The Blissful Body of the Yogi(ni) - Yidam Practice and Yoga Asana

 

Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, a Tibetan yogi regularly contrasted with the incomparable Milarepa, while tending to the issue of Yidam practice inside the Vajrayana vehicle of Tibetan Buddhism, has said: It is the merry body of the yogi or yogini that is the genuine Deity. So what may this mean? What's more, how, if by any means, is it (or could it be) identified with the act of Yoga asana? How about we investigate ... 

Yidam practice unfurls in two phases: (1) The Generation or Creation Stage, wherein the particular god that one is working with is made, for example given a "structure" inside the creative mind of the specialist; and (2) The Completion Stage, where that made type of the god is broken down: settled into void, and (its buildup, its actual knowledge) light/brilliance. The training likewise, over the long haul, advances from one in which the god is just a reasonable projection, to one in which the "characteristic god" shows up, non-adroitly, before the specialist, as a noticeable part of his/her own brilliance. 

Yidam practice in general is based, in enormous part, upon a gainful utilization of the creative mind. It takes that limit (and solid propensity) the vast majority of us need to make mental pictures, and uses this as an instrument to adjust us to, open us to, a reality that is more profound, more significant, and "more genuine" than the one we're routinely "fixed on." The envisioned types of the gods have the nature of being capable, possibly, to go about as entrances, or doors into these more profound real factors ... to place us in touch, straightforwardly, with parts of stirred psyche. 

Presently it's critical to see the qualification between ~ from one perspective ~ this Yidam-practice method of utilizing our creative mind (as a quite certain type of mental preparing, which at last can free us), and ~ then again ~ a utilization of the creative mind which adds up to close to (ongoing, and regularly generally oblivious) fantasizing. To participate in dream is ~ from the viewpoint of Buddha Dharma ~ a non-beneficial utilization of the creative mind: one that takes us further into the domain of conceptualization, mental elaboration, and as such further a lot away from a reality which can possibly free us merudandasana precautions. 

So how does any of this identify with the act of Yoga asana? We could, as a matter of first importance, consider every particular asana as a divinity structure: something we build/project (a la the Creation Stage) and afterward break up (a la the Completion Stage). Undoubtedly asana practice depends generally upon a qualification among profitable and non-gainful arrangements/employments of the body. The beneficial arrangements (a la the gainful employments of mental creative mind) are those which can possibly open us into a reality more profound than the simple physical, for example to the level of the Central Channel/Shushumna Nadi, and the ensuing cognizant progression of that stirred energy outward, into the entire organization of nadis inside the unpretentious body of the yogi or yogini. The non-profitable arrangements (a la dreams), then again, just keep the energy of our inconspicuous bodies circling unknowingly (separated from "reality" of the Shushumna Nadi) in old samskaric designs, for example keep us circumnavigating on the wheel of bith-and-demise which in Buddhism is called Samsara. 

Furthermore, similarly that in divinity practice there is a development from the god as a simple calculated projection (however a possibly gainful one!) to the non-applied appearance of the "regular god"; only so in our asana practice we frequently start with a fairly "outside-in" approach, in which the asana is really a type of reasonable projection, for example it's an "thought" we have (from our educator, or books, or whatever) that we set forth as a plan of (the presence of) bones, muscles, and so on ... be that as it may, it's not yet "genuine" or "common." As our asana practice develops, increasingly more we're ready to work from the "back to front," in which the asanas arise suddenly, non-thoughtfully, as parts of our regular knowledge/brilliance. Our developments all through the asanas are mixed with the soul of what in Taoism is called Wu Wei: an easy exertion which normally delivers the "right" arrangements (rather than "forcing" those arrangements dependent on some outside "moral code" of asana practice). 

So how at that point do we advance from an applied to a characteristic method of communicating our asana practice? From the stances as simple reasonable projections to articulations of a stirred bodymind? An expert of the Generation Stage of Yidam practice may move toward this path by discovering the Completion Stage inside the Creation Stage, by discovering the disintegration of the structure as a characteristic part of the actual structure (much as ~ in Taoist hypothesis/practice ~ Yang is an inborn part of Yin: they between are). In this equivalent manner, our asana practice may re-part the disintegration of structure inside each structure/asana taken. What's more, may ~ to expand the rule ~ put into cognizant and always developing relationship every single restricting development ... So gradually our "thoughts" about the "right way" to do the posture are supplanted by a perpetually unobtrusive quaking which suddenly adjusts us in a manner that permits our adroitly projected "body" to break up into the euphoric body of the god: a part of our own brilliance, pouring forward, shedding itself persistently, to support every single living being.