The obstacles to becoming an adept yogi are sleep, laziness and disease. One has to remove these by the root and throw them away … Asana will help all this. To acquire this skill, recite the following slokam every day before practicing yoga. –Yoga Makaranda (II.3)
maṇi bhrātphaṇā sahasravighṛtaviśvaṁ
bharā maṇḍalāyānantāya nāgarājāya namaḥ
Salutations to the king of the Nagas,
to the infinite, to the bearer of the mandala,
who spreads out the universe with thousands
of hooded heads, set with blazing, effulgent jewels.
(Listen to Richard Freeman chanting.)
In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras (I.30) there are nine obstacles to the practice listed.
Doubt – sanshaya
Lacking conviction or confidence, distrust, and fear, are among a few of the definitions of “doubt” that make it pretty clear why it tops the list of Patanjali’s obstacles in the third position. However, the other definition that is found most in tandem with these less positive ones revolves around uncertainty. It is that definition family that gives rise to sentiments like Paul Tillich’s “Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith, it is an element of faith.” Or Volataire’s, “Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.” Or doubt being one of three great qualities in Buddhism: Great Doubt, Great Faith, and Great Determination.
Doubt is the factor that allows us to drop how and what we’ve pre-decided about people and situations. It grants us freedom to respond to what is, freedom from having to know, freedom not to need to make up our mind about what’s happening right now – to be alive and open to what is.
Two Doubts
Doubt can function in our practice in two ways; one is as a general mood of open inquiry – of a cultivated uncertainty that keeps us awake to the moment. The second is one of critical inquiry that takes a teaching we’ve read or seen and begins to turn it into something we experiment with and experience for ourselves. The results of any teaching reveal its worth.
Stephen Batchelor describes the first kind of doubt in his book, “Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist”;
“When the retreat began and I started meditating in earnest on the question “What is this?” my mind insisted on coming up with clever answers. Each time I tried to discuss my latest theory with Kusan Sunim, he would listen patiently for a while, then give a short laugh and say: “Bopchon [my Korean name]. Do you know what it is? No? Then go back and sit.”
Irrespective of how suitably enigmatic they seemed, my answers were either trite or predictable. After a while, I simply gave up trying to find an answer. “What is this?” is an impossible question: it is designed to short –circuit the brain’s answer-giving habit and leave you in a state of serene puzzlement. This doubt, or “perplexity” as I preferred to call it, then slowly starts to infuse one’s consciousness as a whole. Rather than struggling with the words of the question, one settles into a mood of quiet focused astonishment, in which one simply waits and listens in the pregnant silence that follows the fading of the words.”
We can offer this type of listening to our experiences in nature, in relationship, in our meditation and yoga practices. We can be free from what we think is happening, right in the middle of it happening. Not that we erase our memory, or don’t have ideas, but that we can drop the teacher, you can say to yourself “neti neti” – not this not this, and practice the freedom from knowing.
“Doubting has immense power. It allows us to remain curious and to consider multiple alternative perspectives. This is deeply important because as soon as we think we understand something, we stop paying attention. We then miss the truth about it because nothing is ever as simple as our minds try to make them. Once we think we think we have the answer, we stop questioning. Once we understand something, we grow bored with it.” Sangha member at ID Project
Rilke writes of the second kind of doubt; “And your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become criticism. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it, and you will find it perhaps bewildered and embarrassed, perhaps also protesting. But don’t give in, insist on arguments, and act in this way, attentive and persistent, every single time, and the day will come when, instead of being a destroyer, it will become one of your best workers–perhaps the most intelligent of all the ones that are building your life.”
Here Rilke gives us advice on what to do when doubt arises, as if seemingly on its own. How to allow it to be a harbinger of investigation. While not recommended as how to work in the midst of a meditation or yoga practice, later reflection on doubts that arise from practice or elsewhere would be a powerful way to cultivate great doubt in our lives.
A paper by Robert M Baird on Creative Doubt looks at that second type of doubt from a more proactive lens – to take on the task of actively doubting. The online abstract opens with this story:
“A college student approached his professor after class. With anguish he complained, “I don’t know whether you know it or not, but this class is painful.” “How’s that?” the professor asked. “Well,” the student continued, “you have convinced me that we ought to do what you are encouraging us to do, but when I do what you suggest, it’s so painful.”
What had this professor suggested? What had he encouraged his students to do, the doing of which created, in at least one student, pain? He had encouraged them to doubt creatively. That is, he had encouraged his students to challenge and evaluate the fundamental values – ethical, political, and religious – to which they were committed.”
Follow this source link for further information about the paper, as well as the complete abstract which presents his four arguments for the benefits of creative doubt.
Whether Rilke or Baird, Batchelor, or the Buddha, there is a strong tradition for actively cultivating skillful doubt in our lives. Can you imagine undertaking one of these practices for a month? What happens? What shifts?
Small doubt, small enlightenment; big doubt, big enlightenment – Zen Master Nine Mountains
1) Savasana – truly use the time to be quiet, still, resting and inwards. Avoid the habit embedded in us since childhood of turning to TV or movies. If you can’t get up, truly be down. Since I was travelling, I did not have my Netflix queue nor my stash of comfort reading. I had no choice but to savasana, and it was delightful.
In yoga practice, consolation can become the side effect of working with our tendencies towards perfectionism, self-consciousness, and judgement. Our practice allows us to see how those tendencies are ways that we keep ourselves small, that we reaffirm old stories that no longer (if they ever did) serve us, that are harmful to us and our relationships. So we start to catch ourselves before we get going on the “Why can’t I just…”, “I’m better at this than they are”, “disappointed noise/grunt at ourselves” pendulum swing.
Our habit of consoling in relationship is not only strong, but culturally reinforced – it’s pretty much expected of us.
Can you bring this into your life practice? Do not console, yourself or others. See what happens.
Walking in Brooklyn, in warmer weather when the cold air doesn’t push your gaze down and in, you can look ahead and see both the earth and the sky. It’s harder to do in Manhattan, the horizon is obscured, and that meeting place is rarely seen. The head has to move, has to choose, it’s the earth or the sky.
I was driving through one of the snow storms that blazed through New York last winter. After just having been in a minor snow swerve accident, I then had to drive a further 8 hours (normally 4 hours) home because conditions were so intense. Many insights and lessons came out of that experience. One was to realize just how important it is to have someone in your life who is a pillar and lantern. Both to lean on, be supported by, and gather strength from. As well as someone who brightens, cheers, and gently guides you forward. This person was my eyes when I needed, last minute route change navigator, nerve soother, and perhaps most importantly – was willing to “shake it off” in the middle of a rest stop food court so that I could 
Buddha goes on to give reasons why this is so. One of the first reasons is the quality of conversation you will hear. Obviously not every one of your conversations will be about the path, we all need to debrief on the Walking Dead. Yet conversation between friends is one of Buddha’s main recommendations for practice. In a small satsang that meets monthly, after we chant, and before we eat, the host introduces a question that everyone will answer. Sometimes it’s spurred by a poem, sometimes by an important dharma point someone is struggling with, sometimes it’s one of those questions that you contemplate but don’t often find a place for it to land in regular conversation. Having someone (or a community of comrades) to dig in on those topics with is important to the path.
The next time you’re on the mat – think of someone who is a pillar and lantern for you, think of a specific person and examples of them being this in your life. Then let your intention for practice to be really grateful that day. Not dedicating the practice to them, or sending them energy, just being really really grateful for a friend. Let them sit right in your heart as you practice. And well up with him or her, without needing to do anything with it, but be filled, supported, brightened.
“Watch for sand when you examine the rice. Watch for rice when you throw away the sand.”
“If there is sincerity in your cooking and associated activities, whatever you do will be an act of nourishing the sacred body”
mishaps of her parents, a young princess named Aris must be betrothed to a fearful dragon. When the king and queen tell her, she becomes frightened for her life. But recovering her wits, she goes out beyond the market to seek a wise woman, who has raised twelve children and twenty-nine grandchildren, and knows the ways of dragons and men.
2) Building a temple in rural Thailand, a set of monks uncovered the top of a plaster buddha statue – which turned out to be huge – 5 tons! Later, the temple moves several times, and the monks always arrange to have the large buddha statue moved as well. The third move is into Bangkok, where they had cranes positioning the statue into place. As it was being set up, a rope from the crane broke and the buddha crashed to the ground, and cracked. As the monks went up to investigate the damage, they saw that inside the cracks was something shining. The buddha was actually a gigantic golden buddha that had only been covered over with plaster.
For the time being three heads and eight arms – the wrathful deity. The part of us that pushes back against what’s arising with ferocity, without breath, without our tools. We all have this in us. My teacher, Michael Stone, jokes that it’s called “before espresso” for him.
roof of the mouth. With soft eyes.
For the time being, embody fully where you are right now – the highest peak or the deepest ocean. We all know what it’s like to be in both of those places. We also all know what it’s like to either try and hold onto that space, or to feel like it will never end. Our very heart beats out to us the message that it’s not possible, not true. When we fully take in the first two lines of Dogen’s poem, we are listening deeply to this message. We are fully embodying right where we are, right now, in this moment.
“In the midst of pleasure, we are anxious about when it will end. In the midst of possession, we worry about loss. Even the most beautiful birth and most gracious death come with pain, for entering and leaving the body is inherently a painful process. We know that throughout our day, experience changes from pleasant to neutral to unpleasant, and back again, ceaselessly.” Jack Kornfield
Jennifer Whitney 