Not Present

It’s probably something of a misnomer to talk about “achieving” samadhi, or moksha, mukti, or liberation, or whatever you want to call it, since, as I understand it, (and I probably don’t), when you do, the sense of temporal movement vanishes; you’re in the eternal present, without past or future; it’s all just now. So, you wouldn’t really know that you’d gotten there, because there’d be no looking back on the journey; the only experience you’d experience is the state of arrival.

Consider it the absolute opposition of Gertrude Stein’s assessment of Oakland, California: (there is no “there” there); in the case of samadhi, all that would be there is there.

And while the practice of yoga is intended, ultimately, to enable the practitioner to “achieve” such liberation, the road there consistently reveals how far away that destination remains.

It’s exasperatingly difficult, (but simultaneously fascinating to observe the difficulty) to be in the moment while going through the practice. One’s mind (well, this one’s mind, anyway) darts about like a dragonfly, flitting from the past to the future, rarely, and only momentarily, alighting on the present before zipping backwards or forwards yet again.

You’ll be, for instance, doing the very first movement in the very first sun salutation that begins the practice, and already your mind will be imagining how good it will feel to relax in corpse pose when you finish some 90 minutes hence.

Or, you’ll be on the third iteration of surya namaskara B and start to wonder, looking backwards, “Wait! Is this only number two?” Soon, your thoughts have unraveled all the way back to childhood and the time you embarrassed yourself in second grade when your teacher caught you picking your nose in class.

During the led class, the challenge is even more infernal, as you can’t help fearing what’s yet to come: “Will I survive navasana?” “Can I stay in headstand for the entire count?” “Upplithi is going to kill me, I know it!” (And all these just during the opening invocation.)

Occasionally though, and only for an instant, you do get a taste of what it would be like to actually be in the present; a trickle of sweat pools up on the tip of your nose and drips to your knee during Maricasna A; you notice as it’s happening and are surprised by the moment, but then, just like that, it’s gone, along with your mind, into the past, then it’s back to the future as you start wondering whether you’ll be too sweaty to bind on the other side.