Salads are for winners.
“I don’t know why you do that, Katie.”
Mitch is across the table from me, eight candles burning between us because I like to pretend they create an acceptable (albeit hazardous) makeshift fireplace on gray, rainy days. I’m giving her my most recent sob story and she’s calling it like she sees it, giving it to me straight like so few people do. I have immense respect for people who can and will put me in my place.
“I know you say you don’t have your shit together but as an outsider looking in, trust me when I say this, you’re the only one who thinks that. I don’t know why you do it.”
She’s right, of course. We humans have this incredible ability to build up intricate lies in our heads about who we are or aren’t, who we like and who we don’t, what’s good and what’s bad. We have the capacity to build entire alternate realities for ourselves, and the really amazing thing is not that we can do this but that we almost always choose misery over happiness when we do. (See: Right or Happy? Your Move.) Why do we do this?
There’s a story I keep hearing in yoga and reading in books about this concept, about how things are not themselves by themselves. They are what we think them to be only because of what we make them to be. Bear with me.
Think of an object, any object, and define what it is. In yoga the example is a reed pen. A teacher holds a reed pen up to a student, “What is this?”
“A pen,” the student responds.
“No,” says the teacher. “What is this?”
“… A pen?”
“NO. What is this?”
“It’s a pen.”
“No. What is this to a cow?”
“It’s… food.”
The point is that the pen is only a pen if the seer thinks it’s a pen.
You could go further with the pen. What is it to a warrior? A weapon. To a child? A magic wand.
Try again. Think of a park bench. What is it? A place to sit? Somewhere to sip on a latte? What is it to the homeless guy that slept on it last night? A bed, maybe?
How about me?
I blew through my life savings and can’t get my head back above water. Or… I invested in my future with higher education.
I’m at the mercy of an impossibly full schedule. Or… I’m busy because I want to be.
I sell black stretchy pants at the mall. Or… I’ve met some of my best friends at a fun job that gives me free yoga.
I’m letting everyone down. Or… I’m doing what’s best for me.
I don’t know what I want. Or… I already have everything I need.
I’m lost. Or… I’m exploring.
I read How Yoga Works in the Bahamas and it focuses a lot on this concept of things not being themselves by themselves. There is one page in the book that I’ve dog-eared, underlined, starred and shared. It is this (page 179 if you’ve got it):
He shook his head tightly, forcefully. He almost saw, and he didn’t see, and it was killing him. I picked the pen up from his desk and held it up between us–my shining golden sword.
“Is this a pen; or is it something to eat?” I demanded.
He shook his head again, violently. Help me.
I leaned over intensely and slammed my palm into his chest.
“Is this flesh–born only to die; or is it pure and loving light?”
He looked up at me, his face changing.
“And your wife, and your daughter,” I said, loudly now, thrusting my palm there, at his chest, where the highest compassion of all lies choked. “Are they dead and gone forever; or do they stand at your side, waiting to be seen, waiting until you learn to see them, be with them, be them?”
And then I slammed my hand down again on the desk and held the pen up between us. “Is it a pen or something to eat? Answer me!” I screamed.
“A pen!” he screamed back now, nearly across the border. “A pen!”
“No!” I screamed back. “Not a pen! Never a pen! Never a pen! NO COW HAS EVER SEEN THIS PEN, AS A PEN, AND SO…” I waited for him.
“And so, and so… they would say… cows would say… that there are no pens,” he finished, still thinking it out.
“The mind makes it a pen,” he went on to himself. “It is not a pen… by itself.”
And then he looked down, at his own chest, where my hand had woken him. “And the body… my body, this flesh…” he said, holding his own two hands there, with a look of wonder growing on his face. “It is flesh, it is flesh, because… because… and only because, my mind makes me see it that way.”
It’s just… enormous. This whole concept. It’s huge. It’s all I’ve been able to think about for the last two weeks. I keep telling everyone but I feel like I’m not explaining it right. I want everyone to read it and get it and, more importantly, do it. Make the choice. What do you want? Do you want to be right or happy? Are you flesh and bone here to die or are you pure, divine, immortal light?
It feels so very out there–a little too “yoga,” if you know what I mean–but I choose light. Definitely.
Fire hazard. Look away, mom.
Stay in that one pure thought, and never forget it. That single most important thing: things are empty of being what they are by themselves. Yoga sutra I.43A
