Chapter 2: Have Our Aims Changed?

It’s common now to hear our modern yoga called out as untraditional. An accusation which seems to centre around the fact that our modern yoga is, they say, only about asana; that this physical practice doesn’t ‘go deeper’.

My first reflection on hearing this idea is that it only serves to illustrate what a mind-body split we still live under. One where not only the mental and the physical are inseparable, but also the physical aspect of our being is so much lesser the mental realms.

The yoga of meditation is taken as more valuable than what’s now referred to as postural yoga, yoga asana. Even, strangely enough, when we’re actively doing this type of yoga and not simply sitting down to meditate.

It appears when we’re interested in the body and how we embody it, we still assume that this is an inherently narcissistic or vain endeavor. This is the unfortunate juncture at which our mind-body dualism met a kind of religious asceticism towards the body in the West.

We still haven’t been able to shake ourselves entirely free. Furthermore, it has now spread out from the West to inform modern culture generally. So, now, when we acknowledge that yoga is, at least in part, about the body, we assume an inherent superficiality around our aims.

But why should this preclude the interest in the pursuit of higher aims through the physical? Or, indeed, even if we do have interest in our bodily health and, furthermore, the way we look, why should this not mean we can’t also have higher aspirations towards yoga regarding truth, clarity and the meaning of life?

Asana in pre-modern India seemed to be used for health reasons just as much (and often alongside) more esoteric tantric usages to do with raising kundalini.

In my mind then, to dismiss modern asana by saying that because it’s a physical practice it’s just about the body, is not a reasonable conclusion.

There are numerous examples of physical exertion as the bedrock of yoga certainly not simply related to superficial cosmetic aims scattered across the yoga tradition. The most obvious being that of the ascetic tradition we still see today in using physical penances to raise the mind beyond the individual experience for the sake of truth.

But no one takes umbrage with this.  It seems only when we seek to embrace the body and in a positive sense that people start saying we’ve ‘bailed on yoga’. On the other hand, if we subject the body to pain as our primary method, this is all yogic enough.

I wouldn’t make an argument against modern yoga not being yoga simply based on its physical method itself. Playing devil’s advocate however, if we did want to make an argument against modern yoga, there is more of an argument around its apparently diminished aims in relating to this method.

Lets now turn our attention here, on what our aims are when we move our bodies Because, at least on face value, it does appear that there is a difference between pre-modern and modern yoga’s’ aims towards practice (meaning pre and post 20^th century).

The former was a metaphysical and existential oriented practice to solve the question of our existence, and, in doing so, feel satisfied in it. The latter, a more auxiliary ‘wellness’ practice about feeling more relaxed, balanced, being one’s best self.

It does seem that our expectations have dropped to say the least. Nowadays, it’s more common in a yoga class to hear talk of ‘working on ourselves’, ‘being a better person’, feeling ‘better about ourselves’, than questioning the nature of that self.

In all pre-modern yoga, it was this very unquestioned self that was the problem – why we weren’t happy as we are. It was our confusion with our selves; knowing our existence in the wrong way, that was the issue.

What appears to be happening now, is the simple accepting of this self on face value and the attempt to build on that. Immediately then, one gets the idea that the kind of ‘reach’ of inquiry into life is quite drastically decreased in scope.

But I shall argue that this is not the case.

Nothing much has changed with us regarding our fundamentals. Our humanness has not changed, therefore, neither can our needs have done so. Just because our deeper needs aren’t always on show now in why we say we do what we do, this doesn’t mean that they’re not there underneath.

It’s rather simply a question of the framework of modern culture; how we express ourselves. Or, more specifically, that we can’t express ourselves more fully now in comparison to the past.

Which is not our fault for the most part, rather a byproduct of modernity. It’s because modern society has blocked us from seeing our situation in the world more clearly due to the simple fact of our exponential technological advancements.

Modern technological advancements have allowed us to cover over the side of life we all don’t want to see; the pain and suffering that is inextricably related to our living predicament in a body. One that’s slowly dying, but also, can’t help but achieve its comforts at the expense of others’ suffering.

This bedrock realization is the start of all well-managed spiritual paths, because it’s most unsatisfactory as an understanding, but, equally, incontestably and unavoidably true. Therefore, another avenue other than the material has to be sought.

This is not a realization we immediately want to see, so, as soon as we haven’t had to meet this revelation head on, and instead been able to cover it over from our eyes, quite naturally, we have done.

On the surface, having now reached the stage where we have somewhat the power to ‘sanitize’ our perception of life, it feels better. For who would want to be consistently aware of the suffering innate in the human condition if we didn’t have to be?

It stops us relating directly to our current experiences in a meaningful way because, put simply, we’ve denied half of our reality. At which point, in fact, reality stops making any sense on the conscious level.

But this doesn’t mean we don’t feel it anyway – deeper down. We’re not stupid, and as much modern technology does try to paper over the cracks, stuff gets through anyway; we get sick, loved ones get sick, people die, etc., etc.

Nevertheless, we do tend to live in denial daily as much as we can, as if none of those things happen to us. Because its more pleasant to believe this, So, when we come to our yoga practice, we act similarly, we want to believe as much as we can that modern life is all good now. In the moment, it’s much easier.

Perhaps, in part, this is also because any future hope of salvation in the next life is now gone. This life must work out. But, also, because modern technology does do a good enough job to make our cognitive dissonance, our denial of the way life is, to a greater extent, believable.

Even less than a hundred years ago in most societies on stepping out of our front door in the morning we would be unavoidably confronted by suffering, now we have the most part been able to shove a lot of it behind closed doors.

As we order our products through the protective barrier of a computer screen, or buy nicely wrapped pieces of filleted meat, we never need to consciously acknowledge the actual laws of the game we live under really aren’t that nice.

In the apparent fluidity of modern societies we also live now under the impression that, just around the corner, everything’s going to change for us. That is, we’ll achieve everything we want and be able to permanently banish that which we don’t.

Which is another thing that our pre-modern ancestors had over us living in societies where their lives were fairly mapped out from the beginning and any big change unlikely, they almost had no choice but to face up to the reality of their situation.

On the moment-to-moment level it’s so much easier to consciously relate to yoga as modern wellness than as a practice to tackle this darker side of our existence. In as much as if we had the choice to live in a dream of our own creation, we probably would. And now we pretty much are.

Being surrounded by suffering, whether we choose to acknowledge it consciously or not – albeit, infinitely more separated by a protective barrier now than previously – this understanding comes out anyway in our practices.

It’s there in the floating anxiety that draws us to the mat in the first place, because we haven’t done anything to relate in a meaningful way to the suffering inherent in life.

It is also there in the fact that we push so much to achieve arbitrary shapes with our body. In part as a talisman against suffering, perhaps; in the idea that if we just do our practice, everything will be okay with life.

Because extreme physical sensation has the effect of numbing us to reality. Ironically then, we are using our yoga to feel less. Even so, the pain of suffering is still there underneath.

We don’t have any even handle now what exactly, is going on with us in life and what to do about it. Our aims haven’t changed then, we just don’t know how to frame them now.

What we’re also finding in modern yoga is the force of our aims has simply been redirected. Not understanding where they might more effectively lie, having denied the more challenging side of life, we obsess about the aesthetic vision of ourselves in the postures.

Which is simply meaning attributed to a different place, that’s all. And the voracity in which we pursue our yoga still in the arbitrariness of the superficial yoga shapes, is only further evidence of the depth of our actual longings.

We will always be frustrated in our conclusions until we recognize the depth of our true aims, start looking at yoga for the sake of the making of meaning, as opposed to see ourselves as superficially as modern society is asking us too, wherein yoga is a general panacea – to numb or excite ourselves out of our collective slumber.