Putting Life Into Life
PART 1
The business of getting the necessities is, for many people, a boring
necessity. It is livelihood,
not life. For them, life begins only after the work has finished. This
is especially true when the work has to be done alone, with no one to
talk to. Making endless
entries in computers down to scrubbing the floor and steps, it is said
to be soul-destroying work, in which there is no progress. One is simply
a replaceable element in a machine.
From the point of view of yoga, this is a big mistake.
It is in just those jobs where not much mental alertness is required
that there is a better chance for inner progress. They are good
conditions for practising a special form of meditation - the meditation
on bare action.
Normally when doing these jobs, the mind is full of
stray thoughts. If there has been a quarrel recently, the mind becomes
cries of 'How could they say that! I ought to have told them... and I
will next time...' and so on, endlessly.
Little dramas are played out in imagination, dramas of triumph or
terrible disaster. If on the other hand not much has happened recently,
the mind drops into vague daydreams, or resentment at having to do a job
like this.
In either case, the action is done with half a mind,
almost on the fringe of attention.
1. Conscious Action in Static Environment
The yoga method is, first of all, to make the action
fully conscious. Taking the scrubbing as the example, people practising
yoga as they scrub feel the weight of the brush in the hand, and its
shape and the strength of the bristles. They make their hand soft, and
mould it around the outline of the brush. They look at the white of the
suds so like the foam on the seashore.
Now they make the strokes. Many scrubbers have a hard hand, and a
hard posture. The yogin feels the centre line of the body, and moves the
body a little into the stroke. Some of the force is put in from the
whole body, not just from the arm.
It may take some practice to learn how to use the
action of the whole body. It can be practised first of all on simple
things, such as opening a swing door. Most people do this with the hand
and arm; try practising with the hand as a hook and the arm as a
transmitter of the force from the slight turn of the hips. When moving a
piece of furniture, again, do not plant the feet and keep the body fixed
while using simply the arms. Bend the knees a little bit and feel the
push as from the centre of the body, - the navel point to be precise.
When settling down to write, set oneself in a balanced position and
symmetrically, not with one shoulder hunched forward. In these ways the
action becomes more efficient and alive. Let us return to the scrubbing
example to typify what happens next. After some practice, the action
will seem to become more or less automatic (whether it is being done
efficiently or not). This is the important time. In the ordinary way the
mind, now set free or partially free from the necessity of attending,
begins to develop its own daydreams or fantasies or reactions. There is
no inner progress at all. The yogic method on the contrary is to
practice discarding everything except the movement and its frame.
Ideas of how long it is going to take or what one is going to do when it
is finished or whether it will be appreciated are the first to go; and
then the whirlpool of emotional memories or anticipations and then
perhaps the wet rot of remorse or the dry rot of triviality.
We say "Discard": but how is it to be done? People say it is impossible
to control interruptions by casual thoughts but if we are watching an
interesting television programme, and someone comes in to gossip, we
have no difficulty in saying: "Oh, shut up while I look at this" and
they do shut up.
In a little bit the same way the yogi practises saying "Shut Up" to his
casual thoughts and desires and fears just for the time being in these
favourable circumstances. They are favourable because scrubbing the
floor or steps does not directly produce in us any strong desire or fear
or even casual thoughts. Now is the time, now is the chance, to practise
emptying the rubbish out of the mind.