Once upon a time, a Buddhist monk was alone in a temple. He threw himself to the floor, beat his chest vigorously and muttered: “I am nothing, I am nothing, I am nothing…”
Soon after, a novice entered the temple. He looked around, spotted the monk and knelt down beside him. Together with the monk, he murmured: “I am nothing, I am nothing, I am nothing…” Suddenly, the caretaker arrived to sweep the temple floor. When he saw the two men kneeling, he, too, knelt down and spoke in unison with the other two: “I am nothing, I am nothing, I am nothing…” The monk nudged the novice and remarked with indignance: “Well, well, well – look at who fancies himself as a nothing.”
The moral of the story? Nothing protects you – or rather: does not protect you – from the enticements of rank and status!
(Der Philosophie-Kalender 2025, 27.02.2025)
It is said that in yoga (and particularly in Ashtanga), there are those who feel the need to prove something through their practice: to themselves, to their teacher, to the other practitioners. It is also said that in yoga (particularly in Ashtanga) there are those who sometimes eye those who are already a little further along in their practice – doing drop-backs, gliding through their vinyāsas, practising the Third and Fourth Series – with a certain sense of envy. It is also said that in yoga (particularly in Ashtanga) there are people, both practitioners and teachers, who, quite en passant, will not fail to mention to others – practitioners and teachers alike – where they have practised, with whom, for how long, and what levels of qualification, authorisation, certification (also: injuries) they have accumulated over time.
So they say. What do we know about such things…
So far, so human. And yet: Shouldn’t it be precisely those members of our mundane species who devote their lives, in whole or in part, or even just for a few hours at the end of a long week, to a practice – yoga, for example – in which the focus is not on performance, results and comparisons, but on insight, acceptance and authenticity, who should distance themselves from such competitive struggles and posturing? Of course! Is the fact that, at times, this is not always the case an indication that yoga is not effective? Of course not! Quite the contrary: Like a magnifying glass – Richard Freeman would say: like a mirror – the practice of yoga clearly reveals to us the patterns of thought and behaviour that shape our perspective on ourselves and others both consciously and unconsciously – even as we firmly believe that we recognised and moved on from them long ago.
Here’s an anecdote from my own practice:
In the summer of 2025, I had the great fortune of being able to take part in a Teacher Intensive with Richard Freeman and Mary Taylor, alongside 50 marvellous practitioners from all over the world. Throughout the four weeks of the course, I did my morning practice next to an exceptionally friendly Norwegian who was diligently working on the Fourth Series of Ashtanga, all the while that I was trying to find my way back into the Second Series. “Perfectly fine!” I told myself, “She’s doing her thing and I’m doing mine, each to their own. I completely appreciate her practice and fully accept where I am with mine. And yet – it you’ll permit a quite aside: Aren’t my āsanas much more integrated? Doesn’t my breath flow much deeper? Am I not, in my modest contentment with the first two series, actually more advanced than those who feel the need to master the Advanced Series?” And thus comparative and competitive thinking had swiftly crept into my practice via the back roads of supposed acceptance and serenity: If I couldn’t keep up in flexibility and strength, then surely I could surpass her in attention, breathing and intention!
Chögyam Trungpa (1939–87), Tibetan Buddhist master and founder of the Shambhala Centres in North America and Europe, addressed the pitfalls and traps of spiritual practices in a number of his talks and discussions during the 1970s, describing them in a book of the same title as ‘spiritual materialism’. In it, he points out that the “ego can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality” (p. 13). How so? When teachings and practices are regarded as something that exists outside of us – as an ideal that we construct with the help of certain texts, images and/or role models, which we proceed to emulate, to measure ourselves against, and to compare ourselves to others with. Thus, the practice quickly turns into a performance: “If our teacher speaks of renunciation of the ego, we attempt to mimic renunciation of ego” (id.). To what end? To see ourselves confirmed in the belief that we are completely free of ego – and thus superior to our poor, ego-bound fellow human beings. The tragicomic aspect of this is that, whilst we genuinely believe ourselves to be more authentic, empathetic and present, we are actually becoming ever-more entangled in our rather cunning egos.
This, too, is very much a part of human nature – and thus, in a certain sense, very much true to who we are. The crux of the matter is to recognise this aspect of our nature, to acknowledge it, and to approach it with insight and humour. It may then not only become clear who, in the case of our Buddhist sangha from the beginning of this text, is the one merely imagining himself to be nothing; it might also become possible for us to move from arrogance to humility, from illusion to reality and – in the specific context of yoga – from the poses to the āsanas, from a performance to practice.
“Der Mönch und das Nichts.” Der Philosophie-Kalender 2025. 27.02.2025. Harenberg Verlag, 2024.
(Translated by the author)
Trungpa, Chogyam. Cutting through Spiritual Materialism. Shambhala Publications, 2002.