By Jorge Rotter
Noticing Resistances
One of the delightful gifts of constant practice is to become intimate with your experience outside of the meditation cushion. Gradually, the light of awareness begins to shine on the moments when you used to run on automatic pilot.
For example, imagine that after a swim in the ocean, you find an empty bag of chips on the beach. How would you react right now? Would you judge the person who left it there, calling them careless or lazy? Would you criticize the lack of trash cans around? Vilify the whole industry of disposable packaging?
A closer look at your experience might reveal a more nuanced chain of happenings in consciousness than the simple feeling of frustration. Perhaps it starts with a sensation in the body—a contraction in the chest, a racing heartbeat, a feeling of “ugh.” Maybe there is sadness mixed with a sense of awe towards nature. All of these things happen before the stories kick in.
Before judging and criticizing, something deep inside you knows that the bag shouldn’t be there. That it breaks the harmony, the sense of naturalness. And you can restore it with the simple act of picking up the bag.
The mind will try to trick you into not doing it. It will distract you with judgments. It will show you how little sense it makes to pick up a single piece of trash on a beach that is probably very dirty anyway. But by keeping an Open Attention, you can become aware of this entire process—the contraction, the feelings, the stories—and make a conscious choice to act.
This choice becomes a practice of Karma Yoga. In a way, there is no reason not to pick up the bag. When the spontaneous and authentic reaction of the heart becomes entangled with the stories of the mind, the intimacy of the present moment is lost. It is now veiled behind a projection of attachment to outcomes (“Why should I pick this up? The beach will still be dirty anyway”) or the veil of wanting to be elsewhere.
But in the spaceless, timeless, eternal present moment, what you do doesn’t matter in the same way. You can learn to find the same joy in picking up the bag as you would in doing whatever other thing the mind would prefer. It is simply cidananda, the joy of awareness—the beauty of being fully available for what the moment is asking from you.
After all, as Sri Krishna told Arjuna in Bhagavad Gita (3.18), “Do the actions you must do, for action is better than inaction.”
Becoming Free from Duty
Some people can do things they don’t want to, suppressing their contraction against it. Acting this way can be useful, and society teaches us how to do it in many (sometimes quite violent) ways.
But in the path towards freedom, suppression is an obstacle. Ultimately, the practice is not about mindlessly disciplining yourself. It’s about becoming free from any contraction and personal preferences so that you can do what is harmonious and become a vessel for the will of God. It brings contentment and recognition of the divine nature of action, whatever particular action the unfolding of karma is asking from you.
There is a famous Buddhist parable about the freedom that comes from acting in the moment. (You might have heard it if you’ve sat a 10-Day Hridaya Silent Meditation Retreat.)
Two monks (who had taken vows not to even look at women) were walking through a forest when they heard a woman shouting for help to cross the river. Without a second thought, the senior monk picked her up and carried her to the other side, and both monks kept walking.
After some time, the other monk asked, “How could you break your vows and carry the woman like that?”
The senior monk replied, “Brother, I simply carried her across the river. Why are you still carrying her?”
This parable does not speak about the inner process of the senior monk, but it shows how the other monk was struggling with resistance, maybe even judgments around the action of the senior monk. If you force yourself to act and try to suppress your contraction against that action, you might be like the junior monk—questioning why you are doing this, how intolerable and wrong it is, etc., instead of recognizing the need of the moment.
If you catch yourself doing this, ask, “Who am I?” and try to drop your identification with the doer. Who is the one doing the intolerable thing?
Other people may need to learn how to act in a way that goes against their mental preferences. This is a good training to undertake, for you cannot be free of something you don’t know. As Swami Vivekananda said: “It is work through the sense of duty that leads us to work without any idea of duty… We shall find that the goal of duty… is the same as in all the other yogas, namely, to attenuate the lower self so that the Higher Self may shine forth.”
Bringing Devotion to the Practice
Ramana Maharshi said, “Bhakti is Jñana mata.” That is, bhakti gives birth to jnana.
Bhakti can also give birth to Karma Yoga in a very practical way. If you find yourself unable to relax the contraction, if you would prefer to keep walking and ignore the trash on the beach, take a moment to offer that action to God.
Make a prayer out of it. You may end up finding bliss in that unpleasant task, just like love allows you to find joy in cooking a meal for your lover or child, even if you are tired and prefer to do something else.
Offer all of the fruits of your prayer-in-action. Let go of preferences for any specific outcome. Be grateful for noticing the contraction—at least you are no longer running on automatic pilot. Become intimate with the manifestation of God at that moment in the longing in your heart to pick up the trash, in the action of picking it up, in the person who left it there, and in the action of having thrown it.
May this practice bring understanding and allow us to be fully available for the unfolding of life.
Jorge is a Hridaya Yoga teacher and contributor to our blog
