The exercise in my music book is circled with a date of completion: November 1995. On the preceding pages is a homily from the author on how to practise. The word picked out in a circle of pencil lead is ‘perseverance’. To me, ‘perseverance’ is the motor that propels acquisition of method, skill in method and skill through method.[1]

The theme of this edition of Pushpam is devotion. This article is a personal reflection. It is not a comprehensive ‘answer’. I hope it might serve as something to think with.

When I think of devotion I think of perseverance before I think of any sort of religious faith. I think of chipping away, small-bite-size-chunks, immersion in minutiae, gaze firmly on the path ahead rather than up at the enormous mount. I try to put aside my doubts for long enough to just keep going: keeping on keeping on at whatever the task is - yoga practice, language study, research, trying to be good enough even when I keep messing up.

Is devotion, then, just stubbornness (a translation of haṭha) rather than faith, reverence, awe, respect, or hierarchy? Riffing on the Gītā Dhyānam, a hymn often recited before study of the Bhagavad Gītā, pig-headedness can cross mountains.[2] Stubbornness and tiny steps are, for most of us, the necessary precursors to the acquisition of skill, of strength, or of grace. Every journey starts with a single step, they say.

Cynicism and heart-ache

The thought of writing on the topic of ‘devotion’ awakens two twin birds atop my shoulders: cynicism and heartache. They turn their heads and cast their baleful glare, shrivelling the page I try to write on.

Devotion often seems to me to imply setting aside critical analysis and placing trust in a person or a method. But this setting aside of critical engagement can facilitate abuse and eviscerate responsibility. The thesaurus charmingly, cuttingly, gives eviscerate as ‘disembowel’. Trust in a human teacher has been set-back by the revelations of abuse in the majority of yoga lineages, including Ashtanga yoga. Trust has been further eroded by silence and hesitancy. Jubilee Cooke’s courageous 2018 article ‘Why Didn’t Somebody Warn Me’ spoke to me.

Devotion can go hand in hand with abuse of power if we shut down our critical faculties and turn to totalitarianism. Devotion can blind us. Devotion can blind us to the doubts that might help us see. Devotion can become the pursuit of a one-size-fits all practice, a one-size-fits all body, ironed out, flattening difference and diversity.

In the aftermath of abuse in yoga, to whom can we be devoted?

For me, it is not possible to be devoted to an individual or a divinity. Nor to a ‘guru within’ (sadguru). As we train in yoga, we are often told to trust the internal guru, the ‘true’ (sat) guru, which is explained by some yoga teachers as our intuition. There is a practical difficulty in learning from an inner teacher, a paradox: how can an inner teacher teach method? Invoking the inner teacher, some yoga teachers tell us to do whatever feels best for us in the moment. Yet, this can simply reinscribe the external guru. It can inscribe the values we associate with the system in our hearts, it can reinstate totalitarianism from the inside out.

I need to get grounded in a method learnt from another person before evaluating that method through internal intuition or starting to believe in anything.

One answer to the question of ‘to whom or what should we be devoted’ is devotion to method. Ashtanga yoga is a method. Iyengar yoga is a method. Learning an instrument, learning the instrument of the body is to learn a method. I cannot trust a system that has abused or enabled abuse. But I can find people to guide me in a method—and trust the method.

Can we be devoted without trust? My trust has been wounded by the claws of the twin vultures of cynicism and wounded heart. They perch on each shoulder, scorning the system that I love.

Yet from a place of cynicism, of pain and doubt we can get to a position of acknowledging the benefits of practice and method. Practice opens visceral possibilities in our veins, in our tissues.

(Do) I believe in method (?)

The thirteenth century Dattātreyayogaśāstra, verses 40-49, gets at this idea of perseverance alongside a distrust of hypocrisy.

(40) ‘[If] diligent, everyone, even the young or the old or the diseased, gradually obtains success in yoga through practice. (41) Whether brahmin, ascetic, Buddhist, Jain, Skull-bearer (kāpālika) or materialist (cārvāka), the wise man endowed with faith (42) who is constantly devoted to his practice obtains complete success. Success happens for he who performs the practices - how could it happen for one who does not? (43) Success does not arise in any form merely by reading the scriptures. Shaven-headed, bearing a staff or wearing ochre robes; (44 ) saying “Nārāyaṇa”, having matted hair, smearing oneself with ash, saying “namaḥ Śivāya”, or worshipping external images; (45) marking oneself in the twelve places, or adorning oneself with lots of rosaries: if one does not practice or is cruel, how is one to get success? (46) The wearing of religious garb does not bring success, nor does talking about it. Practice alone is the cause of success: this is indeed true, Sāṃkṛti.… (49) Gradually coming to realise that men like that do not practise yoga, but attain their ends through words alone, one should shun those who wear religious garb.’[3] Trans. James Mallinson 2013.

The opening of this extract draws us all in with a firm welcome: everyone, even the young or the old or diseased, slowly slowly (śanaiḥ śanaiḥ - my favourite Sanskrit phrase), carefully, obtains success in yoga through practice. Everyone. This is powerful, egalitarian stuff.

This ‘everyone’ who eternally delights (rataḥ) in their yoga practice obtains complete success. How else to achieve success but by diving in with delight? Practice alone is the cause of success: this is indeed true.

Intertwined with this manifesto for practice, this passage captures a healthy cynicism, a dissenting voice. The passage calls out the hypocrisy of those who merely wear the right clothes.

Doubt is disabling, paralysing. Doubt has a huge potential to cripple practice, to paralyse intention. It impedes our pursuit of method. It forces a pause in our headlong rush, our zealotry. We freeze at the possibility of injustice, error, terror. Paralysis can enable us to see injustice, error, terror. The vultures of cynicism and heartache are our canaries in the mine. Through their permanent paralysis, their death, they warn of danger ahead.

Should we listen to our doubt, the voice from the dark, debilitating our power? Can we rest in the doubt? Rest in the devotion? Can devotion be respite when self-doubt is crippling? Can we take up the method? One step. Alone or together. Two steps. Drawing one another on, giving each other a leg up. The bodhisattva-ideal - the one who gives everyone a leg-up.

Delights (rataḥ) of devotion

There are counterweights to the dangers of devotion. If we balance our devotion with doubt, if we are a light unto ourselves,[4] if we engage our critical faculties. If we whisper, talk, gossip (etymology ‘god’s sibling’, o friend)—if we are curious and respectful of how the practice lands with one another. Perhaps then devotion does not risk enabling abuse.

Devotion to method is an excelling drive, to exceed our expectations, to exceed our doubts. Devotion as repetition (abhyāsa – such as Pātaṇjalayogaśāstra 1.12[5]), repetitively curious, repetitively self-challenging and self-reflexive. Devotion as standing up, pushing up from the ground upon which we fall, lifted up by the people around us.

The Dattātreyayogaśāstra ends with a verse that seems to play different types of devotion against one another.

(169) ‘I, even though I am devoid of devotion, constantly worship the two lotus feet of Viṣṇu [in his form as] Dattātreya, the guru of all people and the wish-fulfilling jewel of devotion, who on being thought of removes the difficulties of even sages and grants them success in yoga, who, out of compassion, is the lord, the teacher of the yoga scriptures which effortlessly steal the heart.’[6] Translated James Mallinson.

There appears an ambivalence to this closing line: the one who is empty of devotion (bhaktiśūnyaḥ) is also the most-full, brim-full, heart-seized (hṛdayahṛtaḥ) with devotion (bhakti). However, James Mallinson (with Alexis Sanderson) clarified bhaktiśūnyaḥ as likely meaning ‘empty of separation’ i.e., ‘not separated’, playing on the nondualism of Advaita doctrine.[7] For as well as meaning devotion, bhakti also means separation. The one who is without separation. Perhaps emptiness of devotion can coexist with fullness of devotion?

This passage reclaims devotion and a constancy of practice, notwithstanding the doubt, the acknowledgment of hypocrisy in the earlier passage from the Dattātreyayogaśāstra. Perhaps we too can welcome doubt as the canary in the mine, the canary in the mind, in the cave of the mind, the warning of danger, the sign to proceed cautiously, with eyes wide open. Listen for the call of the canary, the cackle of the vulture, the laugh of the medusa. Share them.

Devotion: eyes-wide open perseverance as a method

Is belief in persevering at method the same as belief in a method, the method? Should we worship the method, worship the path? If we do we risk condemnation of those (of us) who deviate from the path.

If I have belief, it is in the process of persevering at a method. Or maybe I just suspend disbelief whilst exploring method. Only later there is space for belief, a space in which belief could take shape. The shape of that belief? As the Rgveda’s creation hymn the Nāsadīya Sūkta 10.129 concludes, maybe the gods know, maybe they don’t…[8]

But of course, we never get there. For me, devotion is eyes wide-open, wide-empty, perseverance. If I have belief it is in the process of acquiring learning, persevering at a method.

Notes

1. Thanks to Lisa Caviglia, Lucy-May Constantini and Jenny-May While for their generous comments on an early version of this article.

2. mūkaṁ karoti vācālaṁ paṅguṃ laṅghayate girim | yatkṛpā tamahaṃ vande paramānanda mādhavaṃ || I worship Mādhava, the highest bliss, by whose compassion the speechless become talkative and those who cannot walk cross mountains by the compassion. Verse 8, Gītā Dhyānam.

3. yuvāvastho ’pi vṛddho vā vyādhito vā śanaiḥ śanaiḥ | abhyāsāt siddhim āpnoti yoge sarvo ’py atandritaḥ ||40|| brāhmaṇaḥ śramaṇo vāpi bauddho vāpy ārhato ’thavā | kāpāliko vā cārvākaḥ śraddhayā sahitaḥ sudhīḥ ||41|| yogābhyāsarato nityaṃ sarvasiddhim avāpnuyāt | kriyāyuktasya siddhiḥ syād akriyasya kathaṃ bhavet ||42|| na śāstrapāṭhamātreṇa kā cit siddhiḥ prajāyate | muṇḍito daṇḍadhārī vā kāṣāyavasano ’pi vā ||43|| nārāyaṇavado vāpi jaṭilo bhasmalepanaḥ | namaḥśivāyavācī vā bāhyārcapūjako ’pi vā ||44|| sthānadvādaśapuṇḍro vā mālābhir bahubhūṣitaḥ | kriyāhīno ’thavā krūraḥ kathaṃ siddhim avāpnuyāt ||45|| na veṣadhāraṇaṃ siddheḥ kāraṇaṃ na ca tatkathā | kriyaivakāraṇaṃ siddheḥ satyam eva tu sāṃkṛte ||46|| śanais tathāvidhān jñātvā yogābhyāsavivarjitān | kṛtārthānvacanairevavarjayedveṣadhāriṇaḥ ||49|| Working edition prepared by James Mallinson with help from Alexis Sanderson, Jason Birch and Péter-Dániel Szántó.

4. ‘Monks, be islands unto yourselves, be your own refuge, having no other; let the Dhamma be an island and a refuge to you, having no other. Those who are islands unto themselves... should investigate to the very heart of things: 'What is the source of sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair? How do they arise?'’ Samyutta nikaya 22.43, Attadīpā sutta, translated from the Pali by Maurice O’Connell Walsh, 2013. Thanks to Maitripushpa Bois for helping me with this reference.

5. abhyāsa vairagyābhyāṃ tan nirodhaḥ | ‘[The vṛtti states of mind] are stilled by practice and dispassion’. Translated Edwin Bryant.

6. yaḥ saṃsmṛtā munīnām api duritaharo yogasiddhipradaś ca| kāruṇyād yaḥ pravaktā sukhahṛdayahṛto yogaśāstrasya nāthaḥ | tasyāhaṃ bhaktiśūnyo ’py akhilajanaguror bhakticintāmaṇer hi| dattātreyasya viṣṇoḥ padanalinayugaṃ nityam eva prapadye||169||

7. Personal communication 25 January 2022.

8. ‘Whence this creation has arisen – perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not – the one who looks down on it, in the highest heaven, only he knows – or perhaps he does not know.’ Translated Wendy Doniger.

References

Bryant, Edwin. 2009. The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali. North Point Press.

Cooke, Jubilee. 2018. ‘Why Didn’t Somebody Warn Me? A Pattabhi Jois #MeToo Story’. Decolonizing Yoga. Retrieved 13 November 2019 (https://decolonizingyoga.com/why-didnt-somebody-warn-me-a-pattabhi-jois-metoo-story-jubilee-cooke/).

Doniger, Wendy. 2005. The Rig Veda. Penguin. p. 25-26

Mallinson, James. 2013. ‘Translation of the Dattātreyayogaśāstra, the Earliest Text to Teach Haṭhayoga’.

Walsh, Maurice O'Connell. 2013. Access to Insight