online exclusive: tias little on union & yoking
March 30th, 2009 by roseanne Posted in ascent
Our Union issue sneak peaks continue with Tias Little’s investigation into yoga and non-attachment… One critical reflection that must take place for any one on the path of yoga, one question that must arise in the course of one’s training is, “What am I yoking to?” Given that yoga means to join or to yoke in the way that a farmer would harness together a pair of horses or oxen to pull a cart and plough through a field, the caption “yoga” suggests a harnessing of separate things.
By way of connecting to the pulse of one’s own respiration, by connecting to the surge of sensation across the muscle fibers in asana, or by generating an emotive feeling from song or spiritual reflection, one builds a sense of connectivity. This connection, however, cannot be limited to one’s self. The aim of much of the yoga teachings is to resolve or exhaust self-centered inclination. For the student engaged in yogic discipline the question then must arise, “What am I yoking to? Who is the other in this dyad of yoking?”
The simplest answer is god, in all of its various guises, forms and incarnations, whether it be one god or a whole batch of gods. One might also say, “I am yoking to something greater than myself,” which is essentially saying the same thing in different words. God suggests an authority, a creator, a guru, a source or center from which everything evolves/revolves, whether one believes that there is one god, multiple gods or that everything is god. But there are plenty of yoga practitioners who do not believe that it is god that one is yoking to when doing yoga.
The voices of the first Americans who ratified our constitution and unified our colonies into an independent American were, rightfully so, suspicious of political or religious authority. I always take pride in the fact that yoga is not a religion, and that one needn’t commit to any particular hierarchy of the sacred in order to practice. If yoga was a religion, I do not believe I would have made it this far along the path. Reifying one deity or deity lineage smacks of separatism, and this has been the case historically wherein spiritual authorities reinforce their divine establishment and wage holy war of one kind or another. But this leads us back to the question at hand, “What am I yoking to, if it is not a god or some sort of divine authority?”
There is, ironically, no thing to yoke to; there is no tangible reality with a name, form or stature that is to be conjoined or harnessed. This is what makes the practice of yoga so difficult, and awakening as fine as a razor’s edge. The highest state of yoga always resists definition. One’s hold is always untenable. If there were something to yoke to directly, something material that you could touch, see hear or feel, then the yogic process would not be so exquisitely astonishing. It would be stripped of its mystery.
What makes yoga so radical is that there is nothing to tether to, in the way that you can tie a horse to a post. As the Zen patriarch Bodhidharma said, “It’s like space. It has no strength or form. You can’t lose it and you can’t possess it.” Critical in your practice is the realization that there is nothing to grasp, nothing to achieve, nothing to yoke to. If you could grasp or yoke to a singular thing, then you could not be free. If you could grasp it, then you would become attached to it, and attachment is not yoga. Yoga as non-attachment is non-yoking, or as said in the Diamond Sutra, “Develop a mind that clings to nothing.”
Tias Little is one of the foremost yoga teachers in the United States today. His unique style of teaching is informed by his extensive study in the Iyengar and Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga systems combined with his in depth study of anatomy, manual therapy and massage. He has a masters degree in Eastern Philosophy and directs his school, Prajna Yoga, from his home base in Santa Fe New Mexico.
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