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208 pages, Paperback
First published June 7, 2011
NAMES AND FORMThe last chapter, "Suicide and Encouragement" has so much heart in it that I feel certain that Stone has wrestled with the suicide demon. That was something I would have denied, until recently, as having had an extended presence in my life. And my desire to write Stone, which happened often throughout Awake, and especially with "Suicide" will go unwritten. Stone died of an accidental drug overdose in 2017.
The mind is constantly caught up in the identity of name (nama) and form (rupa). This is good. The initial differentiation that comes through naming things is very helpful. Name has to do with our conditioning of each and every moment. Name doesn't just constitute something in language but has to do with our feelings about things, the meaning we give things, the way we focus on a particular task. So the way we name things has more to do with idiom or character. The rupa in nama-rupa refers to organic matter (the matter that enters into the composition of the living being). So rupa is a material form that refers to the four primary elements of matter: earth or solidity, fire or heat, water or cohesion, air or movement.
So when we sit [in meditation], we can experience the moment-to-moment impermanent nature of all the elements. We have the heat, the air, the water, the thoughts, and the feelings. So what elements can you truly consider to be your own body if you truly look at it just as elements arising and passing away on a moment-to-moment level? Try to grasp hold of any one of those elements, try to hang on to one, just one sensation in the body, and say "That is me". It is impermanent. When we contemplate the body, we can experience that microscopic level of that constant change and flux, bubbles atoms. And we can experience this directly. There is no permanent, separate entity called "self" there in all those elements. And that constant changing, that state of flux, is what we mean by waves and water being mutually dependent.
Underneath the names we give forms, the natural world moves forward in its own patterning. The rivers are in compliance with the spring — we heard the rushing last night. The snow has melted and now the birds are spreading their little voices everywhere....
Where is the nose? Where is the body? Where is the self? Of course we can tag the location of these "things," but when we look into the body with our eyes closed, we slice the awareness thinner and thinner until we can see that sensations do not arise in the body at all. They arise in awareness. There is no thing that is body. Body is a shifting flow in time and space. This frees us. We can get so locked into thinking that there is something called Michael in this body, Sharon in her body, Simone in her body. But what are all these bodies? Grasping and rejecting both give rise to suffering. We can understand that. There is way out of this contraction, but this is not something to believe. Rather than believing Patanjali, we employ his technique, we embody the teachings, so that we can see.
So much of our self-generated human suffering is believing the language that we use (p90-1).
After many years of Yoga study, practice, and teaching, many of the assumptions I've held in my work as a psychotherapist have been brought to the surface — often in unsettling ways — through my struggle to integrate Yoga and Western psychology. While Yoga philosophy and Western psychology have much to learn from each other, what interests me is where they don't quite fit together smoothly. It's the gaps between systems that we find fertile ground for exploration.Five stars and a book to be read and re-read.
Yogic teachings on the fear of death (ahinivesia) have been very instructive in understanding the way we hold on to narratives about ourselves that reinforce and entrench feelings of alienation and suffering. While this is often readily apparent in others, it is also apparent in my view of others. Psychological diagnoses and pathology, while serving to help me to recognize who and what I am working with, also serve to create separation in a space where intimacy is of paramount importance. Trying to be a good therapist or a helpful teacher can actually get in the way of healing (p151-2).