Ways of Knowing

As Professor Narasimham explained in today’s Yoga Sutra Chanting and Philosophy of Yoga class at the Anatha Research Foundation (which, to my chagrin, I’ll only be able to attend a handful of times before departing) Patanjali, in the yoga sutras, talks about three ways of acquiring “right knowledge” (essentially, what I have been trained to call “true belief,” knowledge being, by definition, true or “right”).

These three are pratyaksha (perception), anumana (logical inference), and agama (testimony or tradition, including scriptural knowledge.)

One of the students in our class made the insightful observation that the first two are essentially Western philosophy’s empiricism and rationalism, which she also thoughtfully pointed out are often seen from the perspective of our tradition as in conflict with each other since the days of the Ancient Greeks, whether it’s Aristotle vs. Plato or Hume against Descartes, with maybe Kant off to the side trying to mediate things.

Additionally, in my world, testimony or tradition tends not to be seen as a reliable knowledge-generating methodology, at least without further empirical or logical justification. In fact, accepting “received knowledge” at face value is generally seen as an informal fallacy of logic, the so-called “appeal to tradition,” the very same mistake in reasoning that has people believing all sort of wild claims and, as a result, having misguided opposition to same-sex marriage, birth-control, or women’s collegiate athletics.

What I found puzzling, and had to ask about (even though I felt a bit presumptuous posing a question in my very first class—but hey! It’s my last week here!) was whether Patanjali envisioned a hierarchy in the reliability of these various knowledge-generating techniques, as, for instance, we tend to do in the West, depending on whether our intuitions lie with the Rationalists or Empiricists.

But as Dr. N. pointed out, the three techniques work together so that, let’s say, pratyaksha is seen as reliable unless it conflicts with anumana, as in the case, for example, of “seeing” a solid table but knowing via received knowledge from the sciences that, in fact, it’s actually made up of atoms with more space between them than matter. Thus, none of the three gets to hold the epistemological high ground; it's rock-paper-scissors all around.

And what was particularly interesting to me was that, as I understood it, anyway, even scriptural knowledge doesn’t therefore get to be incorrigible; if it’s illogical and/or conflicts with sensory perceptions, then it can be rejected as not providing “right knowledge.”

Too bad for same-sex marriage, birth-control, and women’s collegiate athletics, this isn’t more a more prevalent idea in the West.

Official*

Given the opportunity, your average human being (well, this one, anyway) can rationalize just about any sort of behavior; all it takes is a plausible excuse and most of us (well, me, anyway) will find a way to justify even relatively egregious actions in the name of some principle that makes what we’ve done seem reasonably acceptable.

In this case, though, my transgression was pretty minor.

I’ve been one pose away from having been given the full Ashtanga primary series to practice under the watchful eye of my guru, Saraswathi. Having stopped me after Maricasana D the first week I was here in Mysore, she has then—following my triumph in binding both sides of the pose the same day the Steelers lost in the Superbowl—been slowly doling them out to me, a pose or three a week, depending on my progress and who knows what else.

Most recently, before my family and I left for Goa, I received Ubhaya Pandangusthasana and Urdva Mukha Pascimattanasana in a single day, leaving only Setu Bandhasana, a pose I usually get away with in the led class, even when, like on Saturday, I am in the front row, right where Saraswathi can put the kibosh on me should she so desire.

So today, I figured, “What the hell,” and “Besides, it’s my last week here,” thereby justifying my decision to assay that final posture even though I hadn’t officially received it.

Bad man, I know, but it’s my last week here, okay?

Of course, no sooner did I complete it and move into the finishing postures than my teacher arrives alongside to ask me in her sweet, but commanding voice: “What you do?” the question she poses to people as a way of ascertaining how far they’ve gone in the practice and whether they’re ready for a new pose.

Busted!

Upside-down in Sarvangasana, I mumble first, “Urdva Mukha Paschimottanasa,” but then have to come clean: “Setu Bandasana,” I admit, guiltily.

“You do it correctly?” she asks.

“I think so,” I say, never sure, really about the “correctness” of any posture, meanwhile steeling myself for whatever punishment will now ensure.

She takes a beat, obviously, in my mind, deciding whether to ban me from the shala for life or just the rest of my time here.

But then: “Okay. Tomorrow you stand up for backbends.”

I almost fall out my pose with relief.

It’s taken six weeks, but I’m back to where I was in the length of my practice when I arrived.

Now, though, I’m official, albeit today—I admit somewhat guiltily but tempered by the excuse of this being my last week here—with an asterisk.

Guru

The talk at the Ramakrishna Ashram last night was all about devotion to one’s guru. The monk, Swami Karunakaranandaji Maharaj, told a number of stories about the commitment of students to their teachers; the one I recall best had something to do with Krishna bringing the dead child of his guru back to life because he had promised his master he would find the man’s lost son.

I couldn’t help but compare such an attitude to that of most students for their teachers at, for instance, my school. Whereas in the Indian tradition, the student serves his guru, in our world, the teacher is generally seen as providing a service to the student. College students, (somewhat reasonably, I think), have something of a consumerist mentality about their education: they’re paying for it, and it’s up to their instructors to provide value on the dollar.

Whereas this does turn education into a kind of market transaction, I don’t think it’s so awful, really. As a teacher, I feel a powerful responsibility to do right by my students, to provide them with experiences that are meaningful and relevant to their own lives. This doesn’t mean, of course, that it has to be all fun and games, (although in general, I think students learn best when they’re enjoying themselves), and it’s often the case that the students need to have their minds opened to new conceptions of meaning and relevance, but when it comes to devotion, I would have to say that I’m more devoted to the learners than they are to me.

But perhaps this isn’t so far from the Indian ideal, after all. Because, like most— if not all—of my colleagues, I will happily admit that the most profound pedagogical experiences I have are when I have the opportunity to learn from those I am officially teaching.

So, in essence, my students ARE my guru, and thus it’s perfectly in keeping with the tradition that Swami Karunakaranandaji Maharaj was talking about, and entirely consistent with it that in the classroom, I'm the real devotee.

Nearsighted

For the true mystic, or even—if I understand Swami Prabhavananda correctly—your average follower of Hinduism, belief in God is not a matter—as it often construed of in the West—of being convinced by some argument or another. Rather, it comes as a result of direct perception, just as my belief that I’m sitting here in my apartment typing on my computer follows straightforwardly from the sensory data I’m receiving through my eyes, ears, nose, and body, in general.

Here’s Prabhavananda quoting Ramakrishna describing his first vision of the divine: “House, walls, doors, the temple—all disappeared into nothingness. Then I saw an ocean of light, limitless, living, conscious, blissful. From all sides waves of light, with a roaring sound, rushed towards me and engulfed and drowned me, and I lost all awareness of outward things.”

Prabhvananda goes on to say that later in his life, Ramakrishna passed six months in a state without any consciousness of body or of external surroundings, remaining, as he put it, “continuously in the bliss of union with Brahman.”

I suppose if something like that happened to me—even for six seconds rather than half a year—I’d have to believe in the supernatural, too. As it is, though, in spite of over a decade of serious yoga practice and what I hope is at least a somewhat open mind to the possibility that everyday reality isn’t all there is, I remain unconvinced by my own experience, anyway, that there is a Higher Power behind the awe-inspiring majesty that is the natural Universe.

I like the idea of it, and conceptually it makes sense that the natural world is merely a manifestation of something more essential, but so far, it remains merely conceptual. And while I certainly cry inwardly, “Oh God, Oh God” at any number of the difficult poses during asana practice, I’ve yet to truly experience the divine either while doing yoga or in reflective meditation upon the practice.

This, of course, may be merely a perceptual failing on my part, no different than my inability to read the big “E” on the eyechart without my glasses.

Maybe I have something like God myopia and won’t ever really experience the Divine without the help of some sort of corrective lenses. In a way, I think that’s sort of what yoga is, which is why, in part, I typically practice without wearing my spectacles.

Norms

The sand in the hourglass of my time here in India is running out—just 10 more days—and so I can’t help being reflective about the experience, even if that’s a bit premature.

And what I couldn’t stop reflecting upon today is that even though lots of practices that would be considered ethically inappropriate in the US are seen as perfectly acceptable here in India, this still doesn’t necessarily support the claim of ethical relativism: essentially, that culture defines morality such that no overarching objective moral norms exist.

I keep thinking about how people drive differently here; basically, the rule seems to be that the bigger your vehicle, the more people have to get out of your way. The yield signs say “Give way,” but the only giving way I ever see is like when a subcompact car lets a giant truck go ahead of it mainly in order not to be run over.

In the US, plenty of what passes for daily practice here would be reckless driving if not attempted manslaughter, but does this mean that there aren’t any objective moral norms related to conduct on the road?

I don’t think so. It seems to me that both societies concur on some foundational principle, maybe something like, “It is wrong to violate the rules and practices of the road.” It’s just that the two countries have different conventions, sort of like how people drive on the right in the US and (mainly) on the left here.

Or consider the morality of queuing up. At the train station yesterday, people just sort of surged to the ticket window, even if you’re already standing in front of them; only pushy assholes would do that in America, and they’d be unlikely to get away with it, at least if the person in front of them were bigger.

Again, I think both societies share a common value in this case; call it efficiency. The shared moral norm would then be, “One should always queue up in a manner that maximizes line-moving speed.” Here, that means getting ahead of whomever you can; in Seattle, by contrast, that means somewhat passive-aggressively ensuring that everyone behind you knows who was here first.

So in the end, it’s all the same thing, only different. Or, as is so often the case in India, totally different, but somehow the same.

Traffic

If you consider, even for a moment, our society’s necessarily inevitable transition to the post-petroleum economy, you’re going to conclude that we’re all totally and utterly FUBARed; so much of our world depends on the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine that the path from here to whatever lies beyond for recreational and commercial transportation and small-power generation seems absolutely impassible

The world may not end in December of 2012, as New Agers, conspiracy theorists, and allegedly, Mayan calendar-makers, forecast, but insofar as the next few years represent a watershed period in humanity’s exodus to a time when life runs on something else than burned-up hydrocarbons, it sure seems like the world-as-we-know-it, anyway, will pretty soon meet its demise, if not before the curtain rises on 2013, at least not too long afterwards.

It’s hard enough to imagine how it’s all going to happen in the United States, whose empire, such as it is, is pretty much founded on cheap gasoline and where the personal automobile is probably a more appropriate symbol of the country than the Stars and Stripes or the Bald Eagle, but maybe because being native to the society, I can sort of envision how a confluence of events, including lots of governmental support and industrial innovation, might almost begin to build a road (no pun intended) to a future in which the gasoline-powered car is not so king.

But here in India, and especially when I’m in a motor vehicle—be it scooter, autorickshaw, or taxicab—enmeshed in the crazy traffic that characterizes pretty much every trip I’ve taken, it just seems impossible. What will happen to all these vehicles and how in the world will people and goods get moved around without relying on gasoline engines?

What’s weird to think of, though, is how new it all is. A hundred years ago, none of these vehicles existed; besides walking, it was all horses, cows, donkeys, and other four-legged creatures moving folks around; it had gone that way for thousands of years; this period of fast-moving cars, trucks, and motorcyles is just a blip on the screen of human history; I suppose there’s no real reason to assume that it won't all be gone in another century or so.

It’s conceivable that it will actually be an easier switch here in a country like India where so many people already use less gasoline-intensive vehicles—small cars and scooters, for instance—so maybe as the oil runs out, the people here will be able to fun on fumes a little longer and extend the status quo until new solutions emerge, but it also seems likely that because so much of everything depends on petroleum, things are going to get a lot uglier before they get prettier—which I assume they will at some point, when traffic lightens up.

But frankly, all this discussion of cars and traffic represents only a theoretical concern right now; after all, I’m cruising along comfortably from Bangalore to Mysore on the express train.

Humans

I’ve seen Disney video of otters cavorting in the water, sliding down waterfalls and cracking clams on their bellies; or nature films where Orcas throw seals around for fun; and who hasn’t enjoyed movies where bears tussle in the snow for fun or in which mountain goats bash each others’ horns in for the sheer entertainment value of it?

Clearly, there’s something delightful about seeing animals having fun, which is why, perhaps, it’s such pleasure to observe human animals engaging in the variety of strange and wonderful ways they have of amusing themselves, including running full speed into waves breaking upon the shore, then flipping forward to land—smack—on their back in the surf; or hooking themselves to parachutes to be pulled into the air by a boat so as to dangle, suspended a hundred feet above the water, laughing hysterically; or swimming back and forth from sand to breakers, riding the waves or being pulled beneath them or sometimes both.

I wonder if our hunter-gatherer ancestors played around in the ocean as much as we do and whether they did so in such weird ways. Did Og and Gog, for instance, body surf? Did their mates take time from pounding dried fish or whatever to enjoy a float on their backs the boyant waters of the salty sea?

Who can say? But it’s certain that their contemporary counterparts, namely those of us currently inhabiting planet earth, have mastered the practice of doing strange things just for shits n’ giggles; I myself have no idea why parasailing, for example, is such a riot, but I heartily endorse it as a morning’s entertainment and as a way for parents and their children to bond at 150 feet above sea level.

I for one, was cracking up, and so was my kid, and I’m sure that any otters who were watching would have been laughing out loud, too.