Contemplation - Bhavana

Last night, I stopped by one of my favorite spots for a taco and some downtime and saw that they were offering a brew called "Bhavana Pale Ale." I think it's interesting that craft breweries in the U. S. are beginning to use Sanskrit names for their special brews or the breweries themselves. Another one that I know of here in N.C. is the Bhramari Brewery in Asheville.

"Yoga" and beer-drinking are becoming a common pairing I've noticed. "Re-tox after your detox," is a common theme. That's funny to me. My hunch is that the popularity of both together is stemming from a need to be with others to do something that feels good. In our technifed, online world, a lot of us can feel lonely, inadequate and disconnected. Getting together to take a yoga class and drink beer can give us a sense of community and connection. While this may be a distraction from the inner world that yoga practice is meant to illuminate (intense practice can shed light on some pretty uncomfortable and shady places within, but also the expansive, eternal state of infinite love and bliss!) maybe it's a step in the direction of experiencing the harmony and unity that is our true nature.

Bhavana means "a place to dwell" in Sanskrit or "contemplation," or more specifically, "creative contemplation". Usually it's connected to another word like "metta," which means loving-kindness, such as "bhavana-metta": contemplating how we may cultivate an attitude of loving-kindness in our thoughts, words and deeds. Loving-kindness, while a worthwhile practice, is also the result of intentional practice. So taking some “Bhavana” time daily is truly worthwhile.

Yoga practice, with its emphasis on experiencing and embracing reality through sensing what happens as we move, breathe, sit... has long-term positive effects on the body's general physiology and brain function specifically.

Over 2,000 years ago, the Indian sage Patanjali wrote in the Yoga Sutras (2.33):

vitarkabhadane pratipaksabhavanam

vitarka-bhadane pratipaksa-bhavanam

"When harassed by doubt, cultivate the opposite mental attitude." 

and then in the next sutra (2.34):

"Cultivating the opposite mental attitude is realizing that it is our own impatience, greed, anger, or aberration that leads us to think, provoke, and approve conflicting thoughts, such as violence. The intensity of such thoughts may be weak, medium, or strong, but their consequences, ever self-perpetuating, are always suffering and ignorance."

So, how do we cultivate this bhavanam, this "state of mind," this fertile ground where we can plant the seeds of positive intention? Through contemplation and meditation.

Slowing down and growing in awareness we might pause to ask, "What am I feeling right now? What are my thoughts? Are there any images or physical sensations arising that are associated with my current experience and have I felt the same in the past? What’s the story around when I experienced this before? Do I remember a past interaction or experience that caused me to have this same uncomfortable feeling? What’s the story now? Can I see this sequence of events from a different perspective and discover a different story?  Do I want to continue to tell this story over and over again, or do I want to let go and be free to create new stories? Is the discomfort arising because I have an unfamiliar, but good, feeling? " 

Discovering and pondering the nature and origins of our maligned and uneasy thinking-feeling-acting cycles can be arduous. When some of the the WHYs of my thinking, feeling and acting habits (samskaras) have revealed themselves to me (I tend to go all out - or all in) it’s been pretty intense, but it doesn’t have to be.

Experiences we, as children, perceived to be traumatic or stressful may be revealed. And if these experiences are related to people close to us, like our parents, they can be doubly hard to release. But in seeing clearly and understanding it's alright to let go, the golden light of awareness shines brighter. The suffering we have been clinging to (unconsciously, for the most part) becomes more apparent and less appealing.

Through "bhavanam" - creative contemplation -  we can embrace the power of intention and our innate ability to choose, as Patanjali emphasizes in these sutras, to change our thoughts and attachments in order suffer less and feel more true happiness. As seed-thoughts of suffering arise, we use the power of intention to weed them out by actively planting new seed-thoughts that contribute to our experience of true peace, playfulness, flow, relaxation, expansion, joy. Once we plant these seeds, we fertilize the ground of creative consciousness with breath and attention. We can see that these familiar ways of feeling and acting may be "uncomfortably comfortable" but that the experience of true happiness and love can feel equally, if not more, "comfortable" in the long run.

Bhavanam implies creativity. Using present-moment awareness ("How am I feeling right now? What are my thoughts? How do I want to feel? What do I want to do? What would it feel like if this happened? What would it look like? How can I expand my perception of this experience?...) we can embrace our power and creatively participate in designing the experience of living we desire.

Jai!

References you may want to check out:

The Essence of Yoga: Reflections on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali by Bernard Bouanchaud, Rosemary Desnaux, T.K.V. Desicachar

Addicted to Unhappiness by Martha Heineman Pieper and William J. Pieper