Abhiniveśāḥ - A New Years Post

 "The truth of the matter is just this: No god is a philosopher or seeker after wisdom, for he is wise already; or does any one else who is wise seek after wisdom. Neither do the ignorant seek after wisdom.  For herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied." - Plato, Symposium.

            I've been debating what to write this week. I'd intended to continue to talk about Stoicism and Yoga, but another topic has been on my mind, a topic appropriate to New Years, and something I've been teaching on constantly for about a week.  A dream last night answered the dilemma quite clearly.  It was one of those nights where you know you've been dreaming all night, but can only remember about 30 seconds of actual content.  In my dream I was in the ancient world, probably Rome, and I was on my death-bed.  Whatever ailed me first took my sight, and in the dream my eyes were so weak that I wasn't able to read on my own (although, being a dream, I could see the room clearly).  Then my wife came into the scene.  She knelt by my bed and asked if there was anything I needed, anything to ease the pain.  I asked her to bring me Plato's Phaedo, the famous dialogue dealing with the death of Socrates, and read it to me. She brought the scroll and began to read, and that's all I remember.  The whole scene reminds me of a book I read this summer that depicted the death of that great Stoic and enemy of Caesar, Marcus Cato.  Before his suicide (at least in the fictionalized account I read), he sought solace in the Phaedo, finding comfort in its logical "proofs" of the immortality of the soul, and Socrates' own equanimity and grace in the face of his own death.  The death of Socrates, as depicted in the Phaedo, has been held up as the perfect example of a a philosopher facing death without fear.  Therefore, I thought I’d take a break from the Stoics and write a bit about abhiniveśāḥ. 

            As you might recall from last week’s post, abhiniveśāḥ, translated as “clinging to bodily life” or “fear of death,” is the fifth of the obstacles to Liberation given in the Yoga Sutras.  These obstacles (or kleśas) are listed in a particular order: avidyā (ignorance), asmitā (egoism), rāga (attachment, or desire), dveṣa (aversion), and abhiniveśāḥ.  Ignorance is said to be the ground upon which the others rest, the idea being that the other obstacles vanish when true knowledge (of the eternal Self, or Seer) is achieved through the various yogic practices.  In fact, we can look at these five obstacles as a sequence taking us deeper into bondage:  due to ignorance of the nature of the self, ie. confusing the nature of the Seer (eternal consciousness) with the Seen (matter, mind, etc), we identify with something that is sort of a hybrid; the mind-body complex, animated by the soul.  This is the second obstacle, egoism.  The Yoga Sutras define egoism as considering “the nature of the seer and the nature of the instrumental power of seeing to be the same thing.” (II.6) This is much like the brain thinking it’s the eyeball, or you thinking that you’re your web browser.  Egoism then, is unlimited and unbound consciousness misidentifying itself with a limited (in space, time, etc) body-mind.  I’m reminded as I write this of a line from one of the initiation rituals of the Golden Dawn, a Victorian Rosecrucian order, in which the initiator explains to the candidate that “The Three Fold Cord bound about your waist was an image of the three-fold bondage of Mortality, which amongst the Initiated is called earthly or material inclination, that has bound into a narrow place the once far-wandering Soul.”  Clearly the symbolism and metaphysics are different, but the idea is similar – we are bound into a single individual instance by identification with a mortal body.

            Attachment and Aversion are really just a deepening and reinforcing of this tendency.  We enjoy something through the instrument, and we begin to actually identify with the experience.  Similarly, we identify ourselves by our rejection of other ideas.  This comes across in speech in numerous ways:  “Are you a Republican or Democrat (based on whether you like or dislike their platforms)?”  “Are you a white chocolate person or a dark chocolate person?” “Are you a Mac or a PC?”  I always think of High School when considering this point, a time period that was about “finding ourselves” which really means defining ourselves by our likes and dislikes.  We still do this, but when we were kids we did so unabashed.  I, for instance, was labeled a “metal-head” due to the fact that I enjoyed that type of music and played guitar.  People who enjoyed sports were labeled “jocks,” those who enjoyed school were called “nerds,” and so on.  As the internet flattens interpersonal communication, we see this becoming more evident.  Just log onto Facebook and see how people’s  profiles are set up to define you by when you click the “like” button. 

            All of this is like the ego principal coming into contact with the world of the senses, creating a sort of friction and tension.  Whenever we are confronted with new ideas, we tend to feel naturally a bit uncomfortable, because we don’t yet know how we feel about them.  There’s a sense of uncertainty that most find unpleasant, because it challenges our preconceptions.  The habit of continually relating everything to the self (which we might call egoism) means that new information must be assimilated as quickly as possible – we must discover whether or not we “like” or “dislike” this new thing in order to feel comfortable again.  We arrange our world around ourselves in this way, everything settling into a tidy arrangement of a world view. Having defined ourselves by our likes and dislikes, egoism is expanded outside the mind-body to include our favorite football team, our political party, and our musical tastes. 

            Where it goes from here seems natural.  When we have a pleasant experience, we want to have it again and again.  Similarly, when we manage to avoid something we are averse to, we want to keep on avoiding it.  This is the principal of continuance which we all fall victim to.  The Sutras themselves admit that abhiniveśāḥ, fear of death, afflicts even the wise.  How do we make the leap to fear of death?  Well, the main reason we want to keep living is to continue to enjoy what we enjoy and to avoid what we loathe.  We’re largely afraid of losing what we have (family, friends, pleasure, etc), and we’re afraid of pain in the act of dying, or that once dead we might have to endure something we dislike (like divine retribution).  Hence we see so many conceptions of the afterlife which appear calculated to comfort these fears.  A common conception of the Christian afterlife says that in heaven we’ll meet up with all those we were separated from, and we’ll be with them forever, and that everyone there is eternally happy.  We’re similarly assured that there’s no pain to be found, etc. 

            What does all of this have to do with New Years?  As I’ve shown, the order in which the obstacles are listed can be taken to be a progression into bondage, each obstacle being a reinforcement of the one previous.  It is assumed that your typical person, at the beginning of the yogic path, will be afflicted by each of these obstacles.  If we consider kleśas in the exact opposite order, we see the order in which the obstacles must be attacked.  How do we tangle egoism or ultimate ignorance when we are completely bound up with our attachments, aversions and the desire for their continuation?  Therefore, if we are to make progress in the yogic path (and I’d argue, any spiritual or philosophic life), we must first address abhiniveśāḥ, which I will venture to broaden the definition of as “fear of change.” 

            To me, abhiniveśāḥ boils down to the desire to preserve the status quo due to fear of change.  In the Bhagavad Gita, the 16^th chapter sets divides the qualities of a divinely natured person (read: virtuous) and a demonically natured person (read: animal-natured).  Krishna, beginning with the divine qualities, lists those which we might expect (charity, self-control, compassion, etc), but he gives the most prominent place to something surprising.  Abhyam, fearlessness, is the first word of the chapter (a prominent place).  My interpretation of this is that all fear is essentially related to change, ie. is abhiniveśāḥ. Therefore, before we can bring out the rest of the divine qualities, we must be willing to change.  Without this willingness, and the courage to follow through, growth, as well as Liberation, is impossible.  So the first obstacle we face in our desire for peace is our own resistance to change from the state we’ve become accustomed to. Similarly, the first quality we must try to cultivate is fearlessness in the face of change.

            I mentioned in an earlier post that I knew nothing about Plato and the other classical Western Philosophers, and that I never read any of them, other than in excerpts.  After that post, I started to correct this, reading several of Plato’s dialogues and most of the first volume of Copleston’s epic A History of Philosophy.  If I can keep my enthusiasm going, I’d like to continue my survey of Philosophy into the modern day.  However, in doing so I’m directly confronted with the problems I’ve described above.  As I read ideas of numerous different people which are often in conflict, I naturally relate them to myself and my own established “identity,” that composite of my attachments and aversions.  Am I a Platonist, a Neoplatonist, or a Kantian?  Who do I agree with, and what parts do I disagree with?  Furthermore, some of the philosophers pose some challenging theories that I can’t help but agree with but also conflict with the world view I’ve built around myself.  This creates a little mental tension which can only be resolved by absorbing the new material into the whole of my identity. Clearly, this also explains the timing of my dream last night (in yoga, sight is connected with the 3rd Chakra, the ego, and the sense of identity and self.)  Similarly, studying Sanskrit has been an incredibly bruising experience on my ego.  Considering myself as decently intelligent, I find myself at the level of a child regarding Sanskrit, but not even as well off as a child, as a child doesn’t have to worry about fighting old habits, or unlearning old preconceptions.  Learning, we can see, is not always pleasant, but I think we can argue that it is usually a good thing regardless.  Still, its not hard to see why so many people prefer to remain complacent in their lives and accept the status quo rather than the uncertainty that accompanies change.  Certainly it is easier and more pleasant.  I myself have often been tempted to stop studying because it would be easier to just live with convention, happy with the little I know, content in self-congratulatory ignorance.  The quote at the beginning of this post sums this tendency up nicely.

            So many people choose the easy road of complacency (consciously or not), trying to find stasis in life by building a nest around themselves of material goods and pleasant notions, and trying to make it permanent.  But the truth is in opposition.  Everything in life changes, and fighting change brings us nothing but misery.  Sooner or later, someone is going come along and knock over your neat little applecart. 

            The doctrines of the Stoics, of the Yogis, and of the Buddhists are largely trying to answer the question “how can avoid the suffering brought on by the inevitability of loss and pain?”  The answer given by all three is Non-attachment.  This is the practice (and it takes lots of practice) of not trying to hold on to the objects of life, even the body itself.  This is not to say not to enjoy life, or the things in it, but to recognize that whatever you have, you will have to give back.  The first step in this practice must be to recognize the inevitability of change, and to stop trying to make the world into something its not: static.  We must further recognize this habit in the way we consider ourselves, that we believe we are a certain way.  We say “I’m not that kind of guy,” or “I’m just an angry person,” or “I’m a soft-hearted person,” as if these are the only possibilities available, that we, like our likes and dislikes, are an “either/or”.  We’re not.  Identity, personality, and even most traits are fluid (all traits are actually fluid, because they all come to an end).  Think back to who you thought you were and what you valued (and what you were averse to) when you were 10, 16, 20, 30, 40 years old, and it becomes obvious that you’re not the same person in the conventional understanding of the term.  The first step seems to me to be to loosen our own conception of ourselves, essentially “undoing” the personality to discover its actual nature as impermanent (and I’d argue, largely arbitrary).  The yogic method here shares a singular commonality with the Hermetic doctrine of the Path of Return – of the upraising of the mind from the complex to the simple, the particular to the universal.  Both represent an undoing of the path of “creation” of the particular person into its component parts.  While this may sound like metaphysical suicide at first glance, we must remember that in both systems, there is a single permanent aspect to each of us, the immortal soul, and it is this which remains when its coverings are removed.  But this is starting to take me away from my point...

            With the arrival of New Years, its natural to take account of our lives, and to aspire and hope to better ourselves in the year to come.  The main obstacle to this is our innate fear of change, to a clinging of an apparently fixed identity that is the outgrowth of the conjunction of the Seer and the Seen, of the soul with the body-mind and through it the world.  Therefore, whatever you may wish to become in 2011, resolve to be first fearless of change, and even of death.  After all, after whatever pain involved in actually dying passes, there remains only two possibilities:  there is some sort of afterlife, in which existence continues, or there is not, in which case you won’t care or even notice.  Either way, what is there to fear? 

Happy New Year everybody!

"You're not your fucking khakis." - Tyler Durden