دار بيبليون
Teresa of Avila (3)
Nature of the body and its link with the soul in yoga
and in Teresa of Avila
Notes from a lecture by Prof. Lwiis Saliba given on Zoom
Wednesday 25/8/2021.
1) How does yoga relate to the wandering of the mind?
Yoga teaches to know the nature of the body and mind and the dual relationship between the two. This promotes correct practice. Yoga, unlike Greek philosophy and Christianity, does not look at the body as a source of sin. It insists on the coherence, the correlation between body and mind.
Swami Chidananda explains that the mind and the body are not two separate vessels but communicating. The transmission belt is the vital energy. If we calm the body, it will have an effect on the mind. A thorough knowledge of the nature of the body and the mind is necessary to be able to manipulate these natures in practice.
The nature of the mind is wandering, like a grasshopper. It is a “jumping mind”. The more one tries to change one’s mind by force, the more the mind will react to free itself in a thousand and one ways. “Yoga talks about the principle of the second element, for example the postures and the pranayamas. To fight against something, against a distraction, is to feed it. On the other hand, if you don’t care about it, it will usually fall away by itself.
2) Teresa of Avila’s (TA) view of the wandering of the mind.
She was intuitively aware of this wandering nature of the mind and how to control it. “The soul participates in the problems and changes of the body and its moods. T A knew this wandering nature of the mind and how to deal with it. Already, meditators should not be shocked or discouraged by this continual restlessness. She speaks from her own experience. She rediscovers the principles of yoga: not to resist against ideas, because that would be to feed them. “The more you try to force the soul, the worse it gets and the problem continues. So don’t force it. She basically prescribes what yoga advises: “The last treatment I came to after years of practice is that one should not be interested in the imagination, only God is able to tear it away”. cf. Story of Jacob who endured his first wife Laia, as well as the oppression of his father-in-law, in the hope of getting his sister Rachel whom he loved in marriage. Thus, one endures mental turmoil in the hope of gaining union with God.
This image is quite interesting and intelligent. One should not accept that this imagination deprives us of the bliss that meditation can give on other levels. TA admits that she has poor concentration, but in fact this is the problem of all beginners. She gives sound advice: “We need to know, to have the art of managing our weakness without pressuring our nature. When the meditator is aware of the nature of the mind and its restlessness, he or she will not be guilty of it and will know how to deal with it.
The mind wants to change while the body likes routine. One can vary the practices: contemplation, mediation, meditative reading…
Chidananda comments on Patanjali on the nature of the mind: one must use wisdom when one cannot control the mind: concentrating on centers, or reciting the ‘Om’ or a mantra. One must also know how to feel when concentration becomes in itself a nuisance. We must accept that the mind has its limits in the capacity of concentration. One goes up to these limits, then one must know how to release and start again from day to day. Robert Kfoury indicated how to vary the methods of meditation. To what extent? One can rest the mind, change the method but not do it randomly. Know how to continue meditation without expecting results.
In this sense, T A advises a certain variety, as in physical food.
Knowing how to take time for useful distractions: spiritual dialogue, walking in the fields, following your own experience to know what to do and what to avoid. “When you feel some anxiety, try to go to a place where you can see the blue sky, take a short walk, don’t think that you will lose the moment of meditative prayer, because God ‘gives’ sometimes in very short times, which does not happen during long hours of meditation. Give the mind a vacation, stop for a day the long hours of meditation, for example on Sundays. Have flexibility and discernment to adapt to our abilities of body and mind. It has thus escaped from masters who were too liberal or on the contrary too rigorous.
St. Anthony the Great confirmed this approach: the power of discernment is the essential basis for arriving at the goal of holiness, it is the mother of all the other virtues.
He added that many monks had many virtues but they could not reach holiness because they lacked discernment. This is a very important rule for monks in the West and in the East.
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