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There is a great deal of dismay these days about the quality of our leaders. This is true not only in regard to government, but many of our other institutions as well. We keep finding out that lots of the folks at the top - whether it be in sports or brokerage firms, charities or labor unions - are dishonest, unethical, petty, selfish or downright criminal. Our various spiritual communities and their leaders are not immune, either. One after another has suffered the revelation of admitted or alleged turpitude. Of course, not all, not even most, of the people in power are ne'er- do-wells. But the increased reporting of unethical and illegal behavior certainly lends that impression.

While there are clearly problems in our institutions that need attention, dismal trends that need reversing, and plenty of room for improvement in our national and individual character, maybe some of our distress arises because we have more information about everything and everyone than we used to. Every day the news is full of one horrible crime after another. Not surprisingly, people believe that crime is escalating tremendously. Yet statistics indicate that the crime rate is actually declining. We have the sense that it must be getting worse because we see so much more about it. We are more aware of it.

Awareness, of course, is at the heart of the practice of yoga. In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali talks about avidya. A means without or the lack of, and vidya means cognition or awareness, so avidya is usually translated as ignorance or lack of awareness. Another meaning of vid is to see, so avidya also means not seeing. In many ways, seeing IS awareness. When we become aware of something, understand it, we often say "Ah, I see".

Seeing is so important in the practice and teaching of yoga. We find value in practice, for instance, not by what somebody tells us is happening or is supposed to happen, but by what is actually happening, what we see for and about ourselves. For those of us who are teachers, seeing our students is one of the key elements of our teaching. As I have trained more and more teachers, I've discovered that a significant portion of the training involves showing them how to see what's going on. One of the things I continue to find so astonishing about Mr. Iyengar's teaching is his ability to see with almost x-ray vision into his students. Sometimes in class he'll point out to us what he wants us to see, and for the life of me, I just can't catch it. I haven't developed that level of seeing yet.

Patanjali states in the Yoga Sutras that avidya is the source of our suffering (II:4). What he is saying is that if we look carefully at so many of the things that cause us pain, we will observe that our inability to see or understand what is really going on underlies what we perceive as causing us pain.

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So how come seeing all this stuff about our society, our leaders, ourselves doesn't seem to make us feel any better? This illustrates one of the problems with seeing. The idea of seeing clearly sounds great, but the things we see in that clarity may be more than we can handle. Often many of us, I think, would rather not see that things and people aren't quite what we thought or hoped they were. I suspect that more than a few students quit yoga, for example, because they begin to see that they are unhealthy or unbalanced or unhappy in ways of which they were previously unaware. Ask a class of beginners "Who has physical problems?", and a handful of students will describe one ailment or another. Ask more experienced students, and almost everyone will tell of some physical challenge they are working with. Are the yoga practitioners worse off? No. Rather, they are just more tuned in to their bodies and the various imbalances and limitations that had existed all along. They had simply been unaware of them before. And some people would rather remain unaware of them. For some folks it's just too uncomfortable to be confronted with the conscious choice of either living with a particular problem or, if possible, doing something about it. They're not prepared to deal with what they see. They quit. The Bhagavad Gita provides another example. When Krishna, who is a manifestation of the Universal One, reveals his true face to Arjuna at Arjuna's insistence, Arjuna is completely overwhelmed by the radiance and power that are revealed. He simply can't cope with encountering Ultimate Reality.

In a way, the primary purpose of our practice of yoga is to enable us to see more and more clearly and in addition, to prepare ourselves for what we see. Each step on the path sets the stage for the next. Asanas(postures) prepare us for pranayama (breathing); pranayama turns our perception inward (pratyahara) and readies us for dharana (concentration); concentration flows into contemplation (dhyana), which in turn opens us to the essence (samadhi). Certainly until we see clearly where we are in relation to both ourselves (niyama)and the world around us (yama), we will be unable to act skillfully and intelligently. And that takes courage and strength. It's one of the reasons we practice warrior poses. Newer students are sometimes perplexed to learn that there are warrior poses. "I thought yoga was about non-violence and gentleness," they say. But non-violence takes more courage and strength than violence. Who was more courageous: Martin Luther King and his fellow marchers as they stood non-violently on the bridge in Selma, standing for freedom and justice, or the troopers who cursed and beat them? Dr. King had had a dream, a vision; he had seen the truth of our interconnectedness in a way that gave him unbelievable power and strength.

And yet even as we revere him, we know that Reverend King was not always a paragon of virtue. There are those who prefer to see one part of the man; there are those who focus on the other. It requires of us a certain strength and courage to see the glory and the imperfection simultaneously and to see our connection with the squalid as well as the sublime. We would do well to keep that in mind as one revelation after another surfaces about the people who govern and manage our various governmental, social, cultural, and religious institutions, and about our friends, neighbors and families as well. Indeed even more strength and courage are required if we are to look into our own hearts and minds honestly and clearly. For in that clarity of vision coupled with the power to embrace fully what we see lies the heart of compassion and the possibility of freedom.

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