A Garland of faith: śraddhā, Agni, and Medhā sūktams
Once, during one of my anti-200 hour sessions, Michelle Cassandra Johnson came to speak. As often happens in the course of long term teaching/practice, I forget now the details but a single thing stands out and shimmers. I don’t remember what I’d asked her to present. I don’t remember what year this was or which students were in attendance. I only remember how she kept saying ‘spiritual’ and how I interrupted, said Michelle. The direct way you talk about yoga as a spirituality is intense. No apology, no hemming and hawing. As if it just is.
Of course it is, she said. If you read any of the texts, you can’t deny that yoga is a spiritual path.
I added, or look and listen to any of the people who practice it.
Yes. she said. And then everybody was quiet for awhile.
People get hung up. We have qualms. Religion, to our contemporary ears, sounds like ignorance and bigotry. Any conversation about faith might veer - we think - toward spiritual bypassing. And spiritual bypassing is Bad. We don’t want to be That Kind of Person.
Much like the quandary as to weather or not yoga is political, I tend to answer people’s questions about this with a non-answer that asks more questions. Yoga is not objective, defined, or fixed. If a person practicing yoga is also political, than yoga is political. But yoga is not a political stance or identity. This has everything to do with horses and carts.
Nor is yoga a religious doctrine or identity.
The spirit of yoga depends on who, and how, and why.
This is my superficial answer.
As there is always a superficial and then a deeper answer to questions, we go on:
Of course yoga is spiritual. Even in those contexts in which it seems purely secular, fitness based, and materialistic, we get a glimpse of people’s inner motives. Even in new agey classes with crystals and sage and gongs, folks are showing their cards. Even when we balk and doubt and reason it’s right there: the question is not ‘is yoga spiritual?’ but who are we, what are we, ourselves?
If we ask the right questions, we see the specific qualms this might help us work out in ourselves, what resources we might tap, the reasons we have for being who and where we are. We might get honest and true.
Heaven help us, we might begin to understand.
Then the doubt about yoga being spiritual is revealed as a completely silly one. It’s a deflection we get caught in, a presumption we wield to keep ourselves comfortable, a defense we’ve been using for so long we forget it’s a defense and think it’s “reasonable”.
śraddhā
There is very little doctrine or theology in this tradition. Rather there is the again and again teaching of diversity of paths and contexts, and the constant injunction to seek within.
śraddhā is not something we believe. It is something we do.
Etymologically it links the roots śrat and dhā. śrat means something like truth, and something like heart. Both. It’s meaning is much closer to ‘critical reasoning capacity’ than it is to ‘blind faith’.
Dhā means something like ‘to place’ and something like ‘to hold’, but this brings up questions of agency: we’re not ‘holding ourselves up’. We do not make our own heart beat or lungs breath. We did not make this world, but we are living in it and faced with a lot of questions and problems and unending depending moments. In the Gāyatrī mantraḥ, we ‘rest’ our minds on a higher if not the highest truth.
Good questions have a bloom, a spill quality to them. We are not foundational, but we do tend to hold or put or place a lot of stuff in or on our own heart. Expectations. Judgements. Resentments. Wantings. Prejudice and even ‘belief’.
śrat and dhā unfurl to two implications: 1. what we do matters. We might have to un-do such cluttering of the hearts as we’ve become accustomed to: the anger, the resentment, the excuse. This will probably take both time and hard work. What is our heart? What does it carry? What are we holding or centering or hiding?
2. Our hard work and effort ultimately finds ease and comfort and rest. Support. Home. Truth. I’ll not specify the questions resultant from this, but ask for yours. I will say they are infinite. And rich.
What happens if truth and heart are the same thing?
These brutal, dark times
We are living a nightmare. Ancient, twisted karma riddles our minds and worries our hands. People are suffering and ideals are at stake. Human rights are devastated. Social security threatened. Reason and education are denied, science and art and public welfare are under attack. Violence and hatred are driving us mad.
We all groan a little when ‘thoughts and prayers’ are offered in response to real and on-going crises, but it is also true that humanitarian and revolutionary leaders have throughout history been spiritual folk. MLK and James Baldwin were pastors. Ghandi and Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela were all deeply spiritual people. Even folks we’d consider rationalists and anti-church were motivated and sustained by a profound vein of wisdom. This was true of the founding fathers and of folks we’d call ‘atheist’ like Albert Camus, who revolts against the absurd with an unyielding hope and an inner strength that can exist even in the most terrifying of circumstances. "Au milieu de l'hiver,” he wrote, “j'apprenais enfin qu'il y avait en moi, et invincible, l'été" (in the midst of winter, I finally found there was, within me, an invincible summer).
I know that you are exhausted, frightened, and more aware of anger than of peace.
I also know some things that can help.
Veda Recitation Class (totally beginner friendly) starts November 4 and goes through January.
śraddhā is devotion. It is a love for what is beyond the immediate and known, a dedication to the truth, even when the truth is beyond the scope of current understanding. It is a deep interior knowing and expression of confidence, a determination to see things though, and a willingness to work. It counters cynicism and self-defeating behavior. It fuels a capacity to move beyond short term considerations toward long-term, soul-driven conviction.
In my lineage, śraddhā, Agni, and Medhā sūktams are considered to be the first things students should learn. This is downright traditional pedagogy: even Patañjali’s sūtras say that śraddhā is the first step on the yoga path. In the lovely way that yoga is perfect, these three hymns are very simple and accessible, soothing and possible. They provide a practice - something to give us basic direction and easy to follow guidance right when we feel most confused, overwhelmed, and lost. They teach us the basics - the elementals, the first skills - while also validating and confirming our need.
To my own heart these mantras are not only ancient and rudimentary: they are contemporary and alive. They are exactly what we need now. They are everything we could need. They are my solace. This is the only way I know how to reckon with despair. They are stronger than I am, and they are more powerful than hatred.
I will teach you to sing them. I’ll answer questions and give context and tools. You’ll have community and accountability. Most importantly, you’ll recover your heart. Please join us, and please invite anybody you think might benefit.
Beginner level! November - January. Yoga is big on lists. As you learn you understand why and how lists work. The First Thing always carries the whole within it like a seed carries a forest or an inbreathe carries all possible articulation. This list (śraddhā, Agni, Medhā) is primary, essential learning if one wants to understand the yogic path. śraddhā is generally considered 'faith'. Agni is our willpower, divinized to fire. And Medhā is the transformed, oceanic mind.