6. Writing about the body
What is the self? The idea of the usual sense of self being an illusion has become wide-spread. I think we need a kind of double vision, so that we can use the idea of an individual self, or ignore it, depending on our purposes. As novelist Edmond White says:
I'm convinced that the self is an illusion, and that actually all we are consists of several piles, or, as the Buddhists call them, skandhas, of associations and memories and so on, that the way to enlightenment is to dissolve the illusion of unity and return all these elements to their original constituents, thereby ridding one-self of the notion of identity. Although all that appeals to me philosophically, as a novelist I don't believe it. As a novelist I believe there is a kind of smell that's very distinctive about each living creature, and I enjoy being a sort of sketch artist, like a sidewalk artist, who tries to catch a likeness – and I somehow manage to believe that there are likenesses, and that they do tell you something about people. (White 1994:266)
To know what it is that is distinctive about a person is, not only for a novelist, a way to see the real self, to see a kind of truth.
It's your mind that makes you you, isn't it? – your thoughts and emotional responses and all those skandhas that create your identity? What about your body? Are you the same self when your body changes? 'What I am is in here,' I remember a friend saying, pointing to her head, and meaning that she did not care to be judged or responded to according to perceptions of her body.
But in yoga we find that we are, in some way, what our bodies are: open in some areas, closed in others, flexible here and painfully rigid there, holding on to past pains one day, experiencing liberating release another. We talk about yoga making us stronger, calmer, energized. We change as our bodies change. And still to say that is to imply that 'we' are not exactly our bodies.
Yoga approaches the question of self by breaking down the binary of body and mind.
Yoga is not only done by the body, and writing is not only done by the mind.
A challenge to the idea that writing concerns only the mind and not the body has been posited in recent critical theory, notably the écriture féminine of Helene Cixous: a 'feminine' writing that is 'in tune with the body's needs and pleasures ... a writing committed to expressing the truth and deriving from and received by the body'. (Sellers 59, 183)
This is a notion that has met considerable resistance, and not only by patriarchal authority:
If there is any aspect of Cixous's thought that has been and may continue to be problematic for Americans – as it has been for some French women – it is probably the metaphorical system through which her fantasies are transmitted, specifically the complex conceit represented by the now widely used phrase 'writing the body'. (Gilbert:x)
Still, the influence of this idea has become widespread; no one associated with practitioners in writing, Theory or academia can fail to be aware how popular the idea of 'body' has become in relation to questions of writing and culture. (The large number of new academic book titles that contain the word 'body' might suggest the word's inclusion helps the chance of publication.)
When I wrote my first novel in 1979-1982 (Between Careers) I had not read Cixous, but it was a study of that novel, then part of her doctoral dissertation, by Alison Bartlett that drew my attention to some of the naming and development in ideas about bodily writing. I'd managed to live for years in ignorance of the literature of this exciting new theory. Ecriture féminine was introduced to me by Alison after I said, in an interview with her in 1993:
In knowing quite clearly that form and content are one, that a woman who knows her body as a woman writes from that knowledge, and similar things not articulated, I am helped by my study of yoga; it is a language that makes sense of such things for me, not only the writings of yoga but its practice. It makes me practice what I work for in my writing: that attention, that constant refining, that precision. And intelligence that is diffuse in the body. A yoga instruction might be to bring intelligence to the big toe. And you find you can. And your intelligence is then expanded. (Bartlett 1998a:21)
While it is hard to demonstrate that bodily consciousness informs acts of writing, the subject matter of writing in modern times has been drenched in aspects of corporeal reality that once were largely contained in silence. When I was a child I wondered why no one went to the toilet or menstruated in the novels I read; but I was already learning that it is in silences, gaps, absences that knowledge is found. In the same interview I said:
Speak the unspeakable, find words for what is not said. I love it when I see something that does that.
Writing from the body means that I cannot ignore the bodies of my character. In her own essay on reading, Alison says:
I glance at what you are reading. It is a book I have just read, by Inez Baranay [The Edge of Bali]. You are reading a chapter describing the narrator's menstrual cramps. I loved that chapter: the articulation of a common experience and the offering of knowledge on that experience. (Bartlett 1998b:92)
The passage she refers to is:
She wakes from this dream, cold, feeling so awfully cold. She has period pain, that cold, cramping pain, that dragging inside her abdomen and thighs. She might have been able to lie still, to sleep again, if it were either the cold or the pain. But both. She switches on the lamp, and pulls on the rest of her light, tropical clothes. ... She lies back with her knees bent, the soles of her felt pressed together: the supta-badakonasana position she had learned in yoga: good for period pain.
Bodily experience, physical existence, the corporeal: these matters cannot fail to intrigue me, as one who grew to understand the silences imposed on women, queer sexuality and ethnicity. There could also be the influence of my natal horoscope – most planets in earth signs, characterising an especial association to the material world and incarnate self. Then there's the effect of living in a time when these issues provide the philosophical troubles of astounding new technologies. Even just to hear about developments in technical advances and the ontological and ethical problems in, for example, the field of gene engineering makes all of us rephrase our questions of incarnation and mortality. You get used to organ transplants but why is someone else's lung or liver so essentially different from their brain? How many transplants can you have and still be you? What about pre-natal diagnoses of disabilities, of congenital diseases? What about parental selection of sex? What about 'designer babies'?
Will cyborgs do yoga?
And how can we talk of truth and real selves in a post-modern world of uncertainty, relativism, unstable identity? Yet yoga's ultimate question seems always to have been: What is the true self?
Is it the question that matters, or the answer, or your answer?
7. The yoga commodity
In a culture where 'retail therapy' is a serious proposition for emotional health, the true self might be found in shopping.
The ever-increasing popularity of yoga supports or creates subsidiary industry. Consider sales of leotards, mats, bolsters, benches and a range of other props. CDs, books, glossy magazines, videos. Master-class workshops. Classes in gyms. Trips to India.
A recent article in an Indian newspaper, describing the strident marketing of a vast array of 'yoga goods', the celebrity endorsements of yoga and the new entrants to yoga styles – Hot Yoga, Flow Yoga, Power Yoga – asks:
Was this one more example of Western materialism versus Eastern philosophical essence or was it a more general ancient high thinking with simple living fighting a losing battle with the modern branded-goods-for-every-activity obsession that makes moving from one activity to another also a feverishly-paced change from one set of clothes and gear to another, quite often eclipsing the importance of the activity itself. ...[T]he over-commercialisation of the notion of something spiritual being 'sold' is disturbing. (Ravindran 2002:1)
The yoga craze in the West is based on teachings originating in India, now being sold Western-style back to India. Watch out
for YogaWorld or McYoga. Is this kind of selling a globalism?
I spent some months in Delhi in 2002, and newspapers and magazines were full of stories on yoga as a fashion among middle-class women. In familiar manner, various styles and schools are sampled and summarized by the journalist. Savasana, the pose of the corpse, a pose of complete stillness and release usually done at the end of every session, is deemed unnecessary by one fresh yoga adherent, as after all, she claims, we already spend so much time lying around watching television that it's a waste of time to lie around when doing yoga, we need only the active poses.
Commodification, ownership, patent and copyright, tradition and innovation, Westernisation and globalization: these are aspects of the intellectual property issue that was one of the starting points for my novel Neem Dreams. When patents were taken out on neem products - products manufactured by multinational companies, based on the traditional knowledge systems of India which had long ago discovered the many uses of the neem tree in agriculture, medicine, household - many arguments arose over the accusations of 'intellectual piracy'. These arguments have parallels in the yoga craze.
In Neem Dreams, some Western travelers discuss their reason for being in India:
We have come to take further instruction, says Toronto, a stern woman in an embroidered pale blue waistcoat over blue; everyone has new clothes today. But he, says Norway, meaning the golden one, he comes only to network, to contact his contacts, to say I was in India. It is business, yoga, argues Toronto, let's face it, this is the 90s.
Some yogic thing for orientalisme, perhaps, thinks Jade, a book, if there were a yoga book better than the rest or
And why is he here, he wants to secure Guruji's name on the patent he has taken out for yoga props. With Jade between them they air their arguments. Patents on yoga props! Guruji never took out patents; he started with taking an ordinary bench, blanket or bolster, household items, and showing you how they can help you find your pose.
or if not the book, the blanket, the mat, some special kind of mat they lie on to do it, that would be the kind of thing, if there were one yoga prop that was the best you would find it in orientalisme or
And LA developed them further. His props are a new product, supposed to be better than the everyday benches and ropes, as they will be available in calculated sizes, and packaged with instructions. He goes too far, insists Norway; markets himself as a master, publishes his own book, presenting the method of teaching as his very own, with barely the slightest of references to Guruji to whom he clearly owes everything.
Yoga is not static, it develops, argues Toronto; Guruji doesn't own yoga.
or you could even find LA dream's props, he'd have a card, he could want another outlet or
Yoga is his, it's theirs it's not ours, says Norway. Her what, her faction, does not hold with putting yourself on a par with this Guruji who devoted his life, learnt from his guru in ancient lineage, made our learning possible and has more knowledge, experience, insight and wisdom than any of us ever will.
or maybe outfits they do their yoga in, not latex leotards, something from here or design your own line, stretch it out with Jade.
No-one can own knowledge any more argues Toronto.
In yoga magazines in the West, and in cafes adjacent to yoga schools, there is discussion over whether yoga teachers should charge for their classes, and how much. They have to earn a living, but should they rely on yoga for that? If they rely on yoga teaching to earn a living, does it compromise the teaching by the need to attract paying students, the need to make them feel relaxed and comfortable rather than challenged?
Teacher training is a prolonged, intensive and systematic – and constantly developing - program at the Institute in Pune where Mr Iyengar, and his daughter Geeta, son Prashant and others teach the teachers. The thorough instruction includes this advice: 'Do not get carried away by the words of appreciation or disapproval of the students . Remember your dharma is to teach the subject of yoga and impart it well.'
In today's world, yoga is business, yoga teachers advertise and compete, and claim superior authenticity for their methods.
In Australia, 'Writers' Centres' have been established in capital cities and large towns, and endlessly offer workshops and master classes that promise to reveal the secrets of getting published, managing your career, selling more of your work, make a living from your travel experiences or your traumas. The desire to write is represented as the desire to sell. I can't find one of the multiple advertisements in the Centres' newsletters that offers a workshop on writing because you love it, writing against the demands of the prevailing marketplace.
Universities in Australia, and elsewhere, are drowning under a tidal wave of neo-liberalism, universal free education belonging to the past and future. Creative writing courses are popular among fee-paying students. I am not against creative writing in universities; I teach it. Jobs for writers as teachers are created here, places for writers to be able to do new work are created here. The courses become a kind of general humanities course at undergraduate level, where discussions about culture and humanity take place as once they might have in literature courses. The fervent hope is uttered by teachers that they at least will create better and more committed, adventurous readers. (That so many creative writing students want to write and not read remains a baffling, even disturbing, fact.)
The market place, though, plays its inevitable part, with the number of students going on to publish commercially being the measure of any creative writing program's success, ensuring not only its prestige but its continuation, its funding. What sells becomes the measure of worth, and all this in a time when the conservatism, timidity, conformity and predictability of mainstream publishing are widely acknowledged in current discussions and writings on the publishing industry.
Still, this market-place mania, and the prevailing political climate are merely current contexts not lasting preconditions; they will have altered in the cycles and transformations of time. And we will still be doing our practice,
Take away the market place, and people will still practice yoga and practice writing.
And while yogis of old might not have had those great new lightweight yoga bricks available from the sports store at the mall, and you can do yoga without them, they can assist your practice; if you can get them, do it.
8. Four ways to be right
What is the true self? And how can we talk of truth and real selves in a post-modern world of uncertainty, relativism, unstable identity? In a world where gene studies and consciousness studies keep our sense of what we know of real selves and truth unsettled and subject to constantly unfolding findings? Can yoga shed any light?
In his essay 'Four Different Ways to be Absolutely Right', Walter Truett Anderson claims there are four distinguishable worldviews in contemporary Western societies, each with 'its own ideas about what truth is – where and how you look for it, how you test or prove it'. These are: the neo-romantic, the social traditionalist, the scientific rationalist and the postmodernist.
In the neo-romantic worldview, truth is found through harmony with nature and/or spiritual explorations of the inner self. In the social- traditional worldview, truth is found in the heritage of Civilisation; in the scientific-rationalist through methodical, disciplined inquiry, and in the postmodernist-ironist, truth is socially constructed. Each has its own idea about what truth is, how it is found, how you prove it. (Anderson: 107)
Yoga's fundamental question can be seen as what is the self? And the answer depends on how you find or recognise truth.
Following Anderson's model we could suppose there are four types of contemporary Western-style yogis. (The word 'yogi' properly refers to a master practitioner, but in McYogaworld anyone who is taking classes might call themselves a yogi (or yogini).) Each type has its distinguishable way of thinking about the 'true' self and how it is found in yoga:
The neo-romantic westerner finds her true inner sel
f through introspective and meditative attention in yoga. There she is, an unmistakable reality, in the quiet observation of the flow of thoughts and the momentary stillness of the flow. There she really is in that fleeting bliss, the bliss of divinity, so much higher than the material world's mere pleasure. 'I love where yoga takes me' she might say.
She's the one likely to do her yoga among aspirational and motivational slogans (they've become a kind of religion of their own), and to believe that displaying sayings like 'believe it and you're half-way there' and 'angels are watching' make these things true, keep her true to their spirit, confirm her connection to an occult world of better feelings, kinder actions and superior ways of knowing. Ancient wisdom is a key concept. Neo romantic yoga is done to tapes of chanting or other 'spiritual' music, with incense burning and tea made from flowers to refresh you afterwards. A sense of connecting to beauty and harmony through yoga appeals, and yoga is part of an aesthetic that values handicrafts, Indian textiles and wind chimes.
The social-traditionalist finds her true self in obedience to the teachings of the widely revered guru and the widely respected yoga tradition 'What I love' she might declare 'is that this is an old tradition, there is a lineage'. She finds value in written texts that elucidate and validate the teachings. The theory is important to her, and she will begin to make a study of the Sutras, the Gita, and articles in yoga journals. Like the neo-romantic, she will be most likely to consider the chanting of Sanskrit words names, the burning of incense and greeting with a Namaste as elements of practice, but more as a demonstration of or homage to yoga's own traditional cultural origins than for personally uplifting and inspiring effects.
Similarly, the scientific rationalist, has a different relationship to the ancient teachings and the guru's scholarly exegesis: he concludes he can rely on their expertise, knowing that yoga has been subject to examination, testing, testimonials. 'It works, it's proven, it's scientific.' The true self is found outside, in objective facts and the tests of experts. He likes to know that patients are referred to yoga by esteemed psychologists, chiropractors and cardiologists. He likes to know he is doing his practice alongside mental health workers and successful lawyers and tough-minded business people, yoga's benefits under scrutiny, its benefits a matter of empirical study , attested to by sober professionals in physiology, oncology and immunology . Yoga's value is found in its alterations and development – evolution, even – following further studies and experiments, responding to particular circumstances and the interaction with a range of other disciplines.
The postmodernist yogi does not believe there is a single true self. Self is an illusion, and there happens to be an old Sanskrit word for that, 'maya'. The self is a construct, an idea; the self is nothing; the self is a game. Yoga is another way to play this game, a way to experience and consider the perfectibility and limitations and inextricability of mind and body, the meaning of creation and the creation of meaning. She can participate in the game of yoga, for example, for scientific rationalist reasons too, when she cares to, for truth itself is a construct not an absolute, although to say so becomes a declaration of absolute truth, but that only shows how tricky the question of truth is. Plus she can also do yoga just because it feels so amazing.
What's that? Post-modernism is over? There may be new ways to be right being formulated, but there'll be a way that yoga will find a way to be right amongst them.
Of course 'four ways' is not seriously a taxonomy to categorize and divide all yoga practitioners. Yoga practitioners are infinitely more various and the categories we inhabit are not exclusive and not entirely distinct. The point is only to wonder if yoga can say something about the various ways to be right or that ways to be right can say something about yoga. It's just another way to think about what we're doing when we do yoga, how to integrate yoga into the other discourses of our daily lives.