this. And it just goes and goes and goes. And for me, Sally, to your point, I have to sit down, but what I do is I journal. I have to write it down. For some reason, journaling, which I've never enjoyed, has been a real comfort to me. Recently, it's just been something that I sit down and I just write. And that has given me so much clarity to be able to just somehow put it on paper. And it comes clear to me and everything else gets clearer and clearer and less scary and less monsters in the closet like, you know, it's just much, much more easy for me to look at it and just sort of see it for what it is. love Reverend Jagmuth and I'm not sure Carrera which book because I have two of his books, but he had another part that I thought is really what you're saying Sarah Page is. We suffer due to ignorance and there is a way out of ignorance. The first and most fundamental priority in spiritual life is to remove ignorance. Knowledge is attained when the mind is satvik, tranquil, clear, and focused. Knowledge that is colored by attachment, selfish desires, or restlessness often results in partial or misunderstood truths. It would not be incorrect to regard the goal of yoga to be cultivating a satvik state of mind. Once that is achieved, individual effort ends and the seer now allows and receives grace which carries him, her, them to liberation. And whether it's the journaling, whether it's the contemplating, whether it's the cooking German red cabbage, whatever it is, the practice. That's what I think we're getting to. One thing I've really tried to like, you know, there's things you like hear and then you have to, takes you a while sometimes to like integrate them and like into a real practice, right? So one of them is like, I've heard this so many times and only in the last couple of years have I really started to be able to like put it into practice is like when I'm, when I'm activated, when I feel myself like, you know, spun up, when I'm in the Chitta Vritti, whatever you want to call it. The first thing I try to remind myself is like, ⁓ for any of you guys out there, it's the HALT acronym. Right? Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. Are any of these things happening right now? Like, okay, Seth, you are having a moment. And now let's just get curious before you just like appease the moment. Are you hungry? Have you eaten? Are you angry? And if so, like that's okay. Like, pull the thread. What's the anger about? Right, what are you angry for? Why are you angry? What are you really angry about? And are you really angry or does it feel like anger is a surface emotion and are you feeling more hurt or are you feeling undervalued or unvalued or unappreciated? Are you feeling unacknowledged or unseen? Are you feeling unimportant or, ⁓ right, like, like pull that thread, hungry, angry, lonely. Do I feel disconnected? Do I feel like I don't have anybody to talk to? Do I feel like Mitch won't talk back to me as my dog? Or am I tired? Like how much sleep did I get? You know, and so like, it's just a way of like a quick check in, a quick check up, to say like, sort of like to get that clarity. The first question is like what's really like, this is, and this is from the Tarbrock. my favorite Tarot Rock podcast, where she gives us three reminders for spiritual practice. And it's ⁓ awaken from your thoughts or awaken to your thoughts, right? Like the only thing happening right now is a thought. Thoughts are things, thoughts are prakriti. But it's also just a thought. It's just a manifestation of your own mind. It might be based on stimulus that's very real. And what's experience, the experience is just a thought. That's all it is. It shows the thought. And I have thoughts, my thoughts are real, and I am not my thoughts. So like, wake up to that. That's the first. Second, feel your feelings. Okay? So what do I feel? Sometimes I start, I'm really activated, start by just noticing what physically do I feel, right? This is a great coaching technique. I did this for Sarah Page, I don't know, what was that, a month or two ago? You were really upset about something and I said to Sarah Page, tell me five things you see right now. And you're like, ⁓ wait no, and this and that. And I was like, no, no, like see them, tell me what you see. It's really grounding. just to get back to right now. What do you see? What do you hear? What do you smell? What do you taste? What do you touch? That's also a way of taking those wild horses of the senses and starting to yoke them and bring them together, train them, because there's the experience you think you're having and then the actual experience you're having. So awaken from your thoughts, just a thought. Feel your feelings, the physical ones, and then the emotional ones. Okay, so I feel anger. I sort of just went through that practice, but then I'm like, Pull the thread, well, what do I really feel? What do I really feel? What do I really feel? And I'll just sort of keep going. Sometimes I'll stand in my kitchen with my, like it feels like, again, it's a grounding place in my house, because like I love to cook. so like, it's like standing in my kitchen with my hands on the counter and I'll just say like, okay, like, this is a thought, Seth, you're having a thought, it's intense and you have thoughts about the thought and it's all thoughts. It's just all thoughts. It's all that's happening. What am I feeling? I feel the. the tile under my feet. feel the laminate countertop under my hands. feel frustrated. What am I frustrated about? Sometimes I'll just stand there in my apartment and just say feeling words until I feel like I'm okay with it. And then the last one is remember love. So then I get to ask myself, what is one loving thing I can do right now? Just one thing, that's all I have to do right now is one loving thing for myself. And that's another point of like detachment from the gratification of the senses toward Purusa because I think love is at the source of the divine manifestation. And so like if I can remember love, then I'm taking a step back toward God, whatever that means to me toward the divine of my own understanding. Because what I want to get because like, because like, which to me, like it goes to this, like to this bigger, deeper, simple, powerful question, which is like, what do I think I want? And what do I really want? Like I think the sense gratification or the craving for sensory object seen heard, Like that's what I think I want or what it feels like is on the surface. I want that. I want this much money in my bank account. I want this Louis Vuitton bag. I want, right, like it can go endlessly. What do I really want? You're touching on something that's really interesting because it's something that I've done a lot of work around, is the first thing you think is never the thing. Nah. Nah. You know what I mean? It's never the thing. It's like what you were saying about pulling the thread. It's like, okay, I want the Louis Vuitton back. it can, doesn't necessarily have to, but for me personally, it often goes back to a simskara. Okay, so I want it. know, I want, everything does, right? Remind our folks at home what a simskara is. A simskara is, the way I define it is that it's a wound, a scar deep in the soul. in the body from usually it starts for me personally and from what I've always heard others say early, early childhood. And of course, they're always happening, you know? a past impression I like as one definition. a past impression. So like, yeah, for me, it's, you know, I don't belong, I don't fit in because of something that happened when I was a little tiny girl. anyway, but like say, okay, say so it's a Louis Vuitton bag. All right, or say it's ⁓ money in the bank. Because I was an actor for so many years, I didn't have a whole lot of money in the bank. it goes, you go back and back and back and back. Well, if I go way back, that's the first thing. Then the second thing is this and this. And then if I go all the way back, it came to, there were some very financially fragile times in my family. Although we presented a certain way. I knew and felt that fragility. My mother was constantly worried about money. She was born in the middle of the depression. So that comes off on me. That is a sims car on me. I don't know that I ever, ever, ever buy anything full price. I always go to what I call the C word. I go to the clearance rack always. You know, that's just what I do. I could probably have all the money in the world and I would still look for the bargain. And that's just, that's part of it. That's the sims cara. So, but I like what you were saying about that. The first thing is never the thing. And it usually goes way back. So getting really way, way back. You know, the fact of the matter is as, and I love when we talk about Ram Dass around this is, and you know, he's this Freudian psychologist and enlightened and all of those things. And he says, but none of that, none of that has ever cured one of my neuroses. That's my favorite. My most favorite is Ram Dass quote ever. Ever. And it's like, and there's so much forgiveness in that. It's just so much. There's just so much humanity. And humanity. it's just sort of like, you know, if Rambas was never cured of all of his neuroses, I'm doing pretty good because, you know, it's those kinds. But we do become going back to the sutra, we get so I get so attached to what I'm not doing. know, Seth, I think you said that lazy stupid is your story. Yeah. Well, they could be mine too, but I won't steal yours. But it's like, they're very similar. You want them? ⁓ I already got them, Seth. already got them. I wish you would. I wish anybody would. I already got them. But mine's fat lazy. Yeah, no, that's about right. So anyway, ⁓ that's, but it just, it's as enlightened and as much work as I do. We meet. We talk, I love the philosophy of yoga, the Shastra, all of that kind of stuff, and I dig into it, and I journal, and I devotion, and I practice, and I do, and I'm still a mess. And that's just... Sometimes, right? Like, you're still... I'm just not really gonna, you know... And like, there's this practice of like, detaching from fixing that. That's exactly it. Right? And like, and this is also, think, I just, I don't know, I just like, wanna say too that, you know... There's so much like subtlety and nuance to all of this. there's not like all of this, like any spiritual practice can be taken in any number of contexts that can become very toxic very quickly, right? How many of us, like all three of us have like deep experiences at studios and like how many of us have seen people who are coming to the studio every day and it just, feels like it might be, I don't know anybody else's journey, but it might be a lot of bypass. It might be you're doing this like, Like, what are you doing here that you might not be addressing somewhere else? Right? So like, that practice, like, I mean, I love practice. I love the discipline of practice. Staying in this work together, the three of us, this is a practice. And it's, we're trying to be really diligent about it and really rigorous with it, with each other and just like, not in a, like, but in a very loving way. But that, like, it's part of our collective practice and we've made that commitment to ourselves, to each other and with each other. But that can also be really tricky because it can like, we can practice, like we can overdo it to a point of like, like when the practice becomes the way away from answering that question of like, what do I want? And what do I really want? Cause like, I think I want a Louis Vuitton bag. What I really want. If I keep pulling the thread is like, I want the freedom to be able to buy it if I choose it. Okay, but the freedom I'm speaking to there is not about buying a bag or not buying a bag. What is that? Well, that's about the freedom that arises from the economic empowerment of not depending on other people for my safety and well-being. Ooh, okay, wait, like, pull that thread. There's a samskara of seeing how my mother related to her parents and the weird emotional currency of money. and not wanting to do that again or be in that position again. And so I have like worked very hard. So my hand is out to no one, which has all kinds of other externalities around it that I've got to work on too. like, it's this practice, right? Here's this like paradox, right? This practice of detachment, this like this idea of vairagya, it's all of that, right? It's how do we master, find mastery of the senses so that the objects seen, heard, experienced, that the sensory objects are not the thing, but we have the space to figure out what's underneath that. The bag is just the manifestation. Don't get me wrong, I'm very blessed. I have Louis Vuitton bags that I bought for myself. They're in my closet. I don't wear them as often as I used to. Put them on clearance. Right? No, I don't know. I do. They represent like a, they have, they represent like an achievement to me. Oh, absolutely. A hundred percent. And to be clear, if they burned up in a fire, I would be okay. Like, you know, all of those things are true at the same time. But like, it's really interesting that like in this moment, I think I started was thinking I wanted the bags. My grandmother bought Louis Vuitton back in the sixties and I thought that was like, that was success. And then I'm like, okay, well have the bag. And so what? I still seem to want more. I got to say, this is a perfect segue and I didn't think it would come in and it's going to come in. ⁓ Which is, was saying before, dear listener, ⁓ before the actual podcast start, we get on and we just sort of debrief and chat for an hour and love up on each other and stroke our egos and love up on each other. And ⁓ I was saying that today I was in the mall and ⁓ I had to go to Lululemon for something and I looked across the way and there's a Levi's store. Now when I was growing up, Levi's were the thing that all the girls in my high school were wearing. I was a very, very, I was over 200 pounds and I was very heavy and I could not have those Levi's or I could, but you didn't, would, remember, oh gosh, all of a sudden I just remembered they used to put the waist size. They still do, I think. No, no, don't think they do. They They do. stop doing it. They do for men. don't know. They may for men's but not for women's. Not for women's. Anyway, so they would put the waist size. So 28 was the waist size that everybody wanted. And mine was 36. And so I remember taking a pin and scratching it out so that nobody would see my waist size. So that I was almost 10 inches. And that was, that was me sucking it in. So anyway, I see the Levi's store today. And I immediately remember that memory. I walk in and I've just recently lost some weight. And I thought, I wonder if these Levi's will fit. And I go and he says, what size are you? And immediately I like start to sweat because that's, that's a huge sims cara for me. And I said, well, I don't know. Um, I said, let's try 28. And I tried on 28 and they fit. and they were on clearance. It was like two of my dreams come true. But it wasn't. So I got two pairs of these pants. It's not about the pants. It's not even about the waist size. It's about never feeling the same as, that I was very different, that I was other. And, know, Sally, to your point about your mom, my mother was always thin and beautiful. And, you know, she was a twin. She was popular. So having an extremely heavy child, a girl, you know, was just... It's lot of sunscar. It's deep. that was a huge thing for me today. And I'll be honest with you, nothing's going to happen. I have these two new pairs of great looking Levi jeans with 28 inch waist. And I don't know how long that's going to last, folks. I'm hoping it'll last for a while. But at this moment in time, you know what I Maybe so, maybe not, you know, trying not to get too attached to it, but. Still there. And it's like, and you know, and there's this thing, like, there's this fascinating complexity to this too, which is that like when we see or have a moment of like just glimpsing more, purusa, like deeper transcendence, the second, it's like, you know, it's how good meditation when you're, when you sit down to meditate and then, then things, maybe, maybe they do get a little quiet for a moment or two and you're like, oh yes, I'm meditating. And then you're out. then you're right back out. Because now you're aware of your own awareness too much. And you're sort of like, you get a little high on your own supply. ⁓ And I think it's sort of like that. Like when you are reaching for Pruduza, it like slips away from your, it slips right out of your fingers. It's like a greasy ball that you can just grab at with your fingertips. ⁓ Like it's just, it's always there, but you can just like barely touch it, but you can't grab it. Because the second you try to grab it, it slips away. But there is something lovely about being able to look back at that moment in time. Same for you, Seth. And I'm sure you and have a laugh about it. To be able to recognize it like you did, Sally, and you showed it so beautifully was I'm going to make red cabbage and it's going to be really good red and I'm going to go buy some shoes. you know, as opposed to, you know, to your point, Seth, we we both have sat in it in the Meyer and the muck of it and done the work that we know we need to do. And sometimes it doesn't happen in a day. Sometimes it takes a while. Last week was a very difficult week. Carla long time. Long time. it's you go through it, you go through it. And I am at a point now in my life where I know, okay, I am deeply uncomfortable. I'm going through it, but I do know that there's another side and we know the other side, it's gonna be okay. There's gonna be growth and it's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay. But I gotta go through it. The only way out is through. Is through, I'm not gonna bypass it, cause that's not gonna take care of it. I'm gonna just get through it. I taught a class at the gym last night and ⁓ it was a woman who was like, it the last one to leave. And I saw she was a little, could just, you you just like, It's a yoga teacher thing. You can tell she's a little stirred up and she's emotional and I could see her eyes were red. And ⁓ she said something like, I'm so sorry I was crying all through class. I didn't even notice. Great. Like great, like as in like I'm, I said like, and I just, you know, I just trusted my own instinct and I just said like, just as a starter, I just said, need a hug? And she looked at me she like said yes. And I could see the cheers and I just gave her a big hug. I put a hand on her shoulder and I said like, it's a really good place for you to feel whatever you need to feel right now. You don't have to make it okay. You don't have to even explain it. It doesn't matter. I said, know, like yoga teachers aren't afraid of feelings. Don't worry. Like we get it. I said, and these practices will unlock you if you invest in them. So you're right where you need to be. And she said, I'm just navigating a lot of grief. And I said, I don't know your journey, but I know the journey of grief deeply in my own life and experience. I know that journey. ⁓ And I just tried to stand there for a minute with her and didn't ask her to tell me her story, it doesn't matter. Didn't ask her to explain herself as why, doesn't matter. And I think there was a time where I might have wanted to, with good intentions, but maybe a little misguided, jump in and try to fix or offer her a solution or a way out. Didn't do any of that either. And I said, I'm not gonna give you any platitudes about or like, you know, tell you it's gonna be okay. Cause I don't know if that's terribly useful. I said, but can I remind you of something I'm pretty sure you know? And she looked at me and she said, yeah, okay. I said, ⁓ Deep grief is only possible from an experience of deep love. That's the only way. The only reason you feel the grief is because you've known great, like you feel great grief in terms of great as it's in like its impact and its weight is because you felt great love. ⁓ so while it might not be pleasant or your favorite sensation, there's also a real beauty in it. And there's a real beauty in like... giving yourself the space for that space. there's no better place, in my opinion, than a yoga mat and in a yoga studio to let that just be. And again, I think there's a sense gratification of wanting to appease, of wanting to make it okay, of wanting to be a good yoga teacher. All that stuff, right? And ⁓ yeah, I have ⁓ a cancer rising in my chart, and so it's a... the savior complex that I navigate is very real. ⁓ It's something that I really had to get really curious about too. ⁓ What is that doing for me? What do I think I'm gonna get out of that? And I noticed, as I reflect on it, and I'm not telling the story in an aggrandizing way, I'm just telling it in a way of like, I was thinking about these verses and like... ⁓ Like how do I just put my attention on her in service? Right, and like, don't need this, moment is not, this moment is not about me. This moment is for her and like, I can stand here and be of service to her and that's my role and that's a privilege. And then, ⁓ Walk away. Not like walk away as in like leave her in a state, but that like, it's not, like I don't need to manage her. I don't need to fix her. I don't need to make anything okay for her. Cause I am not capable of doing any of those things actually. That's for me. I want to teach as a place of service. I want to teach to be of service. Like that's my intention. That's my high, like my sense of Dharma as a teacher. And so sometimes it looks like really different in different contexts, but in that context, was just don't like hold space, offer her a reminder. And I literally said, can I just remind you of something I think you already know? And then she'll take of that what she's available to her and go from there. Okay, I just saw what time is it. What time is it? What time is it? Time to wrap up a long episode about a big idea. So every week we what do you guys want to do first, inquiry or teaching tips? Let's teaching tips and then an inquiry. Okay, I don't remember. sometimes we do like, we'll do teaching tips. We offer a teaching tip because like we all three of us teach Asana. But like if you listen to this podcast, you're a yoga, you're a yoga teacher, like whether or not you're certified by anybody else, like you're a Sutra Squad certified. You're Sutra Squad certified. I don't know, maybe that'll be a thing one day. Who knows? Who knows where this will go? But but what I mean by that is that like the best Sally said it so well, the best teachers, the one on your mat. So like you're a teacher. So we offer a tip or thoughts about how to bring this wisdom into a class ⁓ on your mat or as the instructor. So who wants to go first with a teaching tip on Vairagya? I will. ⁓ A teaching tip that I like that just came to me too is around fixing. Where are you trying to fix your students? Where are you trying to manage your students? Where are you trying to fix them? We all assist. ⁓ And I often hear students say, thank you for fixing me. And it's like, I'm not fixing you. I'm deepening. Yeah, I'm not doing any of that. It's a deepening, which is what, you know, we're talking about. All that we're talking about now is to assist, is not and to deepen. So anyway, notice where you're trying to fix your students. And that's not just like in the asana practice either. That's also like, if you have an opportunity at the end of class and somebody comes up to you. You know, notice when you're trying to fix them and make it all better and save them and can. And make it all right, you know, you can just notice where that's happening with love. You know, you come at it probably from a really good place, but don't fix your students. They don't need to be fixed. I love that. Yeah, I have to say, so I because I assisted and like I teach it at Jen, like there's a I have to like I'm one of only things I have to do. is I don't even like, this is a different conversation, but I don't like asking students if they have any injuries, because it's not my business and it's not mine to manage. Honestly, students practice, it's your body. What I do have to say, and I like to say, is this is your practice, it is for you, and I'm gonna make some suggestions and give you some shapes to consider, and you should always adapt and modify every single pose, however you need, for you in your body, and you never need to ask for permission. to do any of that. And if that means pressing up to a handstand, that's great. If that means dropping and taking a few breaths in child's pose, that's great. Means using 20 blocks, that's great. Go for it. And I do offer assists from time to time. And to be very, clear, I am not fixing you because you are not broken. I'm not correcting you because you are not wrong. I'm assisting you for you to discover more possibility. and it is your body and you get to say no thank you or shake your head at me or otherwise indicate your preference not to receive touch and that is 100 % okay. We're cool, we'll move on, it's great. Okay everybody, take a deep breath in. I'll just offer that to any teachers out there who might find that language useful to appropriate in whatever way. No citation is needed. Sally, what's your teaching tip of the week? So I'm going to invite people into like recognizing the gunas, think, through bringing balance into the practice or into your whole life through the practice of sthira, which is like the strength more like the rajas and then sukkha relaxed more like tamas. And then to use these extremes sometimes to discover the posture where you can stay with balance or svatthya. ⁓ I love that. Yeah, think my teaching tip this week is to explore why you came to class. What do think you want? What do really want? Came for a workout. I teach at a gym. Sometimes. So it's like, you know, two classes a week at least where it's like, that what you want? Why do you wanna work out? What do you want from that? Like, pull the thread. Pull the thread. Like, what do you really want? And I'm gonna challenge myself, I'm gonna take this right into my frame of inquiry too for the week, which is like, what do you really want? What do you really want? And then just like. Sometimes I like to give myself, and I'm not a big journaler. It's never been like, it's never just like been a practice that I found easy. But sometimes I like to, I will force myself and I'll like, and one of the techniques I like is to just pick one simple, powerful question and just answer it over and over and over and over over again, just see what, like, and again, just like, just, it's just one of those exercises, like just keep writing. So it's like, what do you want? What do you want? What do you want? What do you want? What do you want? What do you like really want? What do you really want? What do you really want? What do you really want? ⁓ and just see what happens. ⁓ I'll tell this very brief anecdote. was giving him, so I have a job in the secular world, in the business world, and I manage a few people, ⁓ and I was giving an employee review, like it's performance review season, and we had this beautiful exchange. He's a superstar, so it was like really fun, not easy, like I wanted to be thoughtful and give him useful developmental feedback, even though he's a really strong performer. He doesn't want my job. He wants to be an individual contributor. He doesn't want to manage people at this point in his career. And so he's not gunning for me. In fact, I'm pretty new and he has been amazingly helpful and instrumental in my success. And I said, I'll just be honest and transparent with you in response. I don't want my boss's job. I love this job. I don't want a different job. I want the job I have. And we had this really sweet shared moment actually of Grilled Connection that we're doing the thing that we want to be doing. And it's really fun and unlocks something, a really different way of being around it that is a little bit more like, it's not so fixed like, I'm not here to set the world on fire or be a corporate climber. I'm here to do a good job. That's my inquiry of the week. What do you want? What do you really want? What do you really want? What do you really want? Sarah Page, do have an inquiry for the week? What is the thing? Start noticing what the thing really is. Like when you get really attached to having a pair of size 28 jeans. Well, what is the thing? Because I mean, listen, I'm glad about the jeans. don't feel bad about that at all. I no problem paid $30 or two pairs of Levas. I'm good. Come on 28. And clearance anyway, so I was like, you know, but what is the thing? do it with some grace and love and some tenderness to yourself. Because sometimes once we get to that thing, it's really tender. But take the time to figure out the thing, you know? I just thought of the title of the essay you should write about this, which is 28 at 64. At 64, bitches, I'm all right saying it. Ah, it's 28 at 64. That's the title of the essay about I like that. 28 at I got several books. Okay. I know that's a good one. I can't say the title of my other books because there's people alive. Yeah, exactly. Okay, Sally, what do you always have a string of really fascinating? Yes, I do. But they're real similar. I ⁓ have what is most distracting to you and what are you most attached to? And then what do you want? And what are you looking for? What you want? In here or out there? Four little words. What do you want? What do you want? What are you? Come here. You what? Your dog wants you. Somebody wants to say hello. Mitch wants to crawl into my skin sometimes. He's ready for us to go. He's ready for to let you. He's like, Daddy, you have been on this podcast all night. It is my turn. this podcast. It's my turn now. It's Mitch time. All right. It is it is just. It's a joy to do this together. It never ceases to amaze me what we uncover together with each other. So much to think about, but so grateful to have such great people to think about it with. Thank you, Sally. Thank you. of my week. Thank you, Sarah Page. Thank you so much, both of you. I love you both so much. I love you guys. And if you have found out there, dear listeners and watchers, if you have found any benefit from our words, ⁓ comment, like, subscribe. And ⁓ if there's anybody you know who you think would be interested in listening to something that's not politics, that's hopefully a little bit of sattva or a little bit sattvic anyway in their feed, send it to a friend. Thank you for your time, for your attention. And we are so grateful. And we'll be back with you next week for another episode of the Sutra Squad. Bye for now. Thank Bye, y'all.