Agnieszka Rostkowska: Shall we talk about joy? While we seek it out in workplaces, in family, in friends, Eastern philosophy and traditions quite precisely guide us to where, or how, we can find long-lasting joy. Mayur Karthik: Human beings are social creatures—we are defined by how we interact with people, how we contribute socially, and that gives us lot of happiness. But the real joy is to blossom from within, by no longer thinking “what about me?” and shifting to a question of “how can I be of help to you”? This is the ancient Indian concept of seva. Seva is a sanskrit word meaning “service,” that is, doing something for others without expecting anything in return. It is important because if you’re expecting any reward—it is business, not service. Seva can be in the form of doing some cleaning, helping older people, etc. Have you noticed that while helping others you feel elevated? This has a lot to do with so-called Karma Yoga. Karma in sanskrit means “action” and Karma Yoga is the path of action where whatever you do, you are not attached to the result. This lack of expectation of any particular outcome or effect of your actions brings you freedom and fulfillment. Why? Because it is the desire of an anticipated result that makes your mind disturbed—you worry if you succeed or fail. The mind knows that success creates happiness, while failure causes misery, and it gets caught up in jumping between these two poles. It is constantly shifting from joy to pain and from pain to joy, over and over again. So how can you calm it down and stay in the state of joy? First you need to connect with yourself. Most people rush through the same points of adult life: they try to find a boyfriend or girlfriend, either marry or don’t marry, have children or not, earn money, find the way to either just bear with their job or achieve their professional dreams. They wake up to the same routine: go to work, come back tired in the afternoon, do some household chores like cooking or doing homework with their kids, sometimes go out to meet friends in the evening, come back, go to sleep. This cycle goes on. And they run through it as if there were taking part in the race, until their life ends. Have you ever asked yourself, “Why am I in this particular body, living in this particular place, doing a particular thing, whereas others are doing something else? Who has put me here? Who has designed the system?” The answer differs, depending on different cultures and religions. Don’t look for the answer in religious scripts and holy books. Don’t look outside, look inside. You need to acknowledge that those questions are important to your life. So many times, we put them aside saying that we are busy with all our duties and commitments, that it is not the right time to think about them. No, you have to recognize and give value to those questions. Stop for a minute to ask yourself, “Who am I? Am I just the physical body or is there something more to me?” When this question becomes really important to you, some higher power, that in yogic tradition we call consciousness, will take you through a process where you start recognizing the higher truth. It will pave your way to the answer. And what if the answer doesn’t come? I can assure you that it will come—because the recognition is not in the validation of the answer, but in the very journey itself. Not a journey to the Himalayas where a guru sitting in the cave will tell it to you. No, the answer is within you. But to see it in a more tangible way, sometimes a guru, or a master, can be of some help indeed. How can he or she help? I will give you a simple example: if you want to become, let’s say, a mathematician, you can study books and solve mathematical problems on your own, but not everything will be clear to you. That is why you attend lessons and discuss some issues with your professors. A math professor knows well the subject of mathematics, a spiritual master knows about the spirit and can awaken it through various meditations techniques. Because the question of “Who am I?” cannot be answered on simply the intellectual level, you need to tackle it experientially. That’s where a master comes in showing you multiple methods to look for the answer in practice. Not everyone is spiritual enough to search for an answer for such an in-depth, yet intangible—or even unclear— question. If you don’t do it now, at some point you will have to do it anyway. The human quest to know the truth has always been there, it’s very much human nature to look for a higher purpose. For some people this purpose is very evident. For others, it’s in the back of their mind—they are neither dwelling on the philosophical questions nor meditating, but look for the meaning through their work or some other actions. But even if they simply focus on achieving success, professionally or materially, by design the search for higher purpose, higher meaning in life, is already there. You don’t have to consider yourself spiritual, you can still continue with all your ambitions and your material life, but do it with the awareness about your true nature. Indian saints and sages who kept asking themselves the question “Who am I?” unlocked a sense of great happiness. Because the true joy is in the Self, in who you are. All the joy created by the objects we buy is an illusion. Look, if one chocolate pastry gives you joy, then two pieces should double joy, three should triple it and so on, right? But does the tenth piece give you ten times the joy or makes you sick? We forget that real joy comes from within. That’s exactly where yoga comes in place to help us realize it. What is yoga according to you? There are so many definitions. Yoga is something that connects you with yourself. It’s as simple as that. It can be literally anything. A carpenter who is totally involved in his craft, so immersed in his work and the present moment, is in yoga. When you are painting a picture and your mind is quiet, not thinking about anything else than the vision that you are putting on your canvas—you are in yoga. When you’re meditating, right here right now, fully present in this moment, that is yoga. When the mind is not in the past or the future, not questioning the present moment, but just experiencing it, that is yoga. In that state you feel bliss, your true nature. To achieve this state, you need a skill, or the tools, like techniques to manage your mind and your emotions. That is why in Bhagavad Gita—probably the most famous and definitely the most widely read text from ancient India—it is written: yogah karmasu kaushalam, which means, “yoga is a skill in action.” Or as some say: yoga starts beyond the mat. Contrary to common belief, asanas—or the yogic postures—are just one element of yoga. Asanas are just one of the methods to achieve the goal. And the goal is yoga—the connection with yourself. Let me stress this: asanas, pranayamas (breathing excercises) and meditation are only the methods to achieve union with your true self. You’re not going to be standing on the mat twenty-four hours a day—this practice just helps you to experience yoga. How? By not allowing your emotions and your inner faculties—your mind, intellect, memory, and ego, which are all very strong—to carry you away with every day disturbances. The word yoga is derived from sanskrit root juy, which means to unite. It is the ability to keep you connected with yourself on daily basis, when you have to deal with both favorable and unfavorable situations and interact with people whom you like and whom you don’t like. All these opposites of life and challenges you face can throw you off the balance. Coming back to the self, even after you are being thrown off—that is yoga. So, it is not about never losing nerves, it is about how quickly you can get back to yourself. That is yoga, that’s the skill—to not keep getting trapped in emotions, but to let them pass and restore your peace of mind. In the most famous treatise on yoga titled Yoga Sutras, the author, Patanjali—a sage who probably lived in the second century BCE, defines yoga as “restraining the modulations of the mind.” In India we have a saying: mind can be either your biggest friend or your biggest enemy. And we also say: if you win over the mind, you will win over the whole universe. The mind is always running either to the past or to the future, producing a constant stream of thoughts that create lot of restlessness and stress. A disturbed mind drains your energy. Have you ever noticed that the more you think, the more tired you feel? It is the plague of twenty-first century that people feel so drained, even if they take care of themselves: sleep well, eat healthy food, do sports, they still feel fatigue and lack of energy. This is because of the activity of their minds—constant stress and worry. The more disturbances in the mind, the more drained you are. The Patanjali definition, in Sanskrit Yogah chitta vritti nirodhah, underlines that yoga is restraining disturbances, or modulations, of the mind. That is especially valuable in a present-day world: calming down the mind brings it to the present moment and makes it laser sharp. Whatever task you are tackling, you’re able to focus on it totally, which skyrockets both your efficiency and the level of your life energy. According to Patanjali the modulations of the mind are five-fold. This classification gives us some explanation about the tricky behavior of our minds that we all deal with. The first modulation is pramana—this concise sanskrit term describes the state of mind that is wanting proof for everything. For example, you hear some news and a question forms in your mind: how do I know if that is the truth? So, you go to Google or call your friends. The mind is constantly looking for validation. The second modulation is viparyaya, wrong understanding. Let’s say an incident has happened and you start making opinions about somebody who caused it, although you don’t have the full picture. Lot of tension and troubles in relationships are caused by viparyaya. The third one is vikalpa, imagining things that don’t exist yet—thinking about future. It can cause baseless fear and worry or joyful fantasies, daydreaming. Next is nidra, sleep, when you are not aware of anything and your mind is blank. And the last modulation is smriti, memory. It is the state when you are not able to let go of something that has happened in the past and you’re still thinking about it. Those five modulations of the mind—we call them vrittis—are neither good nor bad, they are simply activities of the mind. It is useful to be aware of them, especially when they cause you to lose your inner peace. There are only two options: either you are lost in the modulations—then you are not in yoga—or you’re aware of them and connected with your inner world, then you are in yoga. You are the teacher of Sri Sri Yoga. What kind of yoga is that? Sri Sri Yoga is a gentle yet powerful discipline uniting the body, breath, and mind with complete awareness. It is based on Patanjali’s eight limbs of yoga: yamas—restraints and moral disciplines, niyamas—positive duties or observances, asanas—postures, pranayama— breathing techniques, pratyahara— turning the mind inwards, dharana—concentration, dhyana —meditation and samadhi—higher states of conciousness. In short, it is a beautiful combination of knowledge and practice. And when it comes to the practice, it is very holistic: a combination of a very meditative flow of asanas, pranayama, mudras, meditation, and knowledge, supported by other limbs like karma yoga, selfless service, that we have already talked about. It was designed by Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, a spiritual teacher and humanitarian leader who in 1982, established The Art Living Foundation, an international, non-profit organization which offers well-being, education, and meditation programs. All the techniques of Sri Sri Yoga are ancient, but the way we do them is different—very simple. Gurudev wanted to offer people something that could be a household practice that can take people to a higher level, making them blossom in all aspects of life—bring clarity in mind, purity in heart, and sincerity in action. Gurudev says, “Like a flower bud, human life has the potential to blossom fully. Blossoming of human potential to fullness is yoga.” This citation is at the first page of the Sri Sri Yoga Teacher Training Course Resourse Book that is studied in the Bangalore ashram, where the main Sri Sri School of Yoga is located. I know it because I am a graduate of that yoga teacher course. An ashram is a place of retreat, that may bring connotations with hermitage. Yet the Bangalore ashram attracts crowds of people. Indeed, the Bangalore ashram is huge! There is a meditation hall called Dhyan Mandir which can accommodate twenty thousand people and smaller meditation centers, which can host four to five thousand people. And in the specially designed open area almost two hundred thousand people can meditate! To feed them we have so-called The Mega Kitchen, one of the biggest kitchens of India. During an event called Navratri, a ten-day long celebration of the Mother Divine that happens annually, we cook so much food that we use around ten tons of salt alone! In the ashram we also have India’s biggest ayurveda hospital. There is a Veda school where children learn, free of cost, Vedic studies. There is a spectacular lotus-shaped building, named Vishalakshi Mantap after Gurudev’s mother, where many events, like lectures and kirtans (mantras singing) take place. And there are many other buildings where lot of courses take place—Sri Sri Yoga, Sudarshan Kriya, that is a powerful breathing technique that became the very core of the Art of Living courses, silence retreat programs and many more. And there are also leisure spaces—an amphitheater, amazing gardens, a lake over which fifty kinds of butterfly species fly! There are organic farms and a gaushala, where twenty breeds of indigenous cows live—there are around 1400 cows that produce A2 milk, which is considered super food. Seems like in the ashram you can get nourishment on every level. Is that why an ashram is also called “a place where things happen effortlessly”? Yes, the term ashram derives from Sanskrit and means “without effort.” And you can experience it here—tens of thousands people come here with the intention of spiritual, or personal, growth. And with the right intention, things just start unfolding: pure good intentions finally manifest. Do we need to go to the ashram to experience such growth? No, Sri Sri Yoga and many other programs based on ancient wisdom are taught in many centers around the world, in Poland too, and there are also online courses. But do we really need ancient practices in twenty-first century? Ancient means time-tested. Those practices have been serving people for thousands of years and they are still applicable. The human body hasn’t changed much, nor have our needs: we all still want to feel free, healthy, happy, fulfilled. Those techniques accommodate all the needs of the body, mind, and spirit in such a holistic way that they work. The fact that we are—and want to be—modern should not make us overlook the treasures of ancient wisdom. The most valuable knowledge, which can bring lot of tangible benefits, evolves from the past—we take from what is there and we add on that.  

Mayur Karthik:

The Head trainer at Sri Sri School of Yoga and an Art of Living Meditation and Yoga teacher, training under the tutelage of Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.

Agnieszka Rostkowska: Editor, reporter, yoga teacher. Lover of all things Eastern.

Reprinted with permission from przekroj.org