One evening when I was teaching in the class, a tall and fit looking senior woman in her mid fifty, with somewhat forceful voice tone, insisted that I have to see her. I told her to wait until the class is over. I planned to give her ten minutes before I start the next class. She was a part-time yoga instructor looking for a teaching job in my center. Sorry, I train my own instructors, I don’t employ outsiders, I told her. She wanted to know why. Because, the training backgrounds are different and most of all, the human characters are vary, that I don’t like working with people whom I don’t know very well. Moreover, handing over my dear yoga students to some strangers to teach…that’s something I would not do. She insisted that I should at least give her a chance, to see how good and confident she is in her teaching before I turn her down. I asked her why I owe her the chance. Because, as same fellow yoga teachers, we have to support each other in sharing students, that is the basic ethics for those who are working in the same field, she argued. Ethics… Here is someone, who stepped in my yoga center, and asking for a job by using the tag line of ‘ethics.’ That got my attention.
It doesn’t look like she is going to budge out easily until she gets what she wants. Also, I am not good at brushing off people straight in their face. Ten minutes are not going to work… So I asked my other instructor to take over the next class and settled down with her in the office. Okay. What is your training background? How long you have been doing and teaching Yoga? She happily laid out her passion with yoga, the names of teachers she’s been associated with. About three years in practice, one year of teaching experience after taking three month instructor course from a Westerner in the US… That sounds good.
“Do you know Patanjali Yoga Sutra?”
“Say that, again?”
“Patanjali Yoga Sutra…”
“No, I don’t know. First time I hear about it.”
“Do you know Bhagavad Gita?”
“What is that?”
“They are the two most important Yoga text books for any yoga teachers or yoga aspirants to refer for their ethical conducts.”
“No, Tim (her teacher) never mentioned about the books. Why he didn’t teach us if they are so important?”
“You don’t ask me, should ask him.”
“But…”
So it went on like that, for more than an hour. Still not giving up, she was trying hard to convince me to see at least once how she is teaching yoga. I told her I don’t have to see, because I can already know. She would not believe me. I am sure she is very good at what she is doing but it wouldn’t be my style, or my students’. You are forceful in your way of persuading, which reflects your training and your character. By the same token, your students will be those hardy ones who need somewhat aggressive approach. That’s not my characters, therefore not my students. Then she wanted to know what she can do if she were to teach in my center, which she really wants it, because my center is located very near her house for her convenience…
If you really want to teach in my center, then, you have to go through my training, but it will be hard for you to follow. Why? Is it very difficult with a lot to study? The course itself is not difficult, especially given your kinds of disciplinary attitude. It will be difficult because your own ‘tendency’ ‘nature’ is the main obstacle that will be not easy to overcome, unless you meditate regularly. That is what the Patanjali Yoga Sutra is about, how to see our own characters, tendencies, potentials; then you can refine them to be better; only then you can help others how to see and improve themselves. Yoga is not just about stretching or bending here and there; Yoga is about how to “still the turning thoughts.” That takes time and patience. It can’t happen in three months short crash course.
She could no longer argue with me, though still not yet giving up. She said she will come back to take the meditation course as she really wants to teach in my center. I said sure, but in my heart, I knew she won’t. Few days later she called me to say that, she decided to stick to her own styles. I told her good for you, which I really meant. I didn’t want to jeopardize her belief system that was woven so tightly around her strong sense of ego, her own self-worth. My way will be too drastic of change for her nervous system in that age. But, if she can, she would make a rare and fine teacher, as her kinds of high discipline and commitments are hard to come by. But she decided not to take a step further from ‘loving’ yoga to ‘hating’ yoga stage. Ecstasy springs from fire, and as is anything else we do in life, we need to go beyond initial love until we hate it if we want to see til the end of the tunnel in all our worldly or spiritual pursuits.
Why do people act so fierce in defending their value or belief system, their spiritual or material conditions, or the boundaries they have set up around their identity make-ups? Why do people so quick to make judgments, discrimination, to segregate friends and foes, in the slightest disagreement of opinions, inclinations, likes and dislikes? Why do people behave so stubborn in protecting their own self-interest while it’s okay invading others? Because, we lack in balance, perspective, faith of oneself and others; because, we lack in our ability to trust our inner value and the way of life that works in spiral not in linear way; because we lack in the experiences of fundamental wisdom, Samadhi, that is not depended upon time, space or place.
Pantanjali Yoga Sutra provides the lucid answers and practical ways to achieve liberation from the limited perception of ourselves and life itself. Written by a sage Pantanjali some 2,500 years ago, it describes the means by which Yoga is attained, and the powers that come to the seeker in his quest and the state of absolute liberation. While most yoga practitioners or instructors in Malaysia know nothing, if not little, about the book, its short but beautiful 196 hymns, written in poem like style, are priceless jewels for anyone who is seeking truth, wellness and perfect happiness in this ordinary life we live day to day. It shows how to transform our limited small self into an enlighten being who is the living embodiment of unconditional, universal love and compassion.
We just need to inquire into our very awareness and underlying tendencies, to lift off the veils of fundamental ignorance, overcome inner obstacles, to be free from any physical, mental and emotional sufferings. It says, supreme happiness and abundance is our birthright, of which we forgot in our identification of self to the limited physical body, the fluctuating emotional state, the constantly turning thoughts, conjured up by false impressions of reality, words we heard, and tendencies we carried on from the past. How do you overcome them? By repeatedly bringing our awareness to a single focus with the practice of yoga over a long period of time…
That is why I train my own instructors, though it takes much time and efforts for me than using other instructors trained else where. Because, my intention is not to make them work for me, but to see them growing as a whole person. It is easy to master the triangle, headstand, armstand poses, or teach it to others how to do. But, what is difficult, is one’s willingness to turn within, to refine the character to be a better human being, before we can stand in front of others to teach; be it yoga asanas, yoga theories or ethics. In this fast moving and isolated modern world, in where many are out to take advantage of others in serving their own self interests, I still seek to find those rare souls who are willing to correct themselves and enjoy the reward by helping others, not by monetary return. Even if they are not yet as fit or confident as the lady is, it doesn’t matter. Because soon they will rise above the situation, given some time, supports and encouragements; but whom I would not waste my time and efforts are to those, who can’t see or don’t want to see themselves. Am I a naiveté with an unrealistic idealism of ancient? Maybe… But, that’s what I can’t change about myself. I am a still helpless lover of the human heart that resembles God who works tirelessly whether or not we bother to appreciate Him. I am infused in His love that the rest are little of significance; that is why, sometimes, you find me having this far away look at the corner of my eyes…
