Quite intrigued and excited by this big little book by Prashant Iyengar, a phenomenology of Asana?
I bought my copy from Yogamatters in the UK but if in the US you can find a copy here http://iynaus.org/store/books/chittavijnana-of-yogasanas-prashant-iyengar
While your at it you might want to pick up his Alpha and Omega of Trikonasana
http://iynaus.org/store/books/chittavijnana-of-yogasanas-prashant-iyengar
7 comments:
Ooooo. Good stuff. Titillated!
Where did you get it?
isn't it great stuff. I bought mine from Yogamatters in the UK but you should be able to find it in a good Iyengar institute bookstore. Took some hunting but they seem to have it here
http://iynaus.org/store/books/chittavijnana-of-yogasanas-prashant-iyengar
This is awesome. And so helpful for me right now. It is daunting to go from home practice to the shala: it can feel very I-focused, because I get self-conscious. That's definitely the unpleasant part of shala practice (which means that a big part of my practice is about trying to let go of the self-consciousness: catch-22!). It haunts me in koan practice and it haunts me in shala practice: I just can't seem to escape it. :-) These words, though, seem to be pointing in the right direction. Thanks.
i can't help it, i keep hearing Heidegger. Here he is in Origin of a work of art. Read asana for temple and see if it sparks anything
The Greek temple: making visible the invisible space of air
"A building, a Greek temple, portrays nothing. It simply stands there in the middle of a rock-cleft valley. The building encloses the figure of the god, and in this concealment lets it stand out stand out into the holy precinct through the open portico. By means of the temple, the god is present in the temple. This presence of the god is in itself the extension and delimitation of the precinct as a holy precinct. The temple and its precinct, do not fade away into the indefinite. It is the temple-work that first fits together and at the same time gathers around itself the unity of those paths and relations in which birth and death, disaster and blessing, victory and disgrace, endurance and decline acquire the shape of destiny for human being. The all-governing expanse of this open relational context is the world of historical people. Only from and in this expanse does the nation first return to itself for the fulfillment of its vocation.
Standing there, the building rests on rocky ground. This resting of the work draws up out of the rock the mystery of the rock’s clumsy yet spontaneous support. Standing there, the building holds its ground against the storm raging above it and so first makes the storm itself manifest in its violence. The luster and gleam of the stone, though itself apparently glowing only by the grace of the sun, yet first brings to light the light of the day, the breadth of the sky, the darkness of the night. The temple’s firm towering makes visible the invisible space of air. The steadfastness of the work contrasts with the surge of the surf, and its own repose brings out the raging of the sea. Tree and grass, eagle and bull, snake and cricket first enter into their distinctive shapes and thus come to appear as what they are. The Greeks early called this emerging phusis. It clears and illuminates, also, that on which and in which man bases his dwelling. We call this ground earth. What this word says is not to be associated with the idea of a mass of matter deposited somewhere, or with the merely astronomical idea of a planet. Earth is that whence the arising brings back and shelters everything that arises without violation. In the things that arise, earth is present as the sheltering agent"
or perhaps this also from Heidegger's Origin of a work of art. What's interesting may be just as much in the differences as in any similarities, still trying to work it out. Here we read Asana as (art)work.
World and Earth: What does an artwork set up?
"What does [an artwork], as work, set up? Towering up within itself, the work opens up a world and keeps it abidingly in force…by the opening up of a world, all things gain their lingering and hastening, their remoteness and nearness, their scope and limits. In a world’s worlding is gathered that spaciousness out of which the protective grace of the gods is granted or withheld. A work, by being a work, makes space for that spaciousness. “To make space for” means here to liberate the Open and to establish it in its structure. The work as work sets up a world. The work holds open the Open of the world. When a work is created, brought forth out of this or that work-material—stone, wood, metal, color, language, tone—we say also that it is made, set forth out of it…The work as work, in its presencing, is a setting forth, a making. But what does it set forth?…Because it is determined by usefulness and serviceability, equipment takes into its service that of which it consists: the matter. In fabricating equipment—an ax, say—stone is used, and used up. It disappears into usefulness. The material is all the better and more suitable the less it resists perishing in the equipmental being of its equipment. By contrast the temple-work, in setting up a world, does not cause the material to disappear, but rather causes it to come forth for the very first time and to come into the Open of the work’s world. The rock comes to bear and rest and so first becomes a rock; metals come to glitter and shimmer, colors to glow, tones to sing, the word to speak. All this comes forth as the work sets itself back into the massiveness and heaviness of stone, into the firmness and pliancy of wood, into the hardness and luster of metal, into the lighting and darkening of color, into the clang of tone, and into the naming power of the word.
So glad you're dipping in to Prashant's work here. While you're at it, I also highly recommend picking up a copy of his 2011 work: Organology & Sensology in Yogashastra.
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