The practices of meditation and asana, and even the practices of work and community with which I have been involved, have all been driven together in the force of this travel. As I understood it would be, at a knowing, if not thinking, level. It has not been a pilgrimage to empty tombs — a "temple-tour", where the religion changes, and the architecture, but what is seen is a building, and what is felt is felt only with the eyes — but an internal pilgrimage, one that has been supported by the philosophies and energies of this ancient yet modern country and its people.

You know what yoga is: yoga the system of physical forms, of exercise. Or maybe you know the deeper Yoga, which brings in breathing practice and philosophy, meditation and cosmology. Maybe you know this deeper yoga is cultivated in the heart, like all true spiritual practices, and with devotion and dedication becomes an inner light, which shines outward, like a visible prayer?

The essential is before all of this, and beyond all of this. Each stage of our development opens into the next, and we look not to the forms themselves, but to the door that opens out of each form, out of any form, into something greater.

Physical practice is essential to care for and cleanse the body we inhabit; it is essential to become intimate with our shell, and to remove identification with it: in asana practice and in meditations you may scan the extremities and organs with your awareness, and begin to identify parts of the body — my leg, my nerve endings, my heartbeat, my breath: identifying them as distinct things, recognize that they are not You. I feel my leg; my leg is not "I". I feel my heartbeat; my heartbeat is not "I".

If you are not practiced in these techniques, the whole discussion can sound insipid; I consider them here on the page because so many of us have not even been exposed to the concepts, to the possibility that this pulsing mass of feelings and desires and body parts is anything but All of Me. In fact, once you begin to name things, once they have names and have their own identity, all of this dross that you have thought of as the big real world becomes empty. It simply blows away, chaff on the wind. You move through the body, to move out of the body. What's left is greater, stronger, and more generous than what is trapped within your skin.

Meditative practice is not an end in itself. What is the door, the dimly lit door, that appears over time through meditation? When we give attention to our thoughts, when we can see them as distinct and fleeting, when we name them, we begin to see the walls and bars that they create. We begin to look at them a bit more carefully, not "I thought this, therefore it is true", but rather "I thought this, therefore it probably is not Truth, but something partial." When we rest on our thoughts, we build our fortresses on shifting sands, and defend them against time and winds — which history shows pulls everything to dust and to earth.

So we acknowledge a thought, look at it like a fruit, taste it like Eden's fruit, and allow it to be bitter: I see this thought, but this thought is not "I"; I see this new thought, but this thought, too, is not "I". We recognize that all of our thoughts — even this mini-blog-treatise — are simply tools of mind to create comprehension and structure, while what is True, and what is "I", is in fact limitless.

Few in our culture practice meditation — few give critical attention to how they think — so most of us live within the dictates of our own fantasies, and are driven by them, poor creatures before the whip. The first practice is to be intimate with the mind; but freedom is beyond the mind, is out of the mind. Not "I am out of my mind", which is actually a person so spun by their thinking that nothing exists but their mind. But to step out of the body, and step out of the mind, by having intimate knowledge, ever-deepening intimacy, with the minutiae of both, through solid, devoted attention.

To open fully to the experience of this life — and we are here so short a time! to taste all of the bitter and the sweet fruit that is offered us! — to become fully aware of one's humanity, neither practice should exist without the other. One should not become trapped in the aerobic pulse of the body, neither caught in the constant chatter of the mind. A complete Yoga extends both outward and inward, both to the heavens and down into the earth, and is aided by an strong, introspective physical practice joined to a solid, introspective meditative practice.

Take up a practice: and practice is essential. If you are young, your habits of insight will become the solid foundation for all the acts you will take throughout life, and every step will be well-considered — even if it appears to end in failure. If you are past your youth, devotion to practice is even more vital, as your thinking and moving stiffen with accumulated experience and rigidities of life. Take up a practice, and all follows after, with little effort of will.

That is all one needs to know to begin.

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