The World as Self, Part 14: The Journey to Where You Already Are

Now, in Hindu traditions, the realization of who you really are is called, basically, sādhana. And sādhana means ‘the discipline,’ the way of life that is necessary to follow in order to escape from the illusion that you are merely a skin-encapsulated ego. And sādhana comprises yoga, from the root yuk, which means ‘to join.’ And so—from that, in Latin—we get iungere; ‘to join.’ And in English, ‘junction,’ and also ‘yoke.’ And junction is also the word ‘union,’ you see? All this derives from this Sanskrit root yuk. A yoke is also a discipline. When you yoke oxen, that is a kind of discipline.

Now, strictly speaking, in the very strictest sense, yoga means ‘the state of union,’ the state in which the individual self—what is called the Jivatman; Jivatman is approximately translatable as ‘ego’—Jivatman finds that it is ultimately Ātman, which equals Brahman, the supreme Self.

So yoga is the state—the strictest meaning of yoga is the state—of union, and a yogi means one who has realized that union. But we find that the word is not normally used in that way, in that strict sense. Yoga, in the normal way of use, means the practice of meditation whereby one comes into the state of union, and the yogi means one who is a traveler, a seeker who is on the way to that point. But, again, strictly speaking, there is no method to arrive at the place where you are, and no amount of searching will uncover the Self because all searching implies the absence of the Self—the big Self—so that to seek it is to thrust it away, and to practice a discipline to attain it is to postpone realizing.

There is a famous Zen story told of a monk who was sitting in meditation, and the master came along and said, What are you doing? He said, I’m meditating to become a Buddha. Whereupon the master picked up a brick that was lying nearby and started polishing it, rubbing it. And the monk said, What are you doing? He said, I am rubbing this brick to make it a mirror. He said, By no amount of rubbing could you ever make a brick into a mirror. The master replied, By no amount of zazen could you become a Buddha. Zazen means sitting meditation. They react very badly to this story in modern-day Japan.