The Middle Path of Yoga [BG 6.16]

Joshua 0:00
Welcome to the next segment of our weekly discussion groups. This is the continuation of a weekly series of discussions that began in 2006 at Jivamukti Yoga on Broadway and 13th Street. So this is 14 years that we are doing this. Some of you were three years old when we started our discussions and you’ve grown up very nicely. It’s nice to see all grown up. Can you imagine 14 years? So greetings to old friends, to new friends. Welcome one and all.

And also I want to announce to you that I’m thrilled to be sharing the helm of these weekly sessions with my dear friend and God brother Yadunath. So thank you Yadunath for agreeing to share the embarrassment with me when things go south and to fill in when I can’t figure out what to say anymore. So it’s really great having you there.

This is Bhagavad Gita, chapter six, verse 16, of the Bhagavad Gita. We’ll talk about the context in a moment. nāty-aśnatas tu yogo ’sti I’ll do that again. nāty-aśnatas tu yogo ’sti Want to try that with me? You’re welcome to. nāty-aśnatas tu yogo ’sti The second line is na caikāntam anaśnataḥ na caikāntam anaśnataḥ. The third line is na cāti-svapna-śīlasya na cāti-svapna-śīlasya. And the fourth line reads jāgrato naiva cārjuna. jāgrato naiva cārjuna.

So the translation of this 16th verse of chapter six Bhagavad Gita, there is no possibility of one’s becoming a yogi Arjuna if one eats too much, or eats too little sleeps too much, or does not sleep enough no possibility of one’s becoming a yogi or do you know if one eats too much or too little sleeps too much? That does not sleep enough?

Yadunath, you and I started to talk about this earlier today. And the discussion that we started there was, are we to take this on face value? Is it really just about “Hey, watch your diet and you know, get enough rest?” What’s going on here? There’s always a bigger context. When you’re talking about Bhagavad Gita, things are happening on ten different levels all the time.

I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to think about this. But-

Yadunath 3:00
Yeah, things are happening on multiple levels at the same time, including the surface level.

Joshua 3:07
Right.

Yadunath 3:08
There’s a lot of depth-

Joshua 3:08
It’s also about food.

Yadunath 3:10
Yeah, that’s the beauty of the Gita, which is why you can keep going back to it year after year after year, getting deeper and deeper and deeper into it. There’s always more to discover.

Joshua 3:21
Alright, so on that obvious level, Arjuna is being given some very practical advice, right? If you eat too much, you’re gonna get sick. If you don’t eat enough, you’re not gonna have any strength to do anything. If you sleep too little you’re going to be tired all day and if you sleep too much, you’re gonna be drowsy. Alright, so that seems to be pretty practical.

Always remember context, context, context, context. We’re on the battlefield. Arjuna did not want to fight. Krishna is telling him, “This is your dharma1) religious principles, 2) righteous behavior. This is your duty. But if you’re insisting on not fighting, let’s take a look at your arguments. Let’s go through this one by one”.

And Arjuna at the end of the first chapter had given about a dozen different reasons why one should not fight: the scripture say do no harm to people, if I do this I can’t enjoy it even if I win, and so on and so on and so forth. And his conclusion was better for me to become a yogi and go off on my own and leave this battlefield, just you know, leave the stress and anxiety behind and just be peaceful.

Alright, so in the sixth chapter- my take on this is Krishna’s kind of like jabbing an elbow a little bit into Arjuna’s ribs and saying, okay, wise guy, you want to be a yogi? Here’s what you got to do. And then in the first verses of this chapter, he says, “Give up all company, go out to the middle of the forest, way up in the mountains, put down a rug of deer skin on top of kusa grass, stop breathing, stop eating, stop sleeping, don’t have contact with anybody, merge your outcoming breath with your incoming breath… And Arjuna starts getting a little freaked out he says I just can’t do this. We’re at a point here where Krishna is still kind of sticking it to him saying this is how you got to do it. This is how you have to do it. Arjuna will say I can’t. Enough. Another few verses, he says it’s like trying to control the wind, what you’re describing here.

Yadunath 5:26
It’s like a lockdown in quarantine on steroids.

Joshua 5:30
If you will. Try going to the woods and having no contact with anybody except wild animals. You are exposed there to whatever stresses may come living in the wild. And there’s a way to do that there are shastras that describe how to live successfully in seclusion, in the woods. There are scriptures for that. But it involves finding your own food. It involves learning how to live under very extreme conditions.

Krishna’s point to Arjuna is, if this is really what you want to do fine, but look at what the consequences are going to be. These people, these enemies on the other side of the battlefield are still going to be there. We might identify them as terrorists in today’s language. They were people who had no compunction whatsoever, killing whoever stood in the way of their taking over the kingdom. They had to be stopped. And Krishna’s point to Arjuna is if you don’t do it, who’s going to do it? That’s a little bit deeper than just watch your diet. The point he’s making is who’s going to do this if you don’t do it?

And I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve been confronting some of that myself lately. I’m coming up on 70 next month, and I don’t think it’s the end of the road. I still got a few miles to go. But I must admit, I’ve been feeling the energy waning a little bit and asking myself, how aggressive should I be about doing stuff still? You know, I was raised by a mom who was a real go getter. She was in corporate life. And she always taught me to look back at the end of the day and say, I did this, and I did this, and I did this and this and this and this, make your life productive. Right? Materially productive. So I’m having to ask myself, can I afford now to step back? Or do I need to have some of that go-do-something energy for as long as I possibly can? And I admit, I don’t always know the answer. Sometimes I just want to go and read and maybe be like Arjuna and just retreat a little bit. But there seems like there’s so much to do in the world, and I don’t know, I don’t know what I should do. Does life begin after 70? Do we still set our sights on doing great things? I mean, Arjuna wanted to stop. Krishna said no, you can’t stop. You have to keep going. Is anybody out there on this Zoom discussion confronting feelings like that? I mean, maybe having a break from the everyday world has given you a chance to think a little bit about what you want to do with yourself now. Does that ring any bells for anybody? Show me a five, if any of you have had those moments of Yeah, what do I do now? What’s next for me in life? I got a whole bunch of fives. Okay, well, anybody want to share what your conclusions have been? What’s come out for you and that meditation?

Student 8:39
For me, um, I’m sorry, I can’t relate to being 70. But my, the one thing I was really supposed to do is like study because I’m a student. And then my school kind of shut down. And I was kind of caught between this, do I just do the work, but not learn or do I actually try my best to still learn like when I’m learning class. It’s a conflict because- you can see my room’s a little distracting. I can’t go to the library. So it was like, what do I do? And how do I adjust to this new life? And it sucked for a while. You just got to find out what’s right and kind of find what do I actually want to do? And what am being expected to do?

Joshua 9:24
Mm hmm. Okay, that’s a good distinction and in between what other people expect of us and what we expect of ourselves. I can identify with that. Sometimes I think am I trying too hard to do what other people expect of me? That’s a good point. Yeah. Thank you for that.

Quick question. “In Winthrop Sargent”, when Winthrop Sargent has an edition of the Bhagavad Gita that goes back 100 years or so, “the verse is 16, not 17 does it matter?” Different editions of the Gita have numbered verses in slightly different ways, sometimes more than one verse is grouped together. For example, in the addition we’re using by Prabhupada, Bhagavad Gita As It Is, sometimes you’ll see two or three, I think in some instances, even four verses grouped together for the sake of clarity for getting the entire idea out. So it doesn’t really. Remember this isn’t even a book. This is a discussion, this is a dialogue between two people. It was sages and scholars in later years, who took this conversation and divided it into 18 chapters. Originally, it wasn’t a chapter book. It was a live, very energetic conversation on a battlefield.

Student 10:44
So is there advice like just stop, that’s what yoga is, just self regulation and discipline? Stop, look back, [inaudbile] your options and live a disciplined life? Evaluate yourself?

Joshua 11:03
Well, certainly, yes, yoga is self evaluation of the highest order. That’s a nice way of describing. It’s therapy its self-evaluation, it’s introspection, it’s a lot of things. The the risk is trying to do it on your own. I mean that’s, for me, that’s the value of having these gatherings here is not to hear myself yakking up for a half hour. So first of all, I asked Yadunath to come on so that that won’t happen. But secondly, it’s because I think our best realizations, our best introspection, comes when we can do that with people we trust. It’s really all about trust. If you have a group of people whom you can open your heart to, now you can have a meaningful dialogue.

Yadunath 11:50
I think, also, Krishna is talking about the value of leading a regulated life. You know, it’s interesting to say, don’t eat too much, which is sort of the obvious thing. But also don’t eat too little. Don’t sleep too much, the obvious thing, but also don’t sleep too little. And it makes me think of when we’re gluttonous, we want too much of it. But then the other side of that is maybe like, I want to live a spiritual life. But I also kind of get puffed up about it and proud about it. So, “no, no, no, I shouldn’t, just give me some rice. That’s fine. I’ll sleep just a few hours a day”. And then that can be a sense of pride and that can also bring us down. I used to have very long hair, like, down past my little nipples, and that was like a badge for me like letting my freak flag fly, right? But then I shaved my head. Right when I first started hanging out with devotees or not right at first, but eventually, and so I did a shaved head with the sikha, a little tuft of hair in the back of the head. But that was a version of having long hair for me, because it was still unconventional. So I had that look going. So the regulation for me, the most difficult thing for me was not the really long hair or the shaved head, it was like the normal thing in between, you know, and for me, that’s the challenge of how to get through like, not look for that distinction of being different.

Joshua 13:24
Hmm. That’s fascinating. I think you’ve put your finger on a subtle message in Krishna’s instruction to Arjuna in this verse. He’s saying basically don’t be a fanatic. Don’t be a fanatic. Don’t think that you have to just, you know, slaughter like a madman or leave the battlefield all together. There’s a way to conduct yourself here. That is the middle road. There’s a middle path here. The middle path for a warrior of course is to fight bravely and sometimes it’s to the death, but with compassion. Now that may seem like a contradiction. They may seem counterintuitive, there is a way to fight with compassion. There’s a way to kill according to the Arthashastra. If you have to bring someone down because they’re an evildoer, there’s a way to do that by causing the least amount of pain and suffering possible. I’m right in the middle of preparing a holocaust book and it was diametrically the opposite. It was like kill someone by causing them the most amount of pain possible before they die. So the Vedic ideal would be no, there’s a way even to fight. There’s a way to do everything spiritually, and it usually has to do with that middle path there. Yeah.

Being normal that’s a big accolade when once you’ve entered devotee life. I think it’s the highest compliment anyone ever paid me, “You’re like, normal.” It was like that was a good day for me.

Next week’s is an extension of the idea from this week’s class about being regulated and habits. So we can talk about what regulated means. There’s a time and place for breaking out of regulation as well. And we can talk about that. Any any thoughts, questions, ideas, comments?

Yadunath 15:34
I’d like to point out that Mike sent on the chat here, that Prabhupada was very active in later life. And it’s a really good point, because you were talking earlier about, am I supposed to- can I sit back now, and it seems like there are two different, potentially two different kinds of activity, you know, material activity and spiritual activity. Of course, you can bring the spiritual to your material life. And that’s what we’re trying to do overall. At some point, when your material needs are all taken care of, and you still got some time left, and like you said, you know, you still got the energy, but you feel it maybe receding a little bit. In any case, whatever we do have, at that time, direct it toward our spiritual lives. Prbhupada set out just about 70 years old, you know, going cross seas to start a worldwide movement, you know. So, he wasn’t sitting back, and it’s a really challenging thing. I mean, you’re that age now. And I’m thinking about getting there soon enough. And, wow, I don’t think I’d be wanting to travel and start a movement in a place I’ve never been to before.

Joshua 16:53
Prabhupada very kindly accepted me as a disciple in January of 1970. So I’ve been doing this for more than 50 years. To this day, I do not know how he got on that boat. I don’t know how he did it. I don’t know how or why he would leave Vrindavan, this beautiful, spiritual home of Krishna and the eternal world, to come to the Lower East Side of New York City, and be exposed to all of that madness, all that craziness. I don’t know how he did that. I think there’s only one explanation. That’s love. He said once I love Govinda and therefore I love all of you. I mean, it’s through that love of God that he was experiencing discomfort seeing us, you and you and you and you and you and me uncomfortable in our lives, and he wanted to help do something about that. Who does that? Who leaves at age 70? You’re right. Yeah, it’s a good reminder, we can all do more than we think we can. So that’s a good reminder.

Yadunath 18:05
We have a determination, you know, the sincere desire and the determination then Krishna gives us what we need.

Joshua 18:13
Yeah, Sir Edmund Hillary, who I believe was the first person to climb Mount Everest, once is credited with having said, when you make a commitment to a very difficult task, it is after you have made that commitment, that resources come to your aid that you could never have imagined. The universe is filled with energies, filled with all kinds of resources, unless you open the door unless you show that you’re going to do something, all of those resources have no place to go to. So it’s up to us to take the first step. A good reminder. Thank you. I knew there was a reason to have you on this call this evening.

Yadunath 18:58
I thought it was just because I’m pretty.

Joshua 19:00
Well, you are that, too. You may not be as pretty as Tracy with that parakeet on her head.

Yadunath 19:07
Well, nothing is in that category.

Joshua 19:10
Anyway, thank you all. I’m glad we’ve decided on a start time. I will see you next Tuesday at 6:30.

Student 19:19
Josh, can I ask you a question before I go?

Joshua 19:21
Sure, Adam. What’s up?

Student 19:23
So, you found your teacher at a young age, right? How did you? How did you go about finding a teacher like that?

Joshua 19:34
Oh, that was infinite grace. He found me. I’m not even sure I was looking for a teacher, quite honestly. I think he found me.

Student 19:48
Okay, because I’ve been doing a lot of reading and as you said, it’s kind of difficult to do this alone and all these great spiritual teachers have had other great spiritual teachers and, I don’t want to say I’m like searching for that, but it’s just, it’s interested me. How-

Joshua 20:06
Here’s what’s wonderful about this spiritual journey. You don’t have to worry about that. If you continue sincerely, and this is reiterated many, many times throughout the sacred texts, if your effort is sincere, the teacher will come to you.

You just have that desire in your heart to do well on your spiritual path. That’s the whole- that’s that quote from Mr. Edmund Hillary, resources will come to your aid that you could never have imagined.

Student 20:45
Thank you very much.

Joshua 20:46
You’ll see. It’s there. Thank you for your wholehearted commitment. Please join me in the Vaishnava Pranama.

vancha-kalpatarubhyas ca kripa-sindhubhya eva ca
patitanam pavanebhyo vaishnavebhyo namo namah

Thank you. It’s nice to have your company. Hare Krishna. Good night everybody.