The Purpose of Yoga - Empowerment with Jnana Yoga
Jnana Yoga is one of the four primary forms of Yoga. Raja, Karma, and Bhakti Yoga are the other three primary forms of Yoga. When you consider the potential of Jnana Yoga applied to life, you will see that success is also a coordinated effort and a spiritual path of compassion, discipline, study, visualization, and meditation. Jnana Yoga is coordinated power.
Anyone can improve himself or herself with applied thought, action, and perseverance. Personal development requires desire, guidance, and a steady stream of motivation. For all of these ingredients to come together at the correct time, one must study under the guidance of a Guru, Swami, Yoga teacher, mentor, or coach.
At this time, and thanks to the Internet, children have access to information beyond our childhood dreams, but the amount of information is overwhelming for one person. In fact, you would need a team to work together, just to decipher facts from fiction, in order to acquire reliable information.
Being smart does not translate into being successful. You could memorize libraries of information, but if you do not apply any of it to real life, it is just trivia. Applied knowledge must be put into action for self empowerment to take place.
Therefore, reading scriptures and classics is a noble pursuit. You are practicing the foundation of Jnana Yoga, but you must visualize, meditate, and act ethically, for your Jnana Yoga practice to reach its maximum potential.
Some people may say it is wrong to have goals, to improve yourself, and to visualize a better life for your family. Yet, the world would be a much better place in the hands of empowered Jnana Yoga practitioners.
Copyright 2007 Paul Jerard / Aura Publications
Paul Jerard, E-RYT 500, has written many books on the subject of Yoga. He is a co-owner and the Director of Yoga Teacher Training at: Aura Wellness Center, in Attleboro, MA. http://www.riyoga.com He has been a certified Master Yoga Teacher since 1995. To receive a Free Yoga e-Book: "Yoga in Practice," and a Free Yoga Newsletter, please visit: http://www.yoga-teacher-training.org/index.html
Brand New Dvd Denise Austin Fat Blasting Yoga
Dancing For Your Whole Life: Yogic Advice from the Vijnanabhairava Tantra
Wander or dance to exhaustion in utter spontaneity. Then, suddenly, drop to the ground and in this fall be total. There absolute essence is revealed.
~ Vijnanabhairava Tantra, verse 111
Each of has the desire (yes?) to become ~ with each breath we take, with each step of our lives ~ more fully alive and yet there is the paradox that each breath we take, each step of our lives, brings us one step, one breath closer to our death. So how do we work with this? Is there a solution to this paradox?
The traditions of Buddhism as well as Kashmir Shaivism see (the appearance of) this life of ours as training-ground for (the appearance of) that moment of our death. They resolve the paradox through the understanding that only by training ~ in every moment ~ in the art of being fully alive, fully present here and now, in this moment, in this moment, in this moment ~ only through a practice such as this are we able then to be fully present (fully alive!) at the moment of our death.
The quotation above, from the Vijnanabhairava Tantra (a text written by the Shaivite School of Kashmir around the first century A.D.), points to such a resolution. Lets take a closer look
Wander or dance to exhaustion in utter spontaneity. Have you ever danced, or performed any other activity, so completely, with such total abandon, such love and absorption, that the point of exhaustion (what distance runners call the wall) opens into a whole new realm of experience, puts you in touch with a whole new flow of energy/inspiration? Its the moment when years of training (our accumulated expertise) is allowed to open, to fall away into a mindless spontaneity when movement becomes both divinely precise and effortless (Michael Jordan, Baryshnikov, & Jet Li come to mind here) when I am no longer doing anything, yet all things are still manifesting, radiantly, perfectly. In the language of Taoism this state of effortless doing is called Wu Wei.
Then, suddenly, drop to the ground and in this fall be total. Have you ever gone out on a warm summer night, laid on your back on a grassy hillside, and let your mind & heart & vision travel out into the starry sky, with its countless galaxies? When we surrender, we surrender completely no holding back. We let the whole thing dissolve. We die into the present moment. In the language of Tibetan Buddhism, this is called the Completion Stage.
There absolute essence is revealed. What if the essence of life and the essence of death were one and the same? What if both our wandering and our dancing were expressions of that one essence, and equally wise? What if we could touch ~ with each breath, each step, each of our awakened daily activities ~ the sweetness & power that is this essence?
and now, please feel free . to Dance!
Elizabeth Reninger holds a Masters degree in Chinese Medicine, is a published poet, and has been exploring Yoga - in its Taoist, Buddhist & Hindu varieties ~ for more than twenty years. Her teachers include Richard Freeman and Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. To read more of her yoga-related essays, please visit her website: http://www.writingup.com/blog/elizabeth_reninger
Sitemap
