Two Critical Questions

"A Natural Language"

I spent about an hour and a half in a sort of language exchange lesson with Bhimaji today. Bhima is a phenomenal cook and a wonderfully sweet and sincere human being. We got a white board, and got to it. He had all kinds of questions about future and past tense, and in trying to explain, using English words he knew and Hindi words I know, I was more able to recognize how difficult my mother tongue is. I had all kinds of questions about passive and active moods in Hindi. You can say "to heal," in both a passive and an active sense. One would refer to a doctor "curing" a patient (the verb karna), the other would refer to a person simply "getting better," (the verb hauna). Active is intervention. Passive, he explained is like... natural.
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In the book entitled, "Practical Spirituality," a Q+A session with Marshal Rosenberg, founder of Nonviolent Communication, NVC, he says, "I think it's a natural language. Do that which contributes to life."

NVC is a process of learning to communicate with each other and to deal with difficult situations by focusing on two critical questions:
1) What is alive in us?
2) What can we do to make life more wonderful?

According to Rosenberg, question number one relies on three levels of literacy:
1) Observations (what is or is not making life more wonderful for you right now- no evaluation or judgement)
2) Feelings (what is really alive in you right now?)
3) Needs (the cause of your feelings, and the basis for a request for something to make life more wonderful)

The process by which Rosenberg explains how to develop these literacies sounds a lot like Ayurveda:
"Ayurveda places much emphasis on understanding the ego and its inherent biases, so that our judgements remain balanced and our actions are for the greater good, which is ultimately our own good as well. Dissolving the ego (evaluation) cures all psychological diseases and many physical diseases as well." (my parenthetical) -From Yoga and Ayurveda, by David Frawley.
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"Shabash, larki!" he said. I felt my breath skip, and I consciously exhaled. I am not a girl. A few asanas later, he says, again, "well done, girl." This time, I say, with a smile on my face, but sternness in my voice, "Larki nehi hun, mei mehila hun." He laughs, and asks, knowingly, if I am married. My answer does not surprise him, and he says again, "then you are larki (girl)." Exhale again. I am remembering Marshal Rosenberg's writing about NVC, and I ask Raviji, "so what if I were never to get married?" He answers then, that I would become a bardi larki, a "big girl." I think of all of my experiences, and all of the stories I've been told and which I live out daily that deal with coming-of-age, womanhood, and maturity. I have "become" a woman at least three times. My conversation with Raviji continued in this playful but clearly meaningful way. He conceded to referring to me as a young woman, or a lady, but in English only. There is no Hindi equivalent, he told me; if I were to call a lady my age or older who is not married by the Hindi word for woman, she would be angry with me. In the story told in Hindi, a girl becomes a woman through the process of marriage only. (more feminist musings coming in another post)

This interaction occurred only a few hours after a rather heated exchange between another yoga student and Yogiji, during which I quietly and continuously adjusted my own breathing, and relaxed my facial muscles as I felt the tension physically. I reflected on their terse exchange relating to NVC and considering the fact that they were arguing (for lack of a better word) in English, which is a second or third language for the both of them. There were two cultures, two language roots, and two perspectives clashing, though they are all implicated in each other. I wondered how much could be attributed to the language inequality for the both of them (having had both of their minds shaped in two different cultures and two different languages, but communicating in another), and how much of their dispute was value-based (moral stance).(Not to mention that their disagreement was about time and privacy- both of which are social constructs that vary widely across culture and are framed differently in each language.) More than that, however, I was curious how each of them could use knowledge of NVC and understanding of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (that language shapes thoughts), in addition to a meditative approach of simply listening, dropping ego-attachment to stories, results etc., and a calm mind to make their perspectives better understood and actually come to a solution, which they weren't truly able to do.

I thought of the yogic precepts of honesty (satya), and non-harming (asteya). How can we be honest with one another in a situation when that possibly means pain for another? In my first class on Ayurveda, Dr. Amrita told me that one of the basic principles of Ayurveda is that one should never have pain. This made me a bit apprehensive. Recognizing that I come from a western background with the notion of "no-pain-no-gain" deeply imbedded in my history, but also having a sense of balance, I probed her further. She conceded that, yes, in some circumstances, a treatment may be unpleasant, uncomfortable, and even painful in order to achieve a higher state of painlessness or vitality. Most of our first discussion was grounded in the physical realm, but she did mention that another basic principle in Ayurveda is taking the psychology (mentality, emotionality etc.) of the person into account with EQUAL weight as their physical body. You get no oil from the olive without crushing it, or more appropriately for India; you get no butter without churning the milk. Sometimes you have to endure a bit of friction, a bit of pain, in order to come to a better place.

The question is: how much is necessary? I think NVC is a good foundation upon which to build conversations that push our cultural, lingual, and storied (not a typo; storied, as in we create stories and live them out as reality, but they may or may not be universal and so are prone to create what we know as culture shock) buttons. We need to keep the breath steady, the focus simple (2 critical questions, 3 basic literacies), and our energy present with one another. Another basic principle in Ayurveda is that all of nature, including ourselves, is composed of the elements; fire, earth, air, space, and water. Imbalances in our elemental composition may be expressed both physically and emotionally or mentally. In the heated exchange between Yogiji and the other student, the student's overabundant fire was being expressed verbally, which may be healthier for her than for it to manifest as indigestion, for example. However, the fire that was expressed was not done so in a nonviolent way, and perhaps put more stress on the community, or on the relationship between the two of them. The same can be said for the way Yogiji responded in the situation. So while one manifestation of elemental imbalance may be initially healthier for the individual, it may not be the best for the community or for relationships, which would ultimately end up creating more imbalance in all of the individuals in the community. I would like to put some of my eggs in the NVC basket as a possible middle ground.

Often since I've been here, I wonder what in the world are all of these yogis and gurujis are doing, just sitting around in their temples, on their cushions, in trance states, and concerned more with purusa (or spirit), as opposed to really contributing to this, our natural world or prakrti. (and to be fair, many are helping local people with family issues, and many are teaching western foreigners like me...)

B.K.S. Iyengar (yogi superstar) says in his book, Light on Life, "the demonstration of one's spiritual achievement lies in none other than how one walks among and interacts with one's fellow human beings," and while I take a bit of a small and semantic issue with the word "achievement," the statement sounds comfortingly similar to Ronsenberg's sentiment of, "I trust a spirituality that leads people to go forward and transform the world, that doesn't just sit there with this beautiful image of radiating energy. I want to see that energy reflected in the person's actions as they go out and make things happen. It's something you do, a practical spirituality."


So, just to tie it all together: spirit is both natural (hauna), and active (karna).