The Practice of Contentment

by Jen Whinnen

Many, many years ago my grandparents bought a cabin in the woods near a lake in northern Idaho to commemorate one of their wedding anniversaries.  They paid cash. I think my grandma said they paid $5,000 for it. It was a summer cabin, just one step up from tent camping and small; about the size of most modern suburban living rooms with a small alcove off one end that could fit two twin beds, one along one wall and the other at its feet along the opposite wall.

It didn’t have a heating system and wasn’t insulated. It sits high in the mountains where, even in the middle of summer, the temperature can easily dip down into the 40s. My grandpa was a furnace repairman so he built a wooden stove out of sheet metal and this was the cabin’s sole source of heat.  The only other amenities were a kitchen sink with running water, electricity, a hot plate and a refrigerator.

It did not have a bathroom. There was an outhouse. The outhouse was smelly, dark and creepy. As such, it was a constant source of fascination and repulsion to us kids. We hated it, but couldn’t seem to stay away from it. We found seemingly endless ways to tease each other over it.

There was the time my sister and my cousins convinced me that a chicken had fallen in and that we were gonna have to send down the skinniest kid (me) to save it. Or the time my uncle lined us all up under a tarp and made us stand in line in the rain while everyone peed before going to bed. Or the countless times we took flashlights in so that we could stare down into the pit of poop. If you were trying to do your biz, there was a 99.99% chance that someone would materialize outside the door to tease you saying things like “don’t fall in! Wipe fast and don’t look down!” or promise you that something creepy was going to come out of the ooze and drag you down with it.

I am pretty sure I spent most of my early childhood summers constipated.

My grandpa eventually built a “bathroom” in the cabin. He installed a little toilet and sink off the side of the miniature bedroom. It was the size of a broom closet. Being a frugal man, he refused to open up additional fields of the septic system. To this day no one in my family can quite grasps the logic of this choice or how it relates to being frugal, but in doing so, everything made the little toilet back up. You could sneeze near this thing and it would need a couple of hours to settle down.

My grandpa was obsessed with the toilet. It was as if he felt like he’d spoiled us all by putting in this small piece of modern plumbing. What was the point of a toilet when there was a perfectly acceptable and useable outhouse 20 feet from the cabin? He simply did not want anything to go to waste. Not even an outhouse. Therefore, the toilet came with a set of very specific rules:

1. No Pooping in the Toilet Until Night Time. If you had to do #2 during the day, go to the outhouse.
2. No Peeing in the Toilet Until Night Time. During the day, use the outhouse.
3. If You Pee in the Toilet at Night, DO NOT FLUSH. Wait until morning and flush everyone’s pee at once.
4. If You Poop in the Toilet At Night, You May Flush the Toilet ONCE. Any left overs could wait with the pee for morning.

Basically it was a nocturnal toilet.

These rules created a weird sneakiness among my family.  I am pretty sure, although no one has openly admitted it, that everyone at one point sneaked in and used that toilet while the sun was up. I definitely remember slipping into the cabin after everyone had gone to the beach, making a mad dash, praying that no one would catch me and that damn thing would fully flush.

But, despite the hassle of the Nocturnal Toilet, the cabin itself was a bright, cheery, cozy little haven. White washed pine walls and gingham curtains, a large red kitchen table, a huge oval red and grey rag rug and a front porch with two rocking chairs and a little hibachi. It was homey and sweet and simple. Everyone was welcome (provided they only used the toilet at night) and everyone had fun.

The cabin was the sum total of all my summer vacations. Every summer we went to the Lake. We’d play cards, read, swim, hike, pick berries, build bonfires, roast marsh mellows, skinny dip, have epic pillow fights, put on vaudeville shows, eat piles of junk food, laugh until our sides hurt, see moose, deer, elk, bear, rabbits, squirrels, collect bugs, rocks and pinecones.

Looking back now I realize how lucky I was to have the cabin, however, at the time I felt like I was missing out. The cabin was small and cramped, it wasn’t on the water, we didn’t have a boat, our beach was communal and not private, we had the outhouse and the Nocturnal Toilet. I wanted Disneyland and Hawaii, a European vacation or even a trip to Yellowstone. Something I could take back to school and say “THIS is what I did on summer vacation!”

When my mom inherited the cabin she opened up the septic fields, put in a full bathroom, a washer/dryer and built a small bedroom. She knocked down the outhouse, put a shed over it and filled it with water toys and bikes. And now, I take my children to the lake lake every summer. It is the sum total of all our vacations. We hike, swim, pick berries, play cards, eat junk food and have a great time.

We are very lucky.

One day while we were at the (public) beach, I was struck by the unbelievable beauty of the lake. I was overcome with sweet childhood memories and a wave of gratitude. I couldn’t believe how amazingly fortunate I was to have grown up coming to a place like this and that I was now sitting here with my own children.  I felt like my heart was going to burst from pure, uninhibited gratitude and joy.

And then, I had a moment of contraction. Suddenly I was struck with a numbing fear.  We were going to be leaving soon. I may never see the lake again. I panicked. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to lose this moment! I didn’t want it to end!

But then it occurred to me, it’s already gone.

The minute I started to panic, it was gone. The depth of my gratitude, my peace and tranquility were gone. And I did it. I was the cause of both my peace and my panic.

And then I had one of those moments that comes when you are truly lucky. I realized that contentment is something you can actually practice.

This is revelatory to me. Up until this point I have always thought of contentment at something you achieve, something you earn. Work long days, put in hard hours, study and keep your nose to the grind stone and some day you will get to retire and spend all your hard earned money contentedly sitting around. It never occurred to me that contentment is something I could actually practice right now.

In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the second of the “observances” (Niyamasa) is Santosha: contentment. The Sutras say that in order to become enlightened one must  practice being content. I am sure oft over-used yoga catch phrase of “acceptance” could be used as another way of saying “contentment” but to me that would be incorrect. Acceptance implies a kind of acquiescence, a rolling over and letting the world pass over you. To practice contentment means that you are actively choosing to engage in the world according to your own terms. It means acknowledging when you have enough and being satisfied with it.

In conversations with my friends and students the question of being depleted and being dissatisfied has been coming up a lot. And while I am by no means above the fray, I can’t help but wonder, how often do we think our needs are not being met when in fact they are?  How often do we actively practice being discontented and how drastically would our lives change if we did the opposite? Americans are constantly being encouraged to crave, to be dissatisfied, to hunger so that we keep consuming. The fabric of our economy seems to depend on us remaining discontent, believing that we are too fat, too ugly, too old and too poor.

But are we? What would happen if we didn’t believe that?  What would it look like if we looked at our tiny cabins, and our outhouses and nocturnal toilets and said things like “Wow, this place is perfect. I get a respite from my life and time alone with my family. I need to take a crap and here is a place to do it. It satisfies my need. I am content with that.”

this post was taken from Jen’s personal blog “The Cabin” on 7/19/12. To read more, click here: http://yogajen.blogspot.com/

Timing is Everything

by Jen Whinnen

I grew up in Spokane Washington. I really like it there. In many ways Spokane is perfect. It’s a combination between a desert and a forest; nice and woodsy, but dry. It’s small, but not too small, and pretty. The people are very, very nice. One of my best friends lives there. It’s a great place to raise kids. It’s relatively safe with lots of open space to roam free. The weather is temperate so even though the winters tend to be long and cold, the summers never stay too hot for too long and there is zero humidity. There are tons of outdoor activities. It’s a smallish city with a nice community feel and fairly well supported art scene. It is a very nice place to live.

So why don’t I live there? Because, I don’t fit in. Spokane, for all its benefits, is not my place. For as long as I can remember I was out of place in my hometown. I had vastly different political views, have never really enjoyed outdoor activities and I am always, always cold. When I was young, headstrong and outspoken I would rail against Spokane, calling it a conservative hick town, with little or no culture, blah, blah, blah – the kind of stuff you say when you’re desperately insecure and need to feel superior. But now I know that there isn’t anything more or less wrong with Spokane than there is with any other place in the world.

Yogis continually talk about being “present.” It is one of those elusive ideas that often gets translated as “accept the hand your dealt” or “find the silver lining in this crummy situation.” I am not a fan of this translation. I don’t believe anyone should accept a resignation in life. If your situation is out of hand, acceptance doesn’t make it less so. It’s only by understanding who you are and how you work that you will get closer to touching Truth. Without this component, without understanding the landscape of your mind, you will always feel torn and confused. Yoga brings us closer to our authentic self not by teaching us how to resign ourselves to crummy situations, but by teaching us how to quiet the noise of constant recrimination and need. Once that happens we can hear and understand Truth and act accordingly.

Take my family’s move to a California suburb for example. One of the nicest things about city living is the parks. Parks are communal property. In a place where very few of us have anything that resembles a yard, we go to parks to air out our kids. It’s a collective experience and a nice, neutralizing place. You go, have a brief chat, crack a few jokes and move on. Sometimes you meet people you really like and want to get to know more and sometimes you suffer the fool, but either way Park Time is interactive time.

This is not true in the suburbs. Suburban parks are largely viewed as extensions of people’s yards. As such, cross communication is kept to a minimum. Parents bring their children and toys to the park and expect to be left alone. They rarely want to talk and more often than not spend the bulk of their time either on their phones or avoiding eye contact with other adults.

In the city it is widely accepted that if you bring toys to the park they are going to be played with by all the other kids in the park. Not so in the suburbs. When we’d go to the playground my son would march up to some kid and say “Hi, my name is Jack. Do you want to be my friend?” which means “Hi, what have you got there? I am going to touch it now.” This did not translate into Suburban. In the city, when the child with the toy starts to protest, the parents usually say something like “Now Billy, remember it’s nice to share.” But in the suburbs, the parents would shoot us a look that said “Bring your own toys to the park you mongrels!” Then they would scoop up their kid and stuff and leave.

It was, among many, a sign that we were not in the right place for us.

As our year yawned on, our disillusionment with suburban life grew. Eventually a series of events gave us the opportunity to leave California. We spent many nights making lists. Weighing the pros and cons, discussing the options, obsessing over where we’d go next. The option of moving back to New York was on the list but it was fraught with problems. It’s far away. Our families would be mad. It was expensive. The economy is bad. How it would affect the kids. John asked me “will moving back make you happy?”

I threw up my hands and said “I don’t know! Probably not. But I still think we should do it!”

Then I remembered one of the most often quoted texts from the Bhaghavad Gita;

  “Better to do one’s own duty imperfectly

    than to do another man’s well;

    doing action intrinsic to his being

    a man avoids guilt.” (8:47)

In the Gita, Arjuna, a soldier on the precipice of a battle, is holding council with Lord Krishna. Arjuna is having a crisis of faith. When he looks across the battle field he sees his cousins and knows that if he participates in this war, he is going to have to kill them. He doesn’t want to do this. He is about to walk away from battle, but Krishna counsels him otherwise. He says;

 “If you fail to wage this war
    of scared duty,
    you will abandon your own duty
    and fame will only gain evil.
    People will tell
   of your undying shame,
   and for a man of honor
   shame is worse than death.

   The great chariot warriors will think
   you deserted in fear of battle;
   you will be despised by those you esteem.

   Your enemies will slander you,
   scorning your skill in so many unspeakable ways –
   could any suffering be worse?” (2:33 – 36)

Essentially what he is saying is “Snap out of it! You think this war is going to stop because you choose not to fight? You think this battle isn’t going to happen without you? The only person who suffers from your lack of participation is you. Your people will turn their backs on you, your soldiers will say you abandoned them; the other side will call you a wimp. How is that better than doing what you are meant to do?”

Harsh words from God. Because the setting is war, the Gita is often misunderstood as a pro-war treatise, which it’s not. The backdrop of war is neither here nor there, the story could take place in an open air market and the lesson would still be the same. It’s just that backdrop of war is nice and dramatic. It helps to illustrate how mightily we have to struggle against our inclination to give up and walk away versus hunker down and fight our battles. It is a parable on the work we all must do.

Whether it is parenting, teaching, deep contemplation or carpentry, the work is the thing not the worker. Winning or the losing the battle is immaterial. Arjuna is a soldier. Therefore, he must fight. He must participate in his life. Whether he lives or dies doesn’t matter. Whether he fights well or poorly doesn’t matter. What matters is that he participates in his life.

This is probably one of the hardest concepts for me to wrap my mind around. Being an American I was trained to believe that life should be easy. I am entitled to the pursuit of happiness. Happiness comes from consuming things that will make it possible for me to do as little work as possible, right? The concept that work, whether it is done spectacularly or mediocre, is a path to liberation is completely foreign to me.

And yet, here I am in this self-created tumultuous life. We relocated back to New York in the spring. I started my own little yoga biz. Additionally I manage an on-line database. My husband started his own business and is going back to school. Together we’re raising two small humans. My children are young, my business is young, my husband’s business is young and, for all intents and purposes, we are old. We are starting over when most people have settled down. Every day feels like a race against the clock. The clock is ticking, ticking, ticking it never stops ticking! And each day my children get taller, wiser and older. And every day I think “Hey pay attention! You are missing this!”

But in between those moments of doubt, worry and insanity are these wonderful ones where, for the first time in a long time, I am in step with my own rhythms. I am completely absorbed in what I am doing. My life is working at my pace. I am in the right place for me. I tried to make my life what thought I “should” live. I tried to convince myself that someone else’s life was the one I wanted, but I was miserable. So, here I am in a kooky life that defies common sense.

And I feel better.

Doing your dharma isn’t about finding bliss or being perpetually happy. Practicing presence of mind isn’t about rolling over and accepting whatever comes your way as a cruel twist of fate. It’s about doing the work. It’s about learning the landscape of your mind and sticking with it when it’s awkward and hard and sucks. It’s about being present so that you can monitor and then moderate your reactions and interactions and maintain equanimity. It’s not finding the bright side of a bad situation or accepting that you are meant to suffer in some cosmic way, but accepting that you are in the driver’s seat of your own mind.

And deciding that the route you choose to take is ultimately up to you.

this post was taken from Jen’s personal blog “Timing is Everything” on 7/20/2010. To read more, click here: http://yogajen.blogspot.com/

The Rite of Way

by Jen Whinnen

There are six main darsanas, or schools of thought in Hinduism. Yoga is one of them. A lot of the writings about yoga have a lot to say about the mind and most of it is pertains to what the mind is not, namely, you are not your mind, don’t be a slave to your mind, you must reign in your mind, etc. The most often quoted of which is “yogah cittavritti nirodahah,” yoga is the restraint of mental modifications (Yoga Sutras, I.2), meaning the thing I think of as “Me” is really an obstacle that keeps distracting me from seeing myself for the purely luminous being I am. The irony of this is that yoga is deeply philosophical and philosophy is the act of thinking. It is concerned with thinking about the nature of existence. So, yogic philosophy is thinking about the fact that You are not what you think you are and so stop thinking about it.

The foundational text of many yoga schools is theYoga Sutras of Patanjali which is a very philosophical, but extremely practical text. It starts by defining the mind, it’s various “modifications” (knowledge, misconception, delusion, sleep and memory) and then goes on to tell you how each of these modifications can be controlled systematically and eventually manipulated so that you can be liberated from the cycle of reincarnation. Until recently I’ve never really been attracted to the Yoga Sutras. Although I’ve always admired the texts and see true brilliance in the wisdom I found it overly rigorous and completely sexist.

However, as a western woman teaching yoga and training yoga teachers, I feel obligated to think about how this philosophy works (if it works) and how it pertains to my life (if it does). So I went back to college. Hunter College offers a broad based “religion” program. Not a theology, seminary, or Hebrew studies program, but a real, live honest to God (pun intended) “let’s study religion academically” program. This is very appealing to me because I love religion but I am not at all religious. I am not even “spiritual, not religious.” I don’t follow any creed, am not a member of any church or sect and am not looking for a conversion or enlightenment. I am firmly rooted in this reality and understand that I’m either coming back around or getting left behind. And I am OK with that. I am not interested in being saved, I don’t want to bow before any alter or present offerings to anyone.

But, I love religions. I think they are completely, utterly fascinating. Religious texts are so uplifting and inspiring. They are the first recorded poetry, song and drama of the human experience. When I read religious texts I feel the ache of human suffering and the yearning for pure love and I want to learn more. As an observer. I really just want to be an observer.

Which is why the Hunter College program was so exciting to me (and continues to inspire me even when I question the sanity of going back to school to get a second bachelors, while trying to run two small businesses and raising two small kids). Last semester I took “Yogis, Mystics & Shamans” and it’s been pretty much pure synchronicity because not only does this help me with my goal of getting better acquainted with the Yoga Sutras, but it has also introduced me to Kundalini yoga, a world I never knew existed. I’ve taken a few kundalini yoga classes over the years and have enjoyed them, but I knew nothing of the philosophy behind it. In hatha yoga there are rigorous steps one must take in order to achieve enlightenment. First you must align yourself with Yamas (universal principles) and then the Niyamas (personal code of conduct), then you practice asana, pranayama, etc. In hatha yoga the rigors of practice can be extreme; eating only one grain of rice a day, sleeping on a bed of nails, etc. These austerities are designed to separate the yogi from his attachment to the physical world and to enter fully into the psychic world of the soul.

But, Kundalini yoga, you know what you need to do to get enlightenment going?

Nothing.

That’s right! You don’t have to do anything. The guru does it for you! The guru is the conduit for shaktipat, spiritual energy that s/he bestows upon a disciple. When a yogi gets shaktipat, the yogi awakens Kundalini at the base of the central energy channel (the shushumna) and after that, all good things are coming. Now, depending on how much karma you have will dictate how much you feel shaktipat. So someone like me, whose firmly rooting on this earth, may not get much and may end up “enlightened light,” whereas someone whose been coming around for a long time and has very little karmic weight may get a direct link to the universal consciousness and away they go! Of course after receiving shaktipat you have to do the work of meditating which gets Kundalini rising and starts her on her mission of cleaning out your chakras and that work could take a lifetime and may involve things like kriyas (moving meditations, similar to asanas), but the actual awakening is bestowed upon you by someone else.

And this is why I love studying religion. Had I not taken this class I wouldn’t know that there is this other world of yoga. I would have thought that my knowledge was the sum total and I would be living in Avidya (ignorance). According to yogic philosophy, Avidya is one of the main causes of suffering and evil in the world. In fact, in this system there isn’t a good or bad, it’s either right knowledge or ignorance. The more right knowledge we have, the less ignorant we become and less likely we are to harm.

I like this. In fact, this is why yoga is the closest I’ve ever come to adopting a spiritual practice. The philosophies aren’t absolutes. They are simply optional pathways and all the pathways are considered viable. In a world where we are told we have to do this, we must look like that, we need to have this thing or that thing in order to be happy it is encouraging to find a system that says “try this, see if it works” and leaves the rest up to you.

I have no idea if one system is right or wrong or if what I am doing is cosmically correct, and I really don’t care because I really don’t think it matters. The only thing I know for sure is that no else knows for sure either and this makes me happy because at least I know am in good company.