Mindfulness Yoga Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  PUBLISHER’S ACKNOWLEDGMENT

  Foreword

  Acknowledgements

  HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

  SOME WORDS ABOUT THE ASANAS

  A WORD ABOUT WORDS

  Introduction

  INTERLUDE

  PART ONE - PUTTING IT IN CONTEXT

  CHAPTER ONE - THE BUDDHA’S YOGA

  CHAPTER TWO - THE YOGA PRACTICE OF THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS

  CHAPTER THREE - THE EIGHTFOLD PATHS

  Living The Precepts

  The Five Mindfulness Trainings

  Right Consumption

  PART TWO - CULTIVATING MINDFULNESS: REMEMBERING THE PRESENT

  CHAPTER FOUR - WHAT IS MINDFULNESS?

  CHAPTER FIVE - BEGINNING MINDFULNESS MEDITATION

  Sitting Meditation

  CHAPTER SIX - AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SUTRAS

  PART THREE - THE PRACTICE OF MINDFULNESS YOGA

  CHAPTER SEVEN - BODY AS BODY

  MINDFULNESS YOGA: SEQUENCE ONE

  CHAPTER EIGHT - FEELINGS AS FEELINGS

  MINDFULNESS YOGA: SEQUENCE TWO

  CHAPTER NINE - MINDFULLY AWARE OF THE MIND

  MINDFULNESS YOGA: SEQUENCE THREE

  CHAPTER TEN - AWARENESS OF OBJECTS OF MIND: DHARMAS IN THE DHARMAS

  MINDFULNESS YOGA: SEQUENCE FOUR

  APPENDIX A: - THE SEVEN FACTORS OF AWAKENING

  APPENDIX B: - TEXT OF SUTRA ON THE FULL AWARENESS OF BREATHING

  APPENDIX C: - ESTABLISHING YOUR SEAT

  APPENDIX D: - ALPHABETICAL LIST OF POSES

  NOTES

  SUGGESTED RESOURCES

  INDEX

  ABOUT WISDOM

  Copyright Page

  With breath, body, and mind

  I send my heart along with these words.

  May all who read them awaken from forgetfulness, and,

  realizing the true nature of no separate self,

  transcend the path of fear, sorrow, and anxiety.

  May all beings be free.

  PUBLISHER’S ACKNOWLEDGMENT

  The Publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous help of the Hershey Family Foundation in sponsoring the publication of this book.

  FOREWORD

  I LIKE TO KEEP INFORMED about my various fields of interest, especially the yoga tradition, but few of hundreds of publications that cross my desk each year succeed in holding my attention for long. Now and then, however, the weekly influx of books and manuscripts includes a work that is truly worthwhile and captivates me. Frank Jude Boccio’s Mindfulness Yoga is such a work.

  I am happy about this for two reasons. First, this book addresses a subject matter that is important and timely, and second, I have had the pleasure of Frank Jude’s recent participation in the first seven-hundred-hour teacher-training program offered by Yoga Research and Education Center. His quiet presence, unobtrusive service, and thoughtful observations contributed significantly to the quality of our program, and I have since come to value him as a heartfelt Dharma brother. When he asked me to write this foreword, I happily agreed to do so.

  It makes sense in a foreword to a book such as this to begin with some personal remarks. When, at the age of fourteen, I discovered the incredibly rich world of yoga, I knew I had found my spiritual home. Three or four years later, it became obvious to me that I should and indeed would dedicate my personal and professional life to exploring yoga’s ancient heritage. I wrote my first book—on yoga, of course—at the age of nineteen, and since then have authored many more on this and related subjects. At that time, I also encountered Buddhism for the first time and was impressed with the formidable clarity and perceptiveness of the Buddha’s Dharma and came to hold Buddha and his teaching in the highest esteem. Yet I turned to Hindu yoga for my practice and study, because I felt that it would be more accessible for a budding scholar/writer/practitioner like myself.

  In the early 1970s, after having worked intensively with Hindu yoga, I translated a couple of books on Buddhism from English into German and vice versa. It was not until 1994, however, that I encountered more incisively the world of Buddhist yoga—in theory and practice—in the form of Tibetan Vajrayana. From that moment on, I have thought deeply about the relationship between Hindu and Buddhist spirituality, which also is one of the focal points of Frank Jude’s work.

  In my view, Hinduism and Buddhism are not so much religions as great cultural complexes born on the Indian subcontinent that have yogic (spiritual) practice at their core. Hence it is appropriate to speak of a Hindu yoga and a Buddhist yoga. In fact, Vajrayana Buddhism presents itself openly as a form of yoga and, like Hinduism, occasionally even calls its male adepts yogins (or in Tibetan, naljor). Thus the contemporary distinction between yoga (generally narrowly understood to be posture practice) and Buddhism is a false and unconstructive dichotomy. Without blurring the differences between Hindu and Buddhist spirituality, it makes sense to apply the label “yoga” to both of them. This has the advantage of emphasizing important common ground between them, not least in the dimension of moral practice but also in the higher stages of the path. I was happy to notice that Frank Jude, a Buddhist yoga practitioner like myself, has adopted a similar viewpoint.

  For over thirty-five years, my focus has been on building bridges between India and the West—bridges across which fellow Westerners could travel to gain greater access to India’s marvelous wisdom teachings. Few people know that yoga began arriving at our Western shores since the time of the ancient Greeks; and since the epochal presentations by Swami Vivekananda at the 1893 Parliament of Religions in Chicago, the migration of Indian wisdom into Europe, America, and also Australia and New Zealand has been steadily accelerating. Today we have the curious phenomenon of highly skilled Western teachers returning the gift of yoga (at least in the form of the postures of hatha yoga) to India’s middle class—one of the signs of a growing coalescence between the global hemispheres.

  Buddhist yoga was also represented at the Parliament of Religions, in the noble figures of the fiery Ceylonese Anagarika Dharmapala and Japanese Zen master Soyen Shaku among others. The latter, incidentally, had for his translator the young D. T. Suzuki, who was destined to become one of the spiritual heroes of the mid-twentieth century. Both masters subsequently succeeded in attracting a sizable American following and in doing so prepared the ground for the open-armed reception in America and other Western countries of Tibetan Buddhism in the aftermath of the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950. Today there are said to be some two to three million Buddhist practitioners and as many as fifteen to twenty million yoga practitioners in the United States alone. As for the latter group, most of its members understand and practice yoga as a health and fitness regimen rather than for inner growth and spiritual upliftment.

  There is, however, an encouraging trend to engage yoga more seriously, that is to say, as a lifestyle that embraces the high spiritual ideal of self-transcendence and spiritual awakening. Yoga is a potent transformative discipline and, if practiced authentically and with the requisite dedication, it can bring about inner change even at the entry level of posture practice that is the focus of the majority of its Western practitioners. By activating the parasympathetic nervous system, the hatha yoga postures (asanas) can—and have traditionally been intended to—serve as portals to the spiritual aspects of the yogic process. They introduce practitioners to the experience of deep relaxation, especially when combined with conscious breathing, and from there it is but a small step to meditation. The meditative mind, in turn, can effect deep-level changes in a person’s self-image, understanding of the world, and relationship to life. Hence meditation is at the heart of almost all yogic paths.

  The great yogic
traditions of India can be considered as the precious distillate of millennia of meditation and spiritual work. They clearly have much to teach us, and therefore a careful study (svadhyaya) of the teachings of yoga in whatever form has always been an integral component of yogic practice. It is of course possible to teach oneself through trial and error over a long period of time, but why run the risk of frustration and ultimate failure when we can benefit from the knowledge and wisdom of earlier practitioners whose efforts bore fruit? We can spare ourselves a great deal of disappointment by appreciating the superlative importance of “right view” from the outset of our spiritual journey. When visiting a new town, it surely helps to have a good road map at hand. At the beginning, we might not even have a clear notion of our destination, as sometimes our deepest feelings and motivations are hidden from us. Conscientious study of the traditional teachings of yoga not only can awaken the spiritual impulse in us but also can point us in the right direction.

  Frank Jude’s Mindfulness Yoga is a valuable road map, a study guide, for those wanting to tap into yoga’s full potential and discover all the inner resources necessary to live a meaningful and happy life. Mindfulness Yoga also is an admirable bridge-building effort, which will help bring together the now artificially separated camps of Hindu yoga and Buddhist yoga practitioners East and West. This eminently practical work clearly demonstrates the large area of overlap between these two traditions, though without brushing aside the significant theoretical and practical differences that undoubtedly exist. As such, this book belongs to the most sensitive “interfaith,” “interreligious,” or, as I would put it, “intertraditional” dialogue and contributes to mutual understanding and tolerance between Hinduism and Buddhism. What makes it so valuable is that its author’s perspective is solidly informed by his sincere personal practice of both Buddhist yoga (notably mindfulness practice) and Hindu yoga (notably posture practice and breath control). Whatever conflict people imagine exists between these two great yogic approaches, Frank Jude’s life and his writings show that it is possible to integrate them and benefit from their combined strength.

  Mindfulness Yoga dispels a number of misconceptions about both Buddhist and Hindu yoga and contains down-to-earth advice for practitioners of either tradition. By showing that mindfulness can (and should) be applied to all yogic practices, including hatha yoga postures, Frank Jude has succeeded in building a bridge between “heady” meditation practice and “bodydriven” hatha yoga. He appreciates that we are neither disembodied spirits hovering above the physical body nor soulless material vehicles, but rather a wondrous dynamic between both levels of reality. Refreshingly he also includes in his consideration the widely misunderstood but vital dimension of feeling. Neither Buddhist yoga nor Hindu yoga seeks, as often mistakenly thought, to eliminate feelings and turn practitioners into hollow robots. Rather both approaches aim at mastery over the mind, including feelings, by awakening the witnessing faculty within us. In his pioneering work on yoga, Mircea Eliade, the great twentieth-century historian of religion, remarked that the notion of the witness was India’s greatest discovery. I agree but would add the yogic teaching of compassion toward all beings as an equally important and essential correlate. The call for compassion is present in both Buddhism and Hinduism.

  Throughout Frank Jude’s book, the creative interplay between witnessing (articulated in the practice of mindfulness) and compassion is emphasized or present as a background theme. The witnessing consciousness and the compassionate heart are fundamental features of all integrative forms of genuine yoga. Together they make us whole.

  In conclusion, Frank Jude Boccio’s book should be carefully read both by hatha yoga practitioners, especially those overly fond of physical fitness, strength, and beauty, and by Buddhist yoga practitioners, particularly those who are ill at ease in their bodies and in the material universe. In fact, Mindfulness Yoga should be read by every aspiring yoga practitioner.

  Georg Feuerstein, Ph.D.

  Manton, CA

  Fall 2003

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  TRY WRITING A BOOK if you doubt the reality of interbeing! To acknowledge all the causes and conditions for the appearance of this book would be impossible, but I can hope to single out at least some of those who were indispensable through their words of support and advice, their acts of generosity and kindness, and their mere presence in my life.

  Just before Christmas, 2001, the phone rang, and a voice on the other end of the line asked me if I had ever thought of writing a book. That voice was the voice of Josh Bartok, who planted the seed, and helped nurture it throughout these two years. Besides the fact that every suggestion he has made has strengthened the text, his calm voice has eased my first-time writer’s anxiety, reminding me to “breathe” more than once! I would also like to offer thanks to Gopa and Ted2, and Wisdom’s production director Tony Lulek for a beautiful design, to our models, Gabrielle Long and Robbie Gemmel, and Piemonte Photographers, especially David Stotzer, and to Rod Meade Sperry for getting the word out. I never for a moment doubted that the Wisdom team was truly 100 percent behind this book. But Josh would not ever have heard of me if he hadn’t found me through my website (only three months old at the time), which was a gift designed by a student who has become a true Dharma friend, Fortune Elkins.

  And Fortune happened to drop in on one of my classes at The Energy Center, in Brooklyn, whose director, Joyce Cossett, and the family of teachers and students have been instrumental in supporting my practice over almost a decade of teaching there. I especially wish to thank all my students who have allowed me to “experiment” on them and who have been extremely generous and good-natured in their feedback throughout the writing of this book, even those whom I had stand in WARRIOR TWO for five minutes! I wish to make special mention of Liza Toft, who read sections of the manuscript, and Emily Timberlake, Mary Flinn, Adrienne Urbanski, and Victoria Langley who offered much time, effort, and material support. As any filmmaker will tell you, the stuff on the cutting room floor is just as instrumental as what makes the cut in any film’s success. Gina Bassinette and Ami Jayaprada Hirscheim, the directors of Jai Ma Yoga Center in New Paltz, New York, and my students there also offered support and invaluable suggestions.

  There are no words that could hope to capture the gratitude I feel for the teachings themselves, and for all those who have kept the teachings alive and relevant throughout the millennia. Of course, I owe a special debt of gratitude to Thay Nhat Hanh for introducing me to the teachings of the Buddha on anapanasati and the Four Establishments of Mindfulness. They were just the medicine I needed at a desperate time in my life, and they have gone on to transform my life, my practice, and my teaching. I am grateful for his very presence in this world. I also wish to offer a bow to Lyn Fine and Anh Huong, two teachers in the Order of Interbeing who have been models of the life of mindfulness for me.

  Samu Sunim, with whom I have been studying these last four years, has challenged my very idea of what a life of practice is or can be. I am deeply indebted to him for his understanding, his accessibility despite his responsibility guiding three temples and a growing community in Mexico, and his patience with me throughout the process of writing this book. I offer nine prostrations in his direction.

  To Georg Feuerstein, I offer my deepest appreciation and gratitude, for all his many years of scholarship and practice. His integrity, his exuberance, and his dedication are an inspiration. His support for this book, reflected in his splendid Foreword, has been invaluable to me, and I am deeply honored that he would consider me a Dharma brother.

  Other teachers who have guided me along the path through personal instruction, books, or their mere presence include Swami Sada Shiva Tirtha, John Daido Loori, Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Pema Chödrön, Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, Master Sheng-yen, Alan Bateman, Erich Schiffmann, John Friend, Beryl Bender Birch, Claude Anshin Thomas, Rodney Yee, Patricia Walden, S. N. Goenka, David Frawley, Robert Svoboda, Judith Lasater, Richard Freeman, Janice
Gates, and of course, Shunryu Suzuki.

  Which brings me to all my Dharma siblings within the various sanghas I have had the privilege to practice with: my home sangha at The Energy Center; the larger Community of Mindfulness; the Order of Interbeing; The Buddhist Society for Compassionate Wisdom, especially my fellow Dharma student trainees in the Maitreya Seminary; the sangha of the Mountain and Rivers Order at Zen Mountain Monastery; and the Maha-Kula of the Yoga Research and Education Center’s first training program. Among this last group, I would be remiss not to specifically acknowledge Lissa O’Malley, Maureen Clyne, and Sandra Pleasants for their helpful suggestions. May we long practice joyfully together.

  Other communities I wish to thank for their commitment to practice include The One Spirit Interfaith Seminary, The New Seminary, The Long Island Yoga Association, and The New York Yoga Association. Additionally, I wish to offer my gratitude to the Farm Sanctuary, whose mission is to rescue and protect abused farm animals, sentient beings all, to educate the public about the atrocities of “factory farming,” and to campaign for the ending of abusive animal agricultural practices.

  I especially wish to acknowledge and thank the following for the deep and lasting influence they have had on my life: Joanne Politis, Donnah Hartz, Janette O’Sullivan, Mary Mullaly, Maria Bonilla, Pat Conaty, Sam Harrison, Dawn D’Arcy, Stuffy Shmitt, Sheila McGurk, Susan Chaney, Danette Koke, Roberta Wall, and San’ga Monica Weinheimer.