Nadaist yoga sutras

The yoga sutras were written by Patanjali some 2500 years ago, they are a very precise piece of knowledge about yoga. But they were written in sanskrit, which is a difficult and dead language, and they were very short, their meaning a bit obscure, as it happens with many other old scriptures. The fact that according to the myth Patanjali was an incarnation of the snake god does not help bringing light to the subject, I'd guess.

Neither do help much the big number of books that have been written on the subject since the beginning of the 20th century. So many pages of commentaries on a bit less than 200 short aphorisms cannot serve to clarify it but just to mess it up more and more.

Some of these modern thinkers claim that in those ancient times the sutras were written, they were actually understood by the readers, because the spiritual knowledge was on average much much higher compared to the present moment, in which modernity and technology have spoilt everything (?). I would not dare to contradict anybody on anything, but it sounds like the typical statement about any past period of time being better. Why should the contemporaries of the snake god understand anything he was talking about, what do we know about those centuries, were there more yoga practitioners compared to the present?. For sure there were not people from every corner of the world travelling to India to learn yoga.

Anyway, it's not that my translation is going to contribute to clarify anything, of course not. Not that many people are going to read it anyway. Not that it has any value either, I'm not translating it from sanskrit, but just playing from another english translation. But the point I'm going to try to make is that I will translate them not using any spiritual word, that using the right words it could be a very clear explanation with no ambiguity. Depending on who you ask, my translation could be a blasphemy or an exercise of stupidity. I just hope it will be more or less funny.

Let's face it

I have no idea what to do.

I do know what I'm going to do next, I have the return flight to London, which I booked so long ago I can't remember, (when january 2007 was far away and meaningless), and I have to leave India because of the visa. I'll spend a few days in the crazy expensive city, I'll visit my family to say hello, and then I will go somewhere to stay with a friend for some time, he/she still does not know, since I don't know either. Little by little I'll get used to Europe again, and I'll see how my money flies 3 or 4 times faster compared to India, even though I'm staying with a friend. (If it takes me some time to realise it, it might be a different friend from the 1st one).

In the meantime I'll finish the novel - I'm nearly there already. I'll make everything possible to get it published, feeling very sad since if I had success it would be the end of the nadaism and this time there would be no way around, (it was still ok when I starting the regular yoga practice for the sake of it, also when I was focusing on writing just for the sake of it). But the nadaist cause needs money, and if nobody contributes, it is over. Anyway no problem for a while because it is probably a hopeless try I will make.

Then, money running out fast, novel not published, the consequence is obvious and sounds very very scary: I'll be forced to look for a job. Let's face it. It is going to happen. It will be the end.

I hope by that time I am not much worried than I am now, (i.e. right now I am not worried at all). I'm quite sure, actually.

Also I'd like to think that by that time I have an idea or a hint of what to do. But let's face it, I won't. How could you make sense of such a step.

New year's eve

Short post to explain you how did it go with my new year's eve, because it was awesome.

The yoga & vipassana guys were going out for dinner, but somehow I did not feel like it. They are very nice and warm people, I've spent some good times with them, no complains about it, (except maybe that their conversation sometimes tends to go too much to the yoga & vipassana subjects). And they are not "party people", not particularly, which is kind of nice as well.

=> A side note maybe, quite an important one though: make no mistake, yoga people are quite neurotic. I don't know why I thought in a yoga course in India you would find very nice and balanced and peaceful group, but no no no they're nuts, (starting by myself of course).

Anyway that night I did not feel like going out with them. And I did not have any other alternatives since I don't know so many people around - besides the yoga classes, my social life is limited here, there's the girls I try to talk to now and then with little success. Then I didn't.

On my way to the restaurant I was feeling kind of weird. Was I going to spend my new year's eve having dinner on my own and going to bed early?. Would I not regret it and feel sad about it?. The answer was obviously negative. But I don't know, I had my doubts untill it was over; it seems that you cannot be sure unless you give it a try. May I encourage you to do the same one of these years?. It was a wonderful finding. No hassle with new year's eve anymore.

Christmas and all that

I'm in a tropical beach north of Goa. At midday is still too sunny so I usually have to hide, it's a good time to go in front of the cold one-eyed computer, and to update the blog maybe - it's been a couple of weeks since last time, but the simplicity of my days here leave me quite silent, not much to say then...

Yesterday it was christmas eve, you could say this is a good place to spend the holidays. Although I guess it's as good as any other. The best christmas in my life were probably last year, I was also in India and I went for a visit to a tibetan settlement in the south; but those days were for sure amongst the best in my life, I had just left everything and I was travelling with a very very good friend - christmas did not have much to do with it, neither against it, it was just a date in the calendar which was quite unrelated to what was happening to me.

Well yesterday I did not have many plans, did not feel like going into a party for sure, there's some friends around, mostly from yoga classes, and I was guessing I would meet them and have a quiet dinner with them. It's funny though that I had not seen them during the full day and I was getting a bit kind of anxious as dinner time was approaching: the perspective of spending christmas eve on my own did sound weird. I was surprised I had that feeling, (I have had lunch on my own yesterday and it was perfectly alright), but there it was.

Eventually I met them of course, and we went for dinner, it was not much different than usual, (we have food together pretty much daily), except for the fact that we decided to go to a good italian restaurant, supposed to be the best in town, for a change. Afterwards we were all tired and sleepy and went straight to bed.



If you believe that the external things are your problem, that you get disturbed and stressed because of the daily hassles, the job, the responsibilities, the family, or whatever else, then the solution should be easy, no?, then you would know what to do if you wanted to get out of that disturbance, of that stress.

But, whatever your reasons, if you actually do it and leave everything, maybe you find a lot of peace of mind, or even you find something huge you had not realised before, or you start feeling happiness, or I don't know which good things start happening to you. However, if you are lucky, you might also figure out what was the origin of that disturbances and the stress you felt in your "old life", because in your "new life" there's also annoyances, and you may get very angry about them, as much as you want...

It does not mean that you've learnt automatically to deal with all those problems, even worse, no matter how small they are they may go out of hand, probably you're even further away from solving them, and it is very frustrating since they are so tiny now that you are free and you have no reason to get disturbed. The good thing is that you've learnt something very very important, something you know it makes the difference!! - and it's so obvious you kind of wonder how it is that you've never known and you needed all these adventures to get to the point...