Circles

Welcome to Sutra A Day.

I haven’t written in a while. Sutra a day has become sutra a month. This morning, I find myself sitting on the couch, cat hair tickling my nose, my friends’ son humming as he wanders (a blessing) the house, coffee empty, gray day out the window behind, feeling sad and a little lost, even as I sit among old friends. 

I came to visit them for a graduation, each milestone important in the life of their son who has a form of muscular dystrophy called Duchenne. 

Despite this, I’ve been reacting emotionally to the disappointments of life and my own milestones. I’m overwhelmed by the prospect of buying a house, worried about ever retiring, trying to envision a future in which the dots of all my various activities and endeavors connect into some sort of whole that makes sense. 

Before this trip, I was filled with hope, excited about the prospect of a leadership role (volunteer) in a local refugee organization. But soon emails flooded my box from people who couldn’t let go of their own ideas and passions, who had demands and ways of expression that didn’t gel with me, putting a damper on my weekend and making me want to simply quit rather than deal with this new layer of stress.  And I reacted. I may as well have quit, at this point it feels like it’s the only option left.

There goes one of my dots. Will my picture be incomplete? 

I don’t really know when quitting is right. I try to ask myself, am I doing this for ego reasons, to build a resume experience, or motivated by love and care. Frankly the answer is both. And as a person on the earth trying figure out what it all means and why I’m here, a person who feels the pain of lost and misplaced relationships more deeply than some, a person who struggles with faith on any level, it’s hard to never quite see it all come together. To feel like almost there, but never there. To feel somehow like one is always scratching the surface, but never penetrating. Etc. 

Life feels like a circle. Not in a good way. 

And so I take this time to return to Sutra a Day. And I realize that I cling tightly to my vision, that I am attached to need, to people, to ideas, that it is my attachment, my investment through ego over love the drives these circles and the constant redrawing of my vision. 

Circles

24. Klesa karma vipakasayairaparamrstah Purusavisesa Isvarah. Isvara is the supreme Purusa, unaffected by any afflictions, actions, fruits of actions or by any inner impressions of desires.

25. Tatra niratisayam sarvajnabjam. In Isvara is the complete manifestation of the seed of omniscience. 

26. Sa purvesam api guruh kalenanavacchedat. Unconditioned by time Isvara is the teacher of even the most ancient teachers. 

 “Isvara has no desire, thus no action and no need to reap the fruits of action,” says Satchidananda. Satchidananda then tells us that Isvara must be knowledge itself or the Supreme Soul – Purusa. In order to visualize it, he advises us to visualize a circle – what’s inside the circle is bounded and what’s outside is infinite – or Purusa. In explaining S. 26, Satchidananda goes on to clarify that although all knowledge is inside you, rather than outside (although in 25 he tells us it’s outside the circle…. More on that in a minute) we still need a guru or a teacher to help us understand what’s already within. 

I perceive all this differently than Satchidananda. Mind you, if his way of seeing this helps you understand the knowledge you have inside of you – fantastic – it often helps me. But first of all, Isvara has no desire and thus no action – is it always desire that motivates action? What is the difference between basic needs and desire, for instance. I eat because I must eat to live, I love because love is divine – although let’s be honest, as humans our love often comes with very non-divine attachments and ego – conditions – but then is it love? 

Lack of desire, or lack of attachment, doesn’t mean lack of action, rather it’s as the sutra says – not being affected by actions or fruits of actions. 

Rather than supreme knowledge, perhaps it is supreme love. Because supreme love is what unites us all and supreme love is unselfish, divine, the ultimate motivator for pure actions, actions done without the ego.

So perhaps supreme love and supreme knowledge are the same or so intertwined as to be inseparable? I think so. Knowledge absent love seems mechanical.

Indeed in S.26, Satchidananca agrees that we can’t practice yoga with our egos and that nobody can achieve eternal peace by doing something with the mind. Supreme joy and supreme surrender go hand in hand and that is supreme love. 

Next the visual of the circle. As a child, I tried to picture infinity. This after a particularly challenging Sunday school class in which I couldn’t wrap my head around God as an infinite being.  I could only picture a straight line. And then it occurred to me that a circle has no beginning or end – I didn’t know the infinity symbol yet – and so God could be a circle. To me, picturing what’s within and outside the circle still forces and potentially false dichotomy and even an inner boundary to the infinite. Where as letting the circle be the infinite – visual I understand. But it does change the nature of knowledge, life and love – because in yogic philosophy of source when we reach samadhi – the ultimate samadhi – and die we no longer go around the circle we just union. 

Perhaps trying to visualize the infinite is a flawed endeavor. Pictures include lines, boundaries. Love, supreme love, union, surrender, these are boundless. Using our senses, like vision to understand something that can only be experienced beyond the vessels we move through this life in, will inevitably fall short. Perhaps, when we stop visualizing and simply surrender, we are on the path.