Closing the Gap Between Yoga and Zen Zen Master Hae Kwang (Stan Lombardo)

Tere doesn’t seem to be much in common these are echoed in the Bhagavad Gita, the earliest Yogic text we days between yoga and Buddhist meditation practice. have and one that quite possibly existed in oral form dur- Buddhist meditators tend to regard yoga as a system of ing the Buddha’s life: Lycra-clad stretching exercises that might help them sit Having set up in a clean place better and perhaps relieve tension on a long retreat, but A frm seat, neither high nor low, that otherwise have little or nothing to contribute to their A seat of kusha grass covered meditation practice. On the other side, the current dis- With deerskin and soft cloth on top, tance between yoga and Buddhist meditation practice has Let him sit there and train his mind been expressed with delicious irony by yoga teacher and On one point, controlling his thoughts. author Richard Rosen in Pranyama Beyond the Fundamen- tals (Shambhala Publications, 2006): It seems clear that Buddha did not abandon his ear- ly Yogic training in the fnal stages of his quest. But the . . . we yoga people leave meditation liberating insight he attained was in contradiction to an to the Buddhists, whom we then essential Yogic teaching. According to the Buddha, there look at askance because we consider actually is no atman in the sense of a permanent, indi- their posture to be deplorable. vidual self but rather a dependent co-origination of all But what yoga has largely become during the last hun- phenomena, all of which possess a nature perfect in every dred years or so—a highly developed system emphasiz- way. It is ignorance of original completeness that is the 18] ing scores of physical postures called asanas (a term that fundamental cause of sufering. means “seat” and originally referred only to a handful of From these beginnings Buddhism and Yoga went on to sitting positions)—is not what it always was. Nor was it infuence each other over the centuries, sharing teachings at all unrelated to early Buddhism. Quite the opposite. and debating philosophical diferences well into the sixth Yoga began as a meditation practice. By the middle of century CE. Te best evidence for this is the Yoga Sutras the frst millennium BCE Yoga was already established as of Patanjali, which were composed in the second century one of the major philosophical and spiritual schools in CE, and the extensive commentaries on them that began northern India. When Shakyamuni Buddha left his life as soon after and continued for centuries. Te Yoga Sutras palace prince to lead the homeless life, it was to prominent themselves consist of 195 brief aphorisms, or threads (the Yoga teachers he turned, frst Arada Kalama and, when he word sutra literally means “thread”), arranged in four mastered his teachings, to Udraka Ramaputra. We know chapters: “Meditative Absorption,” “Practice,” “Mystic their names and a little about their teachings and practice Powers” and “Absolute Independence.” Te terseness of techniques from various sources, including early Buddhist the Sanskrit text suggests that the sutras are mnemonic sutras. Te teachings pointed to reality as consisting of devices summarizing an older oral tradition. Te very frst matter and spirit. Spirit, or atman, pure and clear in itself, sutra, “Yoga is the stilling of the fuctuations of the mind,” has become enmeshed in matter and lost its identity. Te sets the tone: Yoga’s primary concern is meditation. yogic meditation practice he learned was designed to lead Te most striking example in the Yoga Sutras of cross- to higher and higher levels of samadhi, culminating in the infuences between Buddhism and Yoga can be seen by atman, or self, becoming liberated from its identifcation comparing the eight limbs of Yoga (yogashtanga) as pre- with matter and attaining its original state of absolute in- sented by Patanjali with Buddhism’s traditional noble dependence. eightfold path (aryashtangamarga) (see table on page 19). Te Buddha mastered the levels of samadhi that his Both systems have similar overall structures, fore- teachers had attained, but found that this experience did grounding moral and ethical practice—how we live our not resolve the great question that led him to the spiritual lives—and then listing progressive stages of meditation life: Why is there sufering and what can be done about practice culminating in samadhi. It’s worth noting that it? So he moved on, frst joining a small group devoted to the moral restraints in the frst limb of Yoga as detailed extreme ascetic practice. When he found this too to be in the Yoga Sutras are almost identical to the traditional unsatisfactory, he set out on his own, devoting himself to Buddhist fve precepts and are presented as allowing no a seated meditation practice, some of the details of which exceptions whatever. Yoga limbs 3 through 8 begin with

PRIMARY POINT Fall 2016 PRIMARY POINT Fall 2016 The Noble Eightfold Path The Eight Limbs of Yoga (Aryashtangamarga) (Yogashtanga)

1. Samyak Drishti Right View 1. Yama Moral Restraints 2. Samyak Samkalpa Right Intention 2. Niyama Ethical Observances 3. Samyak Vac Right Speech 3. Asana Seated Posture 4. Samyak Karmanta Right Action 4. Pranayama Breath Control 5. Samyak Ajiva Right Livelihood 5. Pratyahara Sense Withdrawal 6. Samyak Vyayama Right Effort 6. Dharana Concentration 7. Samyak Smrti Right Attention 7. Dhyana Meditation 8. Samyak Samadhi Right Samadhi 8. Samadhi Samadhi the basics of meditation—this is how you sit, this is how proposal by the great yoga teacher B. K. S. Iyengar in his you breathe—and then take us through deepening stages own book (Yoga: Te Tree of Knowledge, HarperCollins, of sensory and mental absorption. 2012), that the yoga posture itself be the object of medi- Tere are many other indications in the Yoga Sutras of tation. Here is Bryant: common ground between Buddhism and classical Yoga. A Approaching asana in this way—as a few examples must sufce: bona fde support for fxing the mind • YS 1.33 recommends cultivating an attitude of (and one for which many people in friendship (maitrī) toward happy persons, compassion the West might be best suited)—is (karunā) toward the distressed, joy (muditā) toward the thus fully within Patañjali’s system, virtuous and equanimity (upekshā) toward the vicious. provided it is performed with this Tese four virtues are identical to the four brahma viharas intent rather than some other super- in Buddhism. [19 fcial motive. Indeed, this approach • YS 1.41 compares samadhi to a transparent jewel tak- constitutes a unique contribution ing on the form of whatever is before it. Compare this not just to the history of Yoga as with the familiar Buddhist trope of mirror mind. it has been transmitted over the • YS 1.49 states that samadhi has a diferent focus from centuries but, more important, also that of discursive reasoning or scripture. Compare Bod- to the participational possibilities hidharma’s “direct pointing to the human heart/mind, of the practice of yoga as it is being without reliance on words or scriptures.” transmitted in a present-day main- • YS 2.3 lists as impediments to Yoga practice the kle- stream context. People who might shas, referencing especially desire, aversion, ignorance and otherwise be disinterested in some a sense of self. Compare this with the second great vow of of the other truth claims of Yoga are Mahayana Buddhism: “Delusions are endless; we vow to very attracted to asana, albeit often cut through them all.” for physical rather than spiritual Tere are signifcant diferences between the two tra- reasons. Even if this is the case, if ditions as well. In addition to their already-mentioned the mind is fully fxed and absorbed divergent positions on selfhood, there is in classical Yoga without distraction on the practice no real equivalent to Buddhism’s bodhisattva ideal. Nev- of asana, for whatever motive, it can ertheless it is clear that Yoga was originally grounded still attain fxity and stillness. in meditation practice and remained so for centuries. Te process by which it has been transformed into a Tis seems like a promising approach, one that could largely postural practice in modern times has been de- draw current yoga students into a congenial but serious fnitively laid out by Mark Singleton in his book Yoga meditation practice, and one that could possibly be use- Body (Oxford University Press, 2010). One promising ful for Zen students who are interested, as we all should way modern yoga might recover its meditative origins be, in bringing our practice of the cushion and into our has been suggested by Edwin Bryant, whose magisterial lives as a whole. In any case, it is always worth remember- edition of the Yoga Sutras (North Point Press, 2009) I ing that just as Buddha was a yogi and made full use of have used freely in this essay. In his commentary on YS the resources of the traditions of his time, so should each 1.39, which states that anything whatsoever can be used of us make best use of whatever traditions in which we as the object of meditation, Bryant calls attention to a participate. ◆

PRIMARY POINT Fall 2016