When Frogs Croak
Mary Taylor
Back in the early ’90s, Richard began giving Studio Talks at the Yoga Workshop on Sundays after the afternoon Mysore class. Often he would begin the talks by leading a chant and then as he explained the chant, the lecture would unfold from there. Chanting is a way not only to focus the mind on ideas presented in traditional texts and to offer devotion to powerful messages of the teachings, but it is also a remarkable way of dropping into the body. It’s a practice. When we chat the exhale is extended as in pranayama, but because we’re not calling it pranayama it can sometimes be a more easeful exhalation. Vibrations from the chant can be experienced throughout the body. This automatically calms the mind as we become absorbed in the sensations, sounds, or meaning of what we are chanting.
The longstanding tradition of Vedic chanting as a practice holds a significant place in ancient Indian rituals and ceremonies where Brahmin priests gather and chant to mark and bless special occasions such as weddings or holy days. The chanting can go on for hours, even days, and can be intoxicating both for chanters and those listening. When you’re surrounded by chanting it’s virtually impossible to not feel it in your bones, so much so that there’s a song in the Rig Veda comparing the priestly chanting to the sound of frogs croaking, which—if you’ve spent time during the rainy season in the tropics—you know can fill you to the core. Chanting, like listening deeply to sounds in nature, clears the mind in a way similar to asana or pranayama. This is why so often Richard begins his talks with a chant. To clear his own mind before he begins
The following is an excerpt from one of those talks, given on December 7, 2007:
Welcome to “The Rotten Heart.” There’s a chant many of us are familiar with, saha nāvavatu that can prevent rotten heart syndrome from occurring because it brings attention to the nature of things. The chant is from Yajur Veda and is an appreciation for the fact that everything is interconnected. No matter what we think is true, we are doing all of this stuff together. We are experiencing life together, we’re interpreting it together. We are even practicing yoga together.
“Saha nāvavatu” means may we be protected together. It’s a prayer. May we be nourished, may we relish or enjoy things together, saha nau bhunaktu. Then it goes on to describe the aim for how this togetherness manifest in our study; saha vīryaṁ karavāvahai, tejasvi nāvadhītamastu. This means may our inquiry, our study together be filled with great energy, and brilliance or tejas. In other words, may we have clear insights.
Of course, if you’ve ever worked closely in this way with someone, you know the dangers after a while. Because of all that togetherness differences are revealed. One (or both) of you can become stuck in your ways, blind to feedback, and unreceptive to alternative perspectives. You can forget that you started off the collaboration with the intention of being protected as one. This leads to the last line of the chant, ma vidvisavahai, may we not hate each other as a result of all of this togetherness. Finally, in the chant, the whole underlying idea of interconnectedness is wrapped up by offering the dropping down of peace: oṁ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ
The chant is a reminder that when you are able to work in union with someone with such brilliance it’s as if very deep dreams or memories awaken within you. You can begin to experience on a cellular level that you are boundlessly connected to all others and to all aspects of life. This is a wonderful feeling, but sometimes it’s unsettling because it’s paradoxical territory—you’re in a situation that is at once intimately familiar and brand new! As a result, when we find ourselves in states of paradox like this we often click back into ancient patterns of avoidance or desperation and we project those patterns and ideas onto our current associates, like our yoga teachers, friends, or families. Or even politicians.
Actually, from a yoga practitioner’s perspective, this is usually considered a good sign. Not the projection itself, which is unfortunate, but it’s a good sign that it’s happening. And even better when you notice that it’s happening. It means that you are effectively starting to seal the container of practice, and in doing so—if you stick with it—you are going to cease the projecting tendency of the mind so that you can, in a sense, stew or cook in your own juices for a while until you wake up to what’s really happening right in front of you.
This is the cure for rotten heart syndrome because a rotten heart is one that projects constantly. It feeds on projecting falsehoods and it definitely doesn’t think it’s rotten. That’s the first sign of a rotten heart. “I don’t have a rotten heart!!” If you notice yourself thinking that, it means you most likely do because you only see everybody else’s heart as rotten. When we see strong deficiencies in the world, particularly things that bother us personally, these are often things that, quite naturally due to our ego structure, we do not acknowledge in ourselves. We may want to think, “I am a great person. I am compassionate, I’m kind and generous. I’m wonderful in all respects and anything that doesn’t fit that description—like being conniving, deceitful, non-truthful, hateful, lustful, greedy, deluded, egomaniacal, and so on—none of that is me. The cosmic joke is that we all have in us the potential for all of these things, they are our shadow sides.
Part of being human is that our ego structure is always working both consciously and unconsciously. On the conscious level we may have studied Jung and be smugly aware of the notion of archetypes and shadow sides, but on an unconscious level, we are usually unaware of what those archetypes and shadows actually look like within ourselves. Your ego will not identify with your shadows, but your mind knows deep down, in a kind of prickly, intuitive way, your mind knows your shadow qualities. Our repressed qualities are projected out onto the world or onto other people. When you find another person who really bothers you it’s possible that you’re seeing something of yourself that you’re bothered by. “I can’t stand how stupid that person is.” Possibly you’re not seeing your own stupidity because you are all puffed up about how smart you are. Like everyone, you’re both smart and stupid because deep down we are all everything.
The biggest problem that arises when we are derailed by our projections when our basic goodness is eclipsed by our very own shadow, is that we suffer. And worse than that, we cause suffering for others. If due to projections or confusion and lack of clarity you experience any person or group of people, or any sentient being as located outside the center of your heart (as separate, as not connected), then the prana in the body doesn’t hook up correctly and there’s no yoga happening.
So, when we say do yoga all day every day, all night every night what we’re really meaning is to notice when you’ve closed off from others, when you’ve projected ideas or prejudices onto others or when you are being ruled by emotional turbulence rather than grounded by the observations that are as clear as you are capable of.
This chant is one that had particular relevance and that we posted at the Yoga Workshop studio on September 12, 2001, the day after the attack on the Twin Towers in Manhattan. It is extremely germane in today’s troubled world too. May we work together for peace and transformation.
