5 Tenuous Retorts
Once taken up then the practice of yoga continues throughout ones entire life. It continues right through the process of death. In Yoga, as in Bauddha, there is really no deep consideration of ends. Teleology and eschatology are extrinsic disciplines to Indian philosophy where atemporal mysticism has always reigned supreme[1]. This is also why "enlightenment" so rarely comes up in the philosophy of yoga, if ever at all. If anything, enlightenment is just the beginning. Having once arrived to supreme self-sufficiency, or what the Yoga technically calls kaivālya, the yogī seeks nil from his external environment. Everything the yogī needs appears before him. He is finished with becoming; all is done. There is nothing to do but to bask in the peace of his own self-luminous divinity.
One fine day the Master remarked, "My philosophy will never catch on like wildfire."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because it never promises miracles," he said.
And it's true. Most of us are only interested in miracles: those powerfully vast metaphysical transformations occurring to the accompaniment of celestial trumpets, rainbow banners and cannon fire.
"But it's also because my philosophy rejects dogma," he added.
To speak about yoga in a dogmatic vein was a tasteless indiscretion for Guru Chod. Still he maintained his rule-ensemble and observed certain pat philosophical truths, all of which were grounded in the principles of nature.
He was open to fielding questions, too, and invited me to pose them whenever I wished. But if I asked too many he shook his head, "No. You'll just get confused."
I also got baffled when the answer he gave seemed to lack any bearing on the question I had asked. Later I caught on to his mode of response, which actually acted to help me get behind the superficiality of my original quandary. His tenuous retorts were like cryptic axes striking at the gristly roots of my predilection for cerebral self-ensnarement.
