Yoga practice offers methods to transcend duality, as in transcendent meditation for example.
Sounds great. But what does it all mean?
One way to decode this is to consider the concepts of good and evil. Imagine the evil laugh associated with the baddest villains and anti-heroes in films. Evil delights in destruction – in fact, it’s the very essence of destruction.
But it’s also subject to destruction, like everything else. Good – the very essence of growth and creation – is similarly itself subject to growth. Good and bad rise and fall endlessly in their own, self-created patterns. I feel that the yin-yang symbol is a remarkable, stylised graphic representation of the interplay of two.
Love – non-judgmental, unconditional, impersonal love (we don’t really have a word for that sort of love) sees only one: the whole, total dynamic of which creation and destruction are necessary and equal parts.
This kind of love discriminates enough to know the difference between the two, but is not motivated to become either. Embracing two as part of one, it transcends both. It has the paradoxical quality of engaged-non-participation. It’s the Original Nature that we are told dedicated Yoga practice will reveal – the single element that is present and reflected in the interaction of it’s parts.
In Yoga terms, to be committed to and continuously buffeted by good and evil, light and dark, etc is to live in the experience of samsara. In that context, nirvana is dissolution of oneself in a broader totality. Of course, you, I, all of us are already in that totality – we just might not have fully realised it yet.
Yogafurie’s teacher training program looks in detail at these questions, and frames them in both the historical context in which Yoga has developed, and the practical needs of everyday life in the Western world. You can find out more at https://yogafurie.com/yoga-teacher-training-bristol/ . Take a look, maybe it’s time to join us and explore your deeper personal truths.
