Kashaya is the term,
I use for indicating old impressions
which come up when we are meditating or even in our daily life, which totally hijacking
our wisdom, put us in a trance of unworthiness , incompleteness,
insecurity, fearfulness etc. You cannot avoid kashaya. It is better to
learn how to handle it. Kashaya is
actually useful because we can use it to understand what our old out-dated
beliefs which no longer serve us are.
Kashaya gives us an opportunity to understand
the layers of old beliefs that have the potential to rob us of our wisdom and
put us in the old trance of unworthiness and insecurity.
Since it hijacks our wisdom, it is not possible to have sakshi bhava towards it. Shastra recommends ignoring it using sakshi bhava, however unless you are an advanced sadhaka, you will not find it possible to do that.
Is there a way out?
Yes there is.
Our first assumption for this method to work, is that one is
a student of Vedanta, who has had a insight into one’s truth being
self-evident, self-revealing, ever-existing consciousness, that is free of one’s
mental world. It is not difficult to have this insight if one has been doing pranayama or japa meditation, or any kind of meditation for that matter, for a while. During pranayama, if one does it consciously, one’s mind becomes very
quiet and one finds that the self-evident consciousness one is very much
present there. So because of shraddha
in Shastra and using anvaya and vyatireka logic one can come to the conclusion that the self-evident
consciousness one is, is always present and it is not dependent upon the
condition of the mind. In fact we should use our moments of quietness to firm
up this understanding. That is why the practices that enable us to enjoy a
quiet mind are useful and important.
When an incident of kashaya
coming up happens, then one wants be able to practice the sacred
pause, so that one does not get overwhelmed. How to do that? Any states of
mind in which you are feeling you are unworthy and insecure is a result of kashaya - so as soon as you feel this sense of something
not being okay with me, some sense of unworthiness, insecurity, a critical
inner voice, feelings of anxiety, anger, shame, fear, hurt and guilt, it means kashaya
has emerged. Recognize it as kashaya maybe by just whispering to yourself ‘this is kashaya’. Immediately you BREATHE slowly
several times and saying to yourself ‘Time
to pause’.
We are not interested in doing anything to make the difficult
painful state to go away. We simply recognize it as kashaya and allow it to be there. There is no attempt
to avoid it or fix it or make it go away by doing something. Letting it be
there does not mean that we believe in whatever it is saying to us. It is just
acknowledging without denial, that these feelings are there. So simply allowing it to be there, we take up
the next step.
We allow our cognitive mind to investigate and enquire more into it with interest and gentle care,
with a natural curiosity to know the truth. This naturally demands more focussed attention
towards this experience. We can use the following questions to help us :- How am I experiencing this feeling
in my body?
What is my belief behind this? This is a vulnerable area of my psyche.
What is it telling me. What does it
most need?
The kashaya will be felt in your body somewhere perhaps in
the throat, heart, belly as irritation or tightness, or a sinking feeling in
your stomach, or restlessness or constriction or even pain. So just pay
attention to where in your body you are feeling it.
It is very important when investigating,
that your attitude is non-judgmental and
kind, because that creates a safety net whereby you can honestly connect with
your feelings.
Now
you can understand your suffering. And let the natural outcome of your understanding
that you are suffering, be compassion towards yourself and not demeaning self-criticism
or dismissing it as mithya. Compassionately
try to sense what that wounded, hurt, frightened part of psyche needs at that
time. Don’t think as Vedantins do, that all this is mithya, and so why should I appease it? If it was truly mithya for you, it would not hijack your
wisdom.
Now
having understood one’s suffering offer a gesture of your care that would
address this need of the wounded psyche. Nourish that wounded psyche. Maybe you need to offer a message of
reassurance that you are there to hold and comfort the suffering psyche, even
as one would comfort a child in pain. Maybe you need to offer to be there in
companionship or love. Maybe a gesture of forgiveness. You will need to
discover which gesture of kindness will comfort the wounded psyche. It could be
just a whisper. Thich Naht Hanh offers a whisper of comfort such as “Darling I
care about your suffering”. Or it could
be ‘I love you’ or ‘I am here for you’ or ‘It’s not your fault’.
It
is very healing to additionally gently place a hand on the heart or cheek. What
is particularly helpful is visualizing the heart center filling up with warm, radiant
light. You can even visualise your Guru or a loved family member or friend
sending you love. Even the smallest gesture of offering love will nourish your
psyche.
What
happens as a result of this kind of psychological processing, is that there is
a space now. In that space you can go to the next level of investigation, to understand
the conclusions or beliefs behind the feelings. Possible conclusions centered
on ‘I’ may come up, like “I am not lovable”, “I am not worthy”, “I am a failure”,
“I am insecure”, “I am not safe”. At the level of your own individuality, you
need to be able to dismiss each of these, cognitively. For this you may need to
take help of a wiser person.
It
is only after this that you are ready to see the kashaya as mithya - in
fact as you repeat this process several times, you will find these conclusions
no longer affect you the way they did before – now they have become mithya for you and you will be able to appreciate
your self to be self-evident, self-revealing consciousness that is invariable
in every experience and unaffected by them. Not only that you will recognize
that everything here is in the all-pervading consciousness that you are – so nothing
is really separate from you.
Om
Tat Sat.
.... This article is inspired by Tara Brach's talks on RAIN of Self-Compassions
