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Winter 1996

NAMASTE,

Two years ago I wrote about the explosion of interest in yoga that was sweeping across the country. That trend has continued unabated; if anything it has picked up steam.

Another major trend has appeared, however, that promises to eclipse by far any popularity that yoga may enjoy, although in a way both trends are related. I’m speaking of the burgeoning preoccupation with aging.

As much as anything, though, especially in the West we have denied aging and it’s ultimate conclusion, death. From Ponce de Leon to Deepak Chopra we have sought the fountain of youth and an ageless body, and that search has accelerated in the past few decades. Retin-A, Porcelena, Clairol, face lifts, the list of powders, potions and procedures is endless. Youthfulness has been exalted in movies, sports, ads, fashion, literature, just about all our major cultural outlets. Being young has been portrayed as being vibrant, attractive, active, desirable. With a few exceptions older people are presented as geezers and fuddy duddies, listless, ineffectual and out of it.

One part of the reason for the emphasis on youth in modern America has been the baby boomers. This is a capitalist country, after all, and demographics are crucial to capitalism. Those who have the largest numbers and/or most money get center stage. That’s been the boomers. And until now the boomers have been young. Furthermore, as we boomers have aged, the designation of what’s “old” has ridden an upward sliding scale. “Life begins at 40” replaced “Don’t trust anybody over 30” some time ago.

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In the last month I have read articles on aging in Yoga Journal, and Common Boundary. Chopra’s book, Ageless Body, Timeless Mind: The Quantum Alternative to Growing Old is a best seller. And cultural mainstays, such as The Washington Post, have also added their voices. Just a few weeks ago The Post devoted the entire Health section to articles on aging. Not that there haven’t been books and articles in the past, but there is clearly an increase in their numbers and the fervor with which the issue is being discussed. It is apparent that there is a more serious, and by that I mean larger, audience.

In 1992, for example, Omega Institute sponsored a program in “conscious aging” designed to examine and change current attitudes about aging. Twelve hundred people showed up. The interest is definitely there.

And as far as I am concerned that’s a good thing. For the most part as a society we Westerners have treated our older citizens terribly. Many of them are segregated in warehouses for the elderly, drugged, patronized or ignored. We relegate them to the dust heap and deprive ourselves of the knowledge and wisdom they have acquired over a lifetime. We cut them off from the pleasure and intellectual stimulation of family and blame them for their languor.

I don’t mean to be a pollyanna bout the issue. There are immense problems to be dealt with on many different levels, and the answers are not going to be easily discovered or implemented. And as with the boon in yoga, lots of people will jump on the bandwagon and try to cash in, offering everything from “reversing the aging process” to conquering death. But it seems to me that an excellent place to begin is with a change in attitude toward aging and the aged. When attitudes change, the nuts and bolts solutions to the problem emerge much more readily.

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One of the primary changes in attitude involves abandoning the idea that old age is a time for people to be put out to pasture and left to amuse themselves with meaningless diversions, doing the shuffleboard shuffle. Instead, one’s later years can be viewed as an opportunity to explore consciousness from the vantage point of a wide range of experience and to share the insights gleaned from that exploration.

This is very much in keeping with the four stages of life described in the Indian tradition. They are: 1) the student, who acquires knowledge necessary to make his/her way in the world; 2) the ordinary householder, who earns her/his livelihood, struggling to fulfill the responsibilities of family and society; 3) the mature individual, enjoying the richness of a life fully lived; 4) the elder, who moves beyond the attachments of the world and seeks the true meaning of life.

In contemplating these four stages I can’t help thinking about my teacher, B.K.S. Iyengar, whose seventy-seventh birthday is December 14. In his usual inimitable way, he somehow seems to be combining all four stages at once even at this point in his life. Always a student of his art, he has clearly reached a level of maturity in the discipline of yoga few will attain. He is still incredibly active in overseeing his family of students in India and all around the world. And yet with his deep study of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras and the fruits of his own practice he is penetrating into the depths of what life, yoga and and real freedom mean, a search that he shares with all of us who will listen and see. He is, in so many ways, and inspiring example of the vitality, creativity, and fullness that are possible as the years continue to roll by. None of us could keep up with him in Rishikesh earlier this year.

Speaking of the years rolling by, I must say that the issue of aging has come to my mind not only because of Mr. Iyengar’s birthday or cultural preoccupations. My fiftieth birthday arrives a few days before Christmas. Zounds! I’ve certainly had a thought or two about it as it draws nearer, but I’m out of space. We are having a discussion group on the subject of aging on January 28, though, so hopefully we can get together and talk about it some more then.

Happy holidays and a joyous new year to you all.

       

P.S. And speaking of joyous new years, on October 15, Suzie Mann and I were married.

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