Mindfulness Yoga Read online

  My most heartfelt gratitude and acknowledgment goes to my parents, Theresa and Louis Boccio, who have consistently offered me unconditional love and support. There have been plenty of times in my life I am sure they had no idea what I was up to, but their love and support never wavered. And also to my daughter, Janah Terese, who has patiently taught me how to be a dad, and who has given me the opportunity to know what it feels like to love unconditionally. And to my wife, Paula Hanke, a phenomenal singer, a wonderful yoga teacher, a great friend, and thanks to her taking over so many of the household chores while I wrote this book, a really good cook! I love you all.

  And finally, I was always suspect of the humility on display when authors gave all the credit for the good stuff to others and took upon themselves all blame for the mistakes. Now that I have actually written a book, I see that they have only stated the truth. Whatever is good and useful in this book comes through the Dharma, which belongs to no one, and for which no one can take credit. Whatever is in error, unskillful, or confused is solely my responsibility.

  May whatever merit generated by this work be shared equally with all beings throughout the world.

  Om Tat Sat.

  Frank Jude Boccio

  Tillson, New York

  Winter 2004

  HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

  FIRST, WHETHER YOU ALREADY PRACTICE YOGA or mindfulness meditation, please read through the Introduction and all of Parts One and Two.

  In Part One I present a bit of the historical and philosophical context within which the Buddha lived and taught, as well as a brief overview of his teachings and how they relate to the classical yoga of Patanjali.

  Part Two examines the basic meditation technique taught by the Buddha, most commonly known as mindfulness meditation. Included are some basic instructions as well as suggestions about how to establish a practice (even experienced practitioners may find them useful). Last, I briefly introduce the two suttas (the Pali form of the Sanskrit sutra), or discourses, that contain the Buddha’s teaching on mindfulness practice, one of which, the Anapanasati Sutta (Awareness of Breathing Sutra) is the main text that will shape our approach to yoga asana practice in Part Three.

  The heart of the Mindfulness Yoga practice is in Part Three, where four chapters offer an analysis of the Four Establishments of Mindfulness and asana sequences with which to practice.

  The appendices that follow the main body of the text contain an essay on the Seven Factors of Awakening, the whole of the Anapanasati Sutta and a description of the Seated Meditation Postures. Finally, the Notes provide references to the sources that have informed this book and my approach. I also supply a list of Suggested Resources for further study and inspiration.

  SOME WORDS ABOUT THE ASANAS

  THE SEQUENCES PRESENTED in Part Three are all designed as appropriate for mixed-levels practice. Beginners may find some of the individual asanas (postures) challenging. If they encounter real physical limitations, they may either practice the modifications provided or skip particular asanas altogether until they advance in their practice. Experienced practitioners may work at longer holdings or in a more vigorous way, and even practice more advanced asanas, while keeping within the framework of the Four Establishments of Mindfulness.

  In the asana sequences, you will find detailed photographs and instruction, including modifications, for each yoga asana. These are just a few of the thousands of postures that can be practiced, yet they include many of the most basic, foundational postures that yogis and yoginis explore and work with throughout their life. I must have practiced TRIANGLE thousands of times in my life, yet still find so much to learn about myself—my body, my mind, and their relationship—each time I enter into it. One of my first yoga teachers would remind us that each time we do a posture can be like the first time if we are truly practicing yoga—the practice of being present in the moment.

  If you want to practice more advanced postures, you may want to look into some of the books or videos recommended in the Suggested Resources list, but I would suggest you attend yoga classes to learn from competent teachers. But remember, the only reasons you may want to do more advanced postures is to give yourself a bit more of a physical challenge, and out of a sense of exploration and fun! You will find that most of the more advanced postures basically build upon and develop what you will find in the more basic postures included here. And even very experienced and adept yogis have found these basic postures challenging indeed when practiced as meditations according to the instructions offered in the Anapanasati Sutta.

  While proper alignment is important, this is not a book about the subtleties of alignment, so what you will find are basic descriptions of the fundamental movements within which you can work and explore for yourself. The approach taken here is less about the performance or form of the asana than about the exploration of experience and the contents, quality, and activity of experience. Trust yourself to bring the asana into manifestation, rather than attempting to force yourself into some structural ideal. As you continue to practice, you will discover more and more about the asana and about yourself. Many books and videos address asanas from a more detailed physical approach, and some of them are listed in the Suggested Resources.

  Many yoga asanas are asymmetrical. When I instruct to repeat on the other side, just substitute the word left for right and vice versa in the instructions. I usually suggest timing by breaths, but of course we all have different breathing rhythms, so you will note a wide range in the suggestions. The most important thing is to spend about the same time on each side when doing asymmetrical postures and to use the suggestions as a guideline to the relative lengths of holding in the various postures.

  I encourage you to work, or perhaps more accurately, play, and be engaged in, the postures as a curious child explores her surroundings. Sometimes when practicing postures we feel pain. Pain, like other sensations, can be our teacher. Again, approach pain with respect and an attitude of inquiry. Much of our suffering is a result of our avoidance of pain. Our practice is to observe our resistance to feeling pain, and learn ways to soften that resistance. Through this practice we learn that much of our pain is merely discomfort with the way things are. One thing we learn through practice is to more accurately sense what is real pain and what is discomfort.

  Of course, yoga is not an activity of masochism or stoicism, and we need to be mindful of pain that can be injurious. With experience you will become more aware of the distinction between discomfort and the kind of pain that is potentially injurious. Back off whenever in doubt, and then gently explore your edges. Even if you choose to back off in the posture, it will be coming from awareness rather than mere reactivity.

  A WORD ABOUT WORDS

  THE LANGUAGE OF YOGA is Sanskrit, and the languages of Buddhadharma are primarily Pali and Sanskrit. Pali is an Indian dialect derived from Sanskrit, in which the canonical texts of the Theravada school of Buddhism are written. Some scholars assert that it may have been the dialect of the capital city of Magadha and the language of the Buddha. However, evidence of Magadhi inscriptions show considerable differences from Pali.

  Be that as it may, the two suttas that form the basis of this work were originally written in Pali and are core teachings of the Theravada school of Buddhism. The difficulty is that in the West, most Buddhadharma words that are familiar are from the Sanskrit, such as sutra, Dharma, and nirvana, while some are more familiar in Pali, such as vipassana and metta.

  Occasionally, when I introduce a term from either Sanskrit or Pali, I will also give the corresponding word from the other language. Throughout the text I will use whatever word is most commonly known in the West unless it refers to a specific text. No diacritical marks have been used since this is not a scholarly work. But in the Suggested Resources section those of you who wish to pursue this aspect of study and practice will find a list of scholarly works.

  INTRODUCTION

  IT WAS 1976. I was twenty years old, my daughter was two, and my marriage wa
s already showing signs of distress. I hated my job. Someone I knew suggested I take a yoga class to relax and unwind.

  I left my first yoga class feeling more calm, centered, and relaxed than I could ever remember. I felt open, spacious, light. The room had felt somehow womblike. The incense, subdued lighting, shag carpet (this was the 70s, after all), and Indian music conspired to create a space where I could settle down and shed my armor. The yoga teacher was a beautiful hippie woman who emanated an aura comprising equal parts earth mother and sex goddess. I was sure I had found heaven on earth.

  I began to take at least two classes a week, and often more than that. Leaving work at four in the afternoon, I’d take the train uptown for class. Afterward, I’d take the Number Seven train to Flushing, Queens, where my family and I lived at the time. After only a few weeks of this routine, I began to notice that while I left the yoga class feeling the divine bliss of heaven, by the time I got off the train in Flushing, I was back in my own private hell. In fact, the bliss I was feeling in yoga class seemed ever more remote and alien to the rest of my life. Even after I had started to practice the postures and breathing exercises at home, I continued to find that whenever I wasn’t “doing yoga,” the peacefulness I felt while practicing continued to elude me.

  Around this time, while browsing in a local bookstore, I came across Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki. I had read a little about Buddhism in high school, mostly in the works of Alan Watts, D. T. Suzuki, and Christmas Humphreys. Intellectually, I was struck by the directness, the simplicity, and its almost scientific, empiricist perspective.

  A student of the natural sciences who considered himself an atheist, I warmed to Buddhism. It presented itself as a religion that was nontheistic, psychologically sophisticated, and refreshingly undogmatic. I was particularly struck by how the Buddha himself told his followers not to simply accept what they may have been told by teachers (including himself), nor to believe what they read in any scriptures, unless they themselves could verify it. Instead, he advised them to practice certain “useful means,” and see for themselves if those tools worked. If what they discovered agreed with what the wise taught, if it led to a more harmonious life free from suffering, then they should accept that truth and live in accord with it. If they found the practices the Buddha taught diminished suffering, they should continue them. And conversely, if they discovered that certain behavior leads to harm and ill, they should abandon that behavior.

  But it wasn’t until I discovered Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, with Suzuki Roshi’s open, frank, and warmly honest visage on the back cover and clear words within, that I was moved to take up Dharma practice. My initial study of the Buddhadharma was in the Japanese Soto tradition. What I learned in the zendo, first through lectures and Dharma talks and later through my zazen practice, began a subtle process of transformation that seems almost miraculous to me now.

  And yet, at the time, I was finding myself in an awkward position. My fellow students at the ashram where I studied and practiced yoga were puzzled by my attraction to Buddhism, because “those dour Buddhists only ever talk about suffering,” while my Dharma brothers and sisters looked askance at my yoga practice and referred to yogis and yoginis as bliss addicts, bliss-heads, or similarly derisive terms.

  I could see how each group might well perceive the other the way they did, without either view being the complete picture. I saw for myself that they not only complemented each other but, at a more fundamental level, were essentially not that different.

  For thirteen years I was a mere dabbler. Then, as the result of my pain and suffering when yet another relationship came to its devastating end, I renewed and recommitted to my practice and study of yoga and Dharma. After six more years, I was certified in yoga teaching and yoga therapy, and in the same year I formally took refuge and the five precepts with the Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh.

  By 1995 I was growing familiar with other Buddhist practitioners who were “doing yoga,” while at the same time many in the yoga world were looking to Buddhism for their meditation teachings and practice. But it seemed to me there was something missing in the way most of them were viewing practice. Rather than seeing how they could be integrated into one comprehensive practice, most people seem to see yoga and Buddhadharma as separate, perhaps with yoga as merely preparatory to the “real work” of meditation, or meditation as somehow just about the mind and not relevant to how we work with the body in yoga.

  Of course, the problem here is the very common misunderstanding of what yoga really is. In the West, yoga has become associated with the practice of the postures (asanas) taught in yoga classes, yet postures are only a part of the yoga tradition—and ironically, a relatively minor one at that! Even groups that one might imagine should know better foster this misunderstanding. I recently received a brochure from a large and renowned yoga center. Among their offerings are courses called “Yoga and Zen” and “Yoga and Meditation.” While it may be legitimate to call a course “Yoga and Zen” since they are two distinct cultural traditions (although in my interpretation zazen is a form of Buddhist yoga), differentiating between yoga and meditation misstates what yoga is. And when one reads the course description, we see that yoga is described purely as asana practice, “opening and strengthening the body,” while meditative awareness can “enhance your yoga practice.” In my opinion, born of my own direct experience and of my study, if meditative awareness is lacking, you may be exercising the body, but you are not engaging the real practice of yoga. I would hazard that in a very real way, ultimately, one doesn’t “do yoga” at all, but rather one is yoga or is in yoga—or one is not.

  Shortly, in Chapter one, I will present some of the historical context relating to the development of yoga and Buddhadharma, but for now I would like to address two central points. First, my assertion that Buddhist practice itself is a form or cultural tradition of yoga, within the larger Indic yoga tradition. Second, my presentation of a Buddhist meditational approach to yoga-asana practice.

  To begin, let’s take a look at the word yoga. Like many Sanskrit words, it is rich in connotation and meaning. It comes from the root yuj, which means “to yoke or harness.” In fact, the English word yoke derives from the Sanskrit, and both connotations of that word can be seen in the way the word yoga has been applied. Yoga has been used to mean “union,” “sum,” “conjunction,” and similar terms of joining. By extension, it came to be used to signify spiritual endeavor, especially as regarding the disciplining of the mind and senses. This particular usage dates back as far as the second millennium B.C.E.

  From etymology alone we can tentatively state that yoga is both the spiritual endeavor to achieve union, and the state of union itself. This, of course, leads us to the obvious, and perhaps more fundamental question: Union of what and with what? What is it that needs to be united?

  According to some of the earliest yogic texts, what are united are the conscious subject and its mental object. This (apparent) merging of subject and object is known in yogic literature (and in Buddhist literature as well) as the state of samadhi, which itself literally means “placing or putting together.” Looking deeply into this explanation, we see that what occurs in yoga or samadhi is ultimately the transcendence of the (perceived) separation between subject and object. Yoga is thus both the technology and the state of self-transcendence. How transcendence is interpreted, and the choice of technology used for its realization, have led to the multifarious number of schools, lineages, and forms within the larger yoga tradition.

  I have placed the words apparent and perceived in parentheses in the preceding paragraph as a semaphore signaling my particular interpretation of yoga and samadhi. Some schools of thought see yoga as the “real” union of an individual self estranged from ultimate reality. Others see the self and all phenomena as maya, or illusory. And some assert that there can ultimately be no real union that needs to be attained because the separation is merely delusory, and yoga is the waking up to what
has always been our true nature. And of course, what that true nature is has been given a variety of names, from the apparently contradictory Atman, understood as the “transcendental Self” beyond the realm of the mind and senses, and Brahman, which means “vast expanse” and came to be understood as “the Absolute” and identical with Atman, to Buddhanature (buddhata), the “true, immutable, and eternal” nature of all beings, which is understood to be identical with shunyata, the Sanskrit word meaning, challengingly, “emptiness” or “the void.” Interestingly, this Buddhanature is also said to be beyond conception and imagination.

  From this extended meaning, we get yoga as a generic term for the enormous body of spiritual teachings and techniques that have developed in India over at least five millennia. It is in this sense that the Buddha’s teachings can legitimately be called yoga. The Buddha taught that the false identification with our perceived self is the source of anguish and pain, and that through a variety of practices we can transcend this perceived separation and achieve the cessation of suffering, or nirvana (nibbana in Pali). It might also be noted that the Buddhist traditions historically closest to the Indian sources, such as the Theravada and Tibetan, often refer to their practitioners as yogis and yoginis (male and female yoga practitioners). But all those who practice Zen or other Buddhist practices can equally and legitimately be seen as yoga practitioners.