Swami Vignanananda and the Path of Prana Yoga (eBook)

Poems - Texts - Practice

Swami Brahmananda (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 2. Auflage
238 Seiten
Books on Demand (Verlag)
978-3-8192-9299-6 (ISBN)

Infos

This book attempts to convey something of Swami Vignanananda's extraordinary personality and bring to life the unique, practical teaching methods of this Grandmaster of Meditation, Pranayama, Hatha Yoga and practical Vedanta, who was always anchored in the True Self. It contains a combination of the practices of Prana Yoga and the spiritual teachings of Swami Vignanananda, in the form of poems and lectures. The first part is a collection of texts from various publications, from the late 1970s to the early 2000s; transcripts of his lectures and poems, mainly taken from letters to his followers. The second part contains practical instructions for Asanas, Bandhas, Mudras, Pranayama and Meditation, some of which have rarely been published.

Textauszug

Memories about Swami Vignanananda

by

Saraswathi Devi

Director Prana Yoga Ashram Berkeley, California, USA

Swami-ji’s Tea Ceremony

Swami-ji was always in top form sitting at the head of a circle of two to six people. We would be pressed together cross-legged, all warmed up in a thick bath of incense and teapot steam, floating in the energy that poured and flowed from Swami-ji like a soft, bubbling river. The setting would be Swami-ji’s room or the Yoga Hall or, just as easily, a hotel room, a grassy meadow or even a car. Yes, tea and incense in the car. No matter where Swami-ji would set up the teahouse, the energy would build and build until, fully buoyed up, we would all feel as if we were at the center of the universe. The group of us would frequently be from several countries. Swami-ji would be the only one in the room who knew all the languages represented – turning to this person, to that person, then the next - seamlessly shifting from English to Tamil to Japanese and back again. Swami-ji would ply us all with tall mugs of dense bitter green tea, creamy rich chocolates and hundreds of tiny, sticky salty crackers – a very balanced meal... Swami-ji would urge us to eat more, drink more (“Eat well! Growing child!”) until, one-by-one, we would be loosening our belts and rearranging our spines and faces, to keep our bulging stomachs intact. “No thank-you Swami-ji, I’m full” was not an option. Everyone would be served with a flourish, the assistant of the moment expected to keep up with Swami-ji’s precise ritual and rhythm. Receive the cup, reach, turn, jump, give – Don’t Trip and No Spills! Of course, the ritual might be a little different each time, even a lot different. Still, you were expected to catch on immediately. “Follow exactly!” Swami-ji would roar. Finally, everyone would settle in, and the stories and lessons would begin.

Now, for many years, all around the world, Swami-ji appeared before thousands, was well accustomed to teaching large yoga and meditation classes, to delivering lectures at schools, universities and conferences, to being interviewed on the radio, to performing on T.V. and even in films. But this was the setting, I could tell, that Swami-ji most preferred. Swami-ji liked best to teach by example, to create a great spiritual lesson out of a tiny moment – and the teaching might be happening in the same moment that the phone was ringing, people were coming in and out and tea and snacks were being passed around continuously – yes, with help from the assistant of the moment, but mostly from Swami-ji’s big generous hands into ours. And the tea and snacks would keep coming. We might all be breathless, waiting for Swami-ji’s punch line or someone might be crying their eyes out asking for help, but interruptions for tea and treats were an essential part of the experience. The stories usually came from the simplicities of daily life, but they would really be all about the great truths of the universe and how to develop oneself physically, psychologically and spiritually. The stories might come from an ancient Tamil proverb – Swami-ji had probably thousands of them committed to memory – and some of them Swami-ji would make up on the spot. ”Don’t expect anything, accept everything.” Swami-ji would repeat a proverb again and again over months and years, to let its meaning filter in - through the skin down to the center of the bones, settling into the corners of the heart and beyond the heart until we just Knew. “Pranayama makes you think like a computer,” Swami-ji would say, but it was more than that. Swami-ji had mastered the art and science of going straight to the essence of everything and never stopped showing us the way there, too. Sometimes the stories would be in the form of fables from Swami-ji’s village childhood. The tricky crow said such and such to the cunning fox would become a study on human pride, greed or dishonesty. At other times, Swami-ji would dramatize a psychodrama from contemporary life, like the response more than once of a mother on the bus - racist, over-protective, pulling her child close and turning away suspiciously when Swami-ji, brown-skinned, white of hair and beard, dressed in ochre robes and an electric blue ski parka, made goofy faces and talked gobbledygook to her laughing child.

How many kids – or adults even – get to see a face in which one eye is going left and the other one is going right?

Sometimes the teachings came directly from Swami-ji interacting with one of the devotees sitting on the floor in the Tea Ceremony circle. Swami-ji was a natural actor. Using every kind of facial expression, imitation, exaggeration, voice and sound effect, Swami-ji would drive a point home, making the person needing help laugh into a new level of understanding. Sometimes Swami-ji would treat you with the soft protectiveness of the best mother, letting you know that He would always love and believe in you, even when you were unable to love or believe in yourself. Swami-ji once said “I have no life. You are my heartbeat.” At other times, Swami-ji might shout at a person, blowing some mistake they’d made into gargantuan proportions. It could be a large mistake or a small one, conscious or unconscious. Swami-ji would catch you on the smallest slip, challenge you to see it as an expression of a negative habit of mind deeply entrenched and then push you to stop identifying with that habit. The person would be shocked, defensive, thinking “I am right, Swami-ji is wrong, this is not a big deal, I’m not so bad, I’m just human,” or “I didn’t do this,” or “I didn’t think that.” Whether you said such things out loud or not, Swami-ji would know what you were thinking. Whether you were able to take in what Swami-ji was pointing out or not, whether you accepted it or not, you would feel in that moment that you were the worst person in the world. In these moments, Swami-ji sometimes used one or more of us in the little group as intercessors - spiritual go-betweens - to help the person to fully take in what Swami-ji was saying. It would be expected that the helper would totally understand Swami-ji’s point and translate it into the appropriate vernacular for the person receiving the lesson or correction. The helper or helpers would be expected to explain the lesson by using details and examples from American or Indian or European or Japanese psychology – depending on where the person was from. While this was happening, Swami-ji would seem to shut down. We could almost see a screen or veil descend from some mysterious place in the heavens, creating a membrane between Swami-ji and the rest of us, especially the person struggling.

Swami-ji would slip into silence and His face would become dim, fuzzy and abstract. One or two of us would have to explain the person’s error to them over and over and over again, until finally - confusion, resistance, fear and pride would gradually dissolve and the person would reach a new level of understanding. This ritual would be painful for all of us, certainly the person being corrected, and most especially for Swami-ji, who would be holding the person’s pain for them until they were able to let it go. And Swami-ji always forgave, no matter what, no matter how long it took. Usually, the person would clear up in a short while. Sometimes, though, the process would take days or weeks and - in rare cases – even longer. Still, Swami-ji always forgave. And this is the point - forgave when the person was able to forgive him or herself. That was always the point – Swami-ji witnessing our difficulties, magnifying them, holding them up to us, challenging us to break this or that pattern until we could move on to a better understanding and a healthier happier mindset and behavior. When that would happen, Swami-ji’s face would brighten up and the mysterious screen would ascend and disappear. The group would sigh collectively and resume our giddy chatter. Sometimes, half listening to all this relief, taking a great masterful pause, Swami-ji would sing out the person’s name and then pause again. The person would be thinking “uh oh, what have I done now?” They would answer “yes, Swami-ji?” only to hear their name sung out again, followed by a great “I love you!” At this point, the person would let loose a wide smile or a small glisten of tears – and the tea, chocolate and crackers would be passed around again. In the Tea Ceremony lessons, Swami-ji’s intention was neither to truly embarrass or humiliate the person, nor to overly praise them, but instead to do these things: confront the person until they could respond from a place of strength inside that they never, ever thought they had, to push the person to cut into their deepest core, to compel them to examine their subtlest perceptions and motives, to find a place inside where authentic honesty, humility, peace and forgiveness reside, to inspire them to keep developing their understanding, to keep expanding their power, to keep refining their discrimination, their wisdom, their faith in Divine Creation, to keep enhancing their well-being, to keep discovering higher and higher spiritual freedom and joy. And of course, the intercessors, too – all of us in the group - would be learning great life lessons during these Tea Ceremony rituals. “Give me two percent and I will take care of the other ninety-eight percent,” Swami-ji would...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 21.8.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Esoterik / Spiritualität
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Östliche Philosophie
• Schlagworte: Breathing exercises • Hatha Yoga • Wisdom of Yoga • Yogamaster • Yoga practice and Pranayama
• ISBN-10: 3-8192-9299-3 / 3819292993
• ISBN-13: 978-3-8192-9299-6 / 9783819292996