38. Answering to the Attitude

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Seeker 1: Shouldn't we keep the body fit for proper spiritual progress? Aren't Hatha Yoga practices essential in spiritual quest?

Master: If you start taking care of the body, there is no end to it. Holding on to the body and trying to cross the ocean of Maya is like sitting on a crocodile and trying to cross the river.

Another situation:

Seeker 2: Are things like Hatha Yoga really necessary? I think Yoga is to be practiced only in the mind, and has nothing to do with the body.

Master: Yes, but keeping the body fit helps in reaching a calm state of mind. That is why Hatha Yoga practices are required for a practitioner in the beginning.

Now is this master just playing with the seekers? If the seeker says Yes, master says No, if seeker says No, master says Yes. This is just a small example with 'Hatha Yoga'. You may see many such Q&A in several books. Let us analyze what this is about.

Very few seekers really want to 'know' something from a master. Most of the seekers only want an answer as per their liking. They already think they know the right thing and only wish to get an acknowledgement to their opinion from a genuine spiritual master. Their question displays their attitude. So, the answers of the spiritual masters are not to the questions, they are to the attitude of the questioner.

Seeker 1 in the above example probably has too much attachment to 'health' and enjoying the pleasures of a healthy body. Many quote "Shareeramaadyam khalu Dharma saadhanam" of Kalidasa like a great ideal they stand for, but their ideal stops with "Shareeramaadyam" and the "Dharma Saadhanam" never happens. Same is the case with many spiritual seekers; their quest somehow takes a long halt in bodily health management and never moves forward. When asked about it they say "Maintaining one's health is necessary for spiritual practice". But the fact is that worshipping the body has itself become their spiritual practice! The path has itself become the goal. Spirituality has become a royal excuse for adoring the body. We can notice the same notion in statements like "Renouncing everything and going is escapism, we have to stay in the world and practice spirituality". This mostly has only become an excuse for staying in the world. The first part "we have to stay in the world" is fully followed but the latter part "and practice spirituality" goes to dogs. Stay in the world, fine, but why give a justification for it with spirituality?! These justifications come unasked only because the Self will be pricking from within that nothing is being done. By making such statements, the mind wants to believe that it is genuinely progressing in spirituality amidst all the indulgence it is into. Also, this person who is saying "Renunciation is escapism" will be usually a person who cannot even give up his beloved chappals.

So, for people like Seeker 1, who ask questions with the hope of getting a "Yes, keeping the body fit is necessary", so that they can happily continue pleasing their precious body, masters usually give a prick with an opposite answer. Because such people ask questions in such a way that they already know that what they are doing is right, and they just want a "Yes/No" vote from different masters, hoping for a "Yes" from most of them.

Seeker 2 is in the other extreme. He is perhaps a beginner like most of us and after reading or listening to many spiritual preaches has become over-enthusiastic. He is talking as if he has already lost his body-consciousness. This is nothing more than an empty show-off out of over-excitement. He is also, perhaps lazy to follow techniques of Yoga which lead to mind control and wants to believe that everything can be done sitting idle. He is not much different from seeker 1, in that, he already thinks he knows the answer and is just expecting an agreeable nod from the master. And he rightly gets a prick too.

If the seekers' attitude behind the above two questions were not biased, then the master's answers would have been interchanged - the second answer would have been given for the first question and the first answer would have been given for the second question. Only a true Guru can see this attitude behind the questions and will know what is to be answered, and therefore the need of a Guru. The seekers, including us, are always after finding an answer that suits our opinion. Our mind works so intelligently to ask questions in such a way that we would get a "Yes" to what we are already doing. We will have attachments to some paths and techniques of spirituality and want to hear that it is the ultimate practice. The paths or techniques are usually not bad on their own, but our obsession towards them makes us stagnate. Just like how a Hatha Yogi's entire attention may get diverted to the well being of the body. A real spiritual master pulls us away from such obsessions and tries to guide us into a middle path - neither belittle the techniques nor get obsessed with them, but practice them as a stepping stone; neither punish or ignore the body like a great spiritual hero straightaway nor stop with the health of the body alone, but keep the body fit with minimum needs and proceed further to tackle the mind; living in a city or in a forest is not the factor, but only the mental efforts to get detached no matter where you are.

I am still getting amazed as to how crucial Buddha's message of middle path was. It has come several times in different ways within this blog itself. It keeps going deeper the more we explore it. Mind seems to somehow stick to extremes in most of the cases, some of them being very subtle, like the one being covered in this post.

Another conclusion of this short post is that the conversations with spiritual masters has to be read keeping the full context in mind. Focusing on their answers alone may give a wrong message to our mind. Because their answers are not just to the questions, but mainly to the attitude of the questioners. If the answers are viewed independently they will lose their original meaning and may even be detrimental. For e.g. "Yes, see, this master said that Hatha Yoga is not necessary. That is why I stopped Pranayama practice"!! This is a misguided practitioner noting only those sentences that suits his opinion without seeing the full context of that sentence, and also ignoring other conversations with the same master that empasize the importance of Pranayama.