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Winter 1990

NAMASTE,

Last August I taught at Feathered Pipe Ranch with Patricia Walden. The title of our workshop was The Balance of Effort and Surrender. And this past October the group discussion at Unity Woods was about “Balancing Effort and Surrender”. In the time since I have begun to turn my attention more and more toward this subject, I have encountered an increasing number of articles, essays and commentaries addressing effort, surrender, or both. The October discussion provided still more information with the numerous and varied ideas and observations expressed. The thoughtfulness of those ideas, coupled with the large turnout for the discussion, indicate to me that this is a subject that is of interest to a number of people.

Patanjali raises these issues in the first chapter of the Yoga Sutras when he describes what is necessary to attain the state of Yoga (citta-vrtti-nirodha). Two things are required, he says: abhyasa, defined as persistent practice or effort, and vairagya, defined usually as non-attachment, but which can certainly be understood as surrender or letting go. And he presents them in that order: first effort, then surrender (I-12). This is not an accident. For the sake of brevity, clarity and precision, everything about the Yoga Sutras is very deliberate, done with tremendous intention. So we can reasonably assume that there is a reason why effort comes before surrender.

In order to go into the interplay between effort and surrender, it will be helpful to have a concrete example. What better example for a bunch of Iyengar yogis than that of practicing an asana, or posture? Let’s even be so specific as to choose a particular asana, say, utthita trikonasana or triangle pose.

To even begin to do trikonasana, some effort is required. In fact, Judith Lasater says that the real effort is in deciding to do trikonasana in the first place. The mental effort of choosing to act comes first, weighing, considering, deciding, and then the physical effort of doing the pose follows.

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But all of us have had the experience of deciding to do something and then somehow not doing it. We make the effort to decide, yet before we even begin the physical effort of doing trikonasana, something happens, something gets in the way.

Patanjali has a whole list of these obstacles (doubt, laziness, delusion, etc.), nine in all (I-30), but without naming and discussing them, I think it would be fair to say that they describe the conditions we create in order to resist acting on our decision. We’re not sure if this is the right pose to do, or we’re just too tired today to practice, and so on. Because of our doubts or laziness or whatever, we resist our own decision to do trikonasana, and so we go back to bed and wait for a better time.

In a recent issue of The Sun magazine, a delightful collection of essays, short stories, poetry and letters that is published monthly, there appeared an interview with Stephen Levine, who has spent much of his life working in the field of human consciousness. Originally a Buddhist meditation teacher, co-author with Ram Dass of Grist For The Mill, and former co-director of the Hanuman Foundation’s Dying Project, he and his wife now conduct workshops on “Conscious Living, Conscious Dying.”

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In the interview the question of surrender arose. He responded thusly, “ The word surrender is so funny, because most people…equate surrender with defeat. But surrender is letting go of resistance.” (The Sun, #167, p.10). If we accept this definition of surrender, letting go of resistance, then what we need in between the effort of deciding to do something and the effort of actually doing it is to surrender, to stop fighting with ourselves and just get on with it. This, of course, is very simple to say, but not so easy to do.

In class the other night a student asked how to establish a regular practice. He had discovered that if he left his practice until later in the day, it often didn’t get done. But when he tried to practice in the morning, he was stiff and didn’t enjoy it as much and wound up missing it on that account.

In thinking of what to suggest to him, I was reminded of a sentence from a yoga book I had read years ago. To tell you the truth, I can’t remember a thing about the book, including the author and the title, other than this particular sentence, which advised that the minute you awoke in the morning, you should get out of bed immediately and begin your practice. Now this may not seem like earth-shattering information, but it had a tremendous effect on me. Instead of lying there in bed, feeling how warm and comfortable it was, how cold the room was, how good slipping back to sleep would feel, I began getting up right away. Not one thought other than, “I’m awake. Get up.” I missed practice a lot fewer times and spent what had been the usual twenty minutes of procrastination practicing instead, which I figure added a little over two hours a week to my practice.

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The effect of that sentence was to help me to eliminate the period of resistance that takes place between the effort of deciding and the effort of acting.

Going back to our example of trikonasana, we’ve decided to do the pose, let go of our resistance to doing it, and now begun to do it.

Certainly standing up in trikonasana requires physical effort. Just standing up requires physical effort. And in the beginning a lot of physical effort is needed. Just watch a baby trying to learn to stand. The movements are gross, inefficient, uneconomical, weak. Then watch a dancer rise from a stooped or lying posture on the floor to a full standing position. Smooth, beautiful, powerful, effortless. It took tremendous effort over a long period of time to attain the control whereby that apparently effortless action became possible.

Mr. Iyengar addresses the question of effort in his chapter on “Effort, Awareness, and Joy” in The Tree of Yoga. He observes that in the beginner’s pose a great deal of effort is involved, while for the experienced practitioner the degree of physical effort decreases.

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In class I have heard him refer to donkey work, mule work and horse work. You need a lot of effort to get a donkey to work; you have to push or pull it. To get a mule to work you shout at it. I watched an old tobacco farmer in West Virginia work a pair of mules through his field simply by shouting commands at them. He did shout real loud. To get a horse going all you need to do is cluck your tongue.

In the beginning much of the work of doing the poses is donkey work. Sensitivity, understanding, and refinement develop as the poses are performed time and again, and through this sensitivity and understanding, bad habits, imbalances and weaknesses are surrendered.

What seems to emerge through all of this is a pattern which involves effort to bring awareness to a new level and then letting go of what is not appropriate at that level, and then more effort, another new level, more letting go, and so on.

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I have found this to be true in doing asana practice. I have also found it be true in lots of other aspects of my life. Certainly in my relationship with my wife this pattern occurs. We struggle with some problem, get a clearer picture of it, let go of some hangup that was getting in the way, and then move on to the next level.

I suspect the real problem is in solving the question of appropriateness. When do you work harder, when do you back off? In doing a pose, when do you make the effort to push through resistance, and when do you stop and wait? In struggling with problems in a relationship, when do you keep gnawing at them and when do you just let it go for awhile?

Unfortunately there is not an easy or quick answer, at least none that I’ve been able to find. In the chapter on “Effort, Awareness and Joy” Mr. Iyengar says, “You proceed by trial and error. As the trials increase, the errors become less. Then doubts become less, and when doubts lessen, the effort also becomes less…Direction will come, and when you go in the right direction, wisdom begins. When wise action comes, you no longer feel the effort as effort – you feel the effort as joy.”

I understand him to be saying that we need to work hard, to persist, to be attentive and learn, and that as we work in this way, we arrive at a level of comprehension whereby we no longer fluctuate between effort and surrender but rather find ourselves in the place where effort and surrender merge into one another in harmony and balance. Or, as Bob Marley said:

You must try, Try and try, You’ll succeed at last.

       

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