OVERCOMING THE THREE CAUSES OF SUFFERING
Words: Srivatsa Ramaswami
My Vedic initiation (upanayana) took place when I was about ten years old. I used to wake up around six in the morning and do my morning sandhya, a sun worship ritual in which I did 108 Gayatri mantra recitations, or japa, and ten rounds of samantraka pranayama, the practice of pranayama accompanied by mantra recitation that allows one to totally immerse one’s mind in the mantra.
One day I woke up around five a.m. and heard some muffled voices downstairs. Curious, I went down and opened the puja room door. There I found my father learning to chant Vedic mantras from a young teacher, a student at the famous Madras Sanskrit College. I quickly brushed my teeth and washed my face, then sat down next to my father and started repeating each mantra twice, along with my father. Neither the teacher nor my father raised any objection. This went on for about an hour. Afterwards, I learned that this was the first chapter of the Vedic text known as the ‘Taittiriya Aranyaka,’ which consists of the well-known Aruna Surya Namaskara* mantras. Thereafter, I continued to study along with my father up until the end of the text. Later, I learned the earlier portions that I had missed.
In the course of the next four years, I learned how to chant a number of Vedic Sanskrit works commonly taught in South India, such as the ancient Vedic chant known as the Rudram Chamakam, the hymns of the Vedas known as suktas, and the Taittiriya and Mahanarayana Upanishads from the Yajurveda, an ancient collection of mantras used in Vedic rituals. The teacher also taught some well-known Sanskrit verses, or slokas, such as the Vishnu Sahasranama and the Chandrasekharashtakam and Shankaracharya’s Dakshiamurti Stotram.
While the other slokas were accessible, the Dakshinanmurti slokas, which explain the source and metaphysics of the universe from the Advaita Vedanta perspective, were not understandable. I asked my teacher to explain them, but he told me that I should learn to chant it first, then, later on in life, I could try to understand the philosophy behind it. My studies with the young teacher ended after four years, when he left the city.
I first started studying with Sri Krishnamacharya in 1955, and he remained my guru until his passing in 1988. Initially, and for several years, it was all “on the cotton mat” yoga. It was all cotton mats at that time and not the synthetic stuff commonly used in the West and everywhere nowadays. He taught a wonderful breath-oriented yoga asana practice that included hundreds of vinyasas in scores of asana sequences that included synchronised breathing. He called his system, which I now use in my own teachings, vinyasa krama.*
Thereafter, and for several years, I studied Vedic chanting with Sri Krishnamacharya, covering almost the entire ‘Taittiriya Aranyaka.
At that point he started teaching the important texts he thought a yoga student should study if so inclined. He started with the ‘Yoga Sutras of Patanjali’—every sutra, word by word. Other texts followed: the ‘Samkhya Karika’ of the fourth-century sage Ishvarakrishna, with commentary by sixth-century Vedic philosopher Gaudapada and some of the classic treatises of Hatha yoga—the ‘Hatha Yoga Pradipika’, the ‘Gherunda Samhita’, ‘Yoga Yagnyavalkya,’ and the ‘Siva Samhita.’ But before that he taught me the ‘Bhagavad Gita,’ which he considered an important Yoga text just as it is considered an important Vedanta text. He then taught me the ;Brahma Sutras’ and many vidyas or topics of the major Upanishads, such as the ‘Chandogya, Brihadaranyaka,’ ;Prasna, Mundaka,’ ‘Taittiriya,’ ‘Mandukya,’ ‘Kausitaki Brahmana,’ ‘Svetaswatara,’ ‘Katha,’ ‘Kena,’ ‘Aitareya,’ and a few others. In all, this course of study took me three decades to complete.
After my guru’s passing, I decided to retire from my work in finance and investment and start teaching as much of what I had absorbed from my wonderful teacher as I could. I didn’t realise at the time while was studying with him, but I later came to discover that Sri Krishnamacharya was very well-known all over the world, yet most of his teachings were completely unknown in the western yoga world. Even the asana practice I found being taught in India and elsewhere in the world was much different from the vinyasa krama yoga he taught in all the years I had studied with him.
His vinyasa krama system was predominately breath-oriented and based on the correct interpretation of the term prayatna saitilya, translated as “effortless life effort (breath),” a description of smoothing the breath in aesthetic vinyasa variations. So, I told myself that I would endeavour to teach as many of the subjects I had learned from him as I could, as I loved what he taught and how he taught. Nothing touched me as deeply and was as fulfilling as his teachings on the ancient wisdoms. I thought there may be a few yoga enthusiasts who will resonate with these teachings as deeply as I had, so sort of lonely.
Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles gave me ample opportunities to teach, and I initially taught yoga according to Krishnamacharya’s method of vinyasa krama. Then in 2000 I published my book ‘Yoga for the Three Stages of Life’ (Inner Traditions). In it, I gave a comprehensive view of yoga as articulated by Patanjali, following the thought process behind it. It had a fair amount of discussion and teachings on asana, but it also had other aspects of yoga that in my view are not sufficiently emphasised in modern yoga books or in studios. Then in 2005 I published ‘The Complete Book of Vinyasa Yoga’ (DaCapo Press), which I have used as a textbook in my 200- and 100-hour yoga teacher training programs, taught many times in different places.
Around this same time, I recorded many of the Vedic chants and other popular Sanskrit devotional works that I had learned from Sri Krishnamacharya, using a leading company in Madras, India, the Master Recording Company. An album, titled ‘Sundara Kanda’, runs close to ten hours and includes the ‘Sundara Kanda,’ the fifth “beautiful chapter” in the Hindu epic the Ramayana, of more than 2800 verses. Other major chants that I recorded include a three-hour recitation of the Aswamedha ritual (described later); the ‘Mooka Pancha Sati,’ a 500-sloka classic on the goddess Kanchi Kamakshi Devi; the Devi Mahatmayam, or “Glory of the Goddess”; and many of the sahasranamas (thousand names) mantras of popular deities such as Shiva, Vishnu, Ganesha, Lalita, Durga, Subrahmanya,n Gayatri, Anjaneya, Raghavendra, and others.*
Thereafter I offered teachings to yoga practitioners on a number of Vedic treatises at Loyola Marymount and other locations around the world: the ‘Bhagavad Gita,’ the ‘Yoga Sutras of Patanjali,’ the ‘Samkhya Karika,’ Sri Krishnamacharya’s ‘Nathamuni Yoga Rahasya,’ the ‘Yoga Yajnavalkya,’ the ‘Hatayogapradipika,’ and the ‘Upanishad Vidyas.’ Some of my talks on the ‘Gita’ and the ‘Samkhya Karika’ were filmed and can be found on YouTube,* as were talks on other yoga-related subjects such as “Yoga for the Internal Organs.” My 20 hour lecture series on the ‘Samkhya Karika,’ which took place at Yoga Vahini, a yoga teacher training facility in Chennai, India, was transcribed by a team chosen from among the participants, and this has become the basis of the book you are reading now.† While preparing this book, I also recorded a recitation of the complete ‘Samkhya Karika.
I am now 85 years old. Although yoga is multidimensional, most modern books on yoga deal exclusively with asana practice, so my goal for my remaining years is to continue to teach and publish works on the foundational subjects of yoga that Krishnamacharya taught. The ‘Samkhya Karika’ for yoga practitioners, is the fruit of my labour. EXTRACT
