Once had put a full stop behind final sentence of my last blog post, my inner critic and I set off on our evening walk. Ambling beneath the fresh greenery of the trees, where the wind played with the sun’s light to the song of the birds, some of my thoughts (though by no means all of them) crept back to my desk, to the organic geometry of the yogi vitruvianus,inspired by Leonardo da Vinci.
“Why,” I wondered – or rather: they wondered, “do humans feel the need to measure themselves by the abstract form(ula)s of geometry and mathematics?” “Because,” one of them replies rolling his eyes, “they were presented to us by none other than Plato as the absolute ideal and highest truth of life’s imperfect formations (Phaedrus 247d–248b).” “In contrast to Patañjali’s kaivalya, the total separation from all forms of prakṛti, concrete and abstract (Yogasūtra 4.34),” another thought snaps back at the know-it-all, “Plato’s ideal can hardly be described as absolute,” and adds: “What could be truer than pure consciousness, than puruṣa?” Checking his nails, my Platonist shrugs: “I have no idea what that could even mean,” he says. “Perfect puruṣa!” says the other, triumphantly.
Meanwhile, the inevitable in(ter)fluence of streams of consciousness has carried the concept of puruṣa into my thoughts in the park. However, whilst the discussion over there is focussing on the abstraction of the abstract, rather different texts and contexts are unfolding over here: The great Puruṣa-Sūkta of the Ṛg-Veda, for example, written some 3500 years ago, which speaks of puruṣa’s primordial sacrifice – here it is still, in accordance with the literal meaning of the word, the first cosmic being or person – through which the gods bring the world into being:
The moon was born from his mind; from his eye the sun was born. Indra and Agni came from his mouth, and from his vital breath the Wind as born.
(10.90.12)
Far removed from the supernatural or transcendent spheres of Plato and Patañjali, this puruṣa is situated in the world – indeed: he is the world, he is the stars, he is the universe. As brahman, puruṣa reappears in the later Upaniṣads where he, in accordance with the verbal root √bṛh-, becomes the expansive principle that underlies and permeates everything that exists (Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 2.1–10b). Ātman, whose grammatical self-reference and literal corporeality initially suggest a limitation of its nature, is simultaneously called upon to realise itself as brahman by means of meditation (Aitareya Upaniṣad 3.1–3) – not in an abstract-transcendent sense, but in a sense entirely immanent to the world: Thus, the Chāndogya Upaniṣad links the five movements of the human body’s breath to the five senses, which, in turn, and as we encountered in the Puruṣa-Sūkta of the Ṛg-Veda, are connected with the elements and celestial bodies (2.1.1–5). Yet it is the Markaṇḍeya Purāṇa that describes the awakening of consciousness as a systematized meditative process, which the yogi moves through via his sensory perception of the elements earth, water, fire, air and ether:
One should hold seven subtle concentrations in the head, starting with the earth.
The Yogi should hold to the earth and enter its subtle quality.
[The Yogi] thinks on its expansive nature and moves beyond its fragrance.
Likewise in regard to the subtle flavor in water and the form [revealed by] fire.
This concentration extends simultaneously to the touch of the wind.
In the subtle activity of the sky, one moves beyond sound.
Thus one enters all of the elements of the mind through the mind.
Carrying this mental concentration, the subtle mind is born.
(40.17–20)
“Here,” I find my self thinking, “the ideal of humanity is measured not by the abstract forms or transcendent realms of consciousness, but by the manifest and living reality of the world as a whole,” and I realise that this idea resonates with me not only intellectually, but also somatically. “That is surprising, though,” a passing thought notes, and draws my attention to the world-renouncing, body-disciplining, inward-looking yogi who runs – or rather: sits – like a leitmotif through texts and traditions, and whose interest in the elements lies, at best, in overcoming and mastering them. “Ultimately, however, his goal is mokṣa,” my thought observes, “the final liberation from the cycle of rebirths into this world: He transcends the elements, as the Purāṇa describes.” I agree with my thought’s thought. Nevertheless: If mokṣa also means liberation from the confines of the me and mine, is a practice that allows us to become more open and permeable not a way to move towards this goal within our lives, within this world? My thoughts are still. Within me, only the leaves of the trees and the light of the setting sun are moving to the evening song of the birds.
Chapple, Christopher Key. Living Landscapes: Meditations on the Five Elements in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain Yogas. State University of New York, 2020.
Doniger, Wendy. The Rig Veda: An Anthology. Penguin Classics, 1981.