Thursday, July 3, 2008

Action without Karma

Would you believe I bought yet another yoga book? Since Simon took the yoga book we were using to Denmark, I tried to use Moving into Stillness to get started again, but it was just too overwhelming to read three full pages of text for each asana. So I got another book by the same author as the book we were using before, Richard Hittleman. I haven't actually started practicing yoga yet, but I've been dipping into the philosophy section, and today I read this:

Approval and improvement frequently are the incentives for one to sally forth
into the world to improve it. That is, the ego, seeing the world as
imperfect, appoints itself as the agent to help perfect it. (There are
certain egos who don't just want to help but have decided to take on the entire
job themselves.) The reality of imperfection is reinforced on a
second-to-second basis by the media and almost all with whom you come in
contact. You are informed, loud and clear, that the world is in terrible
condition, disaster is imminent, and madmen are running amok everywhere.
But all is not necessarily lost. You are also made to know that although
man has wreaked havoc, he can extricate himself from the chaos. This
dictum effectively keeps you in a state of acute anxiety which allows the ego to
remind you that man's ingenuity (itself) must take charge of the situation if
the world is to be saved. So, the ego fabricates chaos and then convinces
you that that it will cope with the chaos.
Richard Hittleman, Yoga for Health

No wonder I feel so anxious, with the constant reminders that the polar cap is melting, the hole in the ozone is growing, madmen are running our country (not to mention Turkmenistan and Zimbabwe), the infrastructure is crumbling, famine is just around the corner, and x number of species are becoming extinct every day. With the responsibility for all this, who wouldn't drink?

Hittleman goes on to say, "Is the world imperfect, or is your vision imperfect? You will discover, possibly to your astonishment, that as your inner vision is clarified, the world magically improves."

I'm not sure how that happens, but I'm willing to give it a serious try.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

oh the synchronicity! I think it's too cool that you and Mara would both write about the idea of improvement, self or otherwise, within a day of each other.

Modernicon said...

The other day, in Sunday School, one of the participants made an analogy of self-improvement comparing life to the sky. The sun being the closest, appears as the largest object. Now imagine what the sky would look like without the sun impeding our view. The stars become the myriad of other objects in our life that also catch our attention. Notice how, by removing the sun, everything else seems to become more manageable.

Modernicon said...

Hello...(taps the microphone)... is this thing on?