April 30, 2020

Tantra uses several words to describe our essence nature. Ultimately, what or who we are is beyond words or descriptions but one of the words used to get close to describing our essence is ananda. Like most Sanskrit words, ananda does not translate directly into English. The words bliss and joy are most often used to translate ananda.

While bliss and joy do not resonate as much for me, what I experienced is a sense of a quiet openness at my core. This openness is a “yes,” a deep willingness to experience all that life has to offer, and it arises in moments of grief, happiness, rage, compassion, fear and excitement. Early yoga texts like the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali suggest suffering is the seeking out and clinging to what is pleasurable while avoiding or rejecting that which is painful. The Bhagavad Gita says it this way: That one is dear to me who runs not after the pleasant or away from the painful, grieves not, lusts not, but lets things come and go as they happen. By the time we are adults, most of us are locked into preferences that influence our daily life.” I like this; I don’t like that. I want this; I don’t want that. It is okay to feel this; it is not okay to feel that.” As a result we narrow our range of experiences and attempt to control that which is ultimately uncontrollable. We use our energy to compartmentalize our life and equate happiness with pleasure. We are less and less able to let things come and go as they happen.

My father was a man with very strong likes and dislikes. What he didn’t like, he thought no one should like and what he enjoyed, he encouraged on everyone. These preferences governed family choices to a large extent. Near the end of the his life, dementia set in. While a devastating experience of ongoing mourning, dementia also provided some unexpected surprises. One surprise was that as the course of the dementia progressed, most of the preferences that were engrained in my father melted away. My father started eating and even enjoying foods he had avoided his whole life, much to the shock of those around him. To me as the outside observer, it was as if a layer of his superficial self dissolved and with it, a level of freedom arose. There were things he didn’t enjoy still, but they were much fewer and accompanied with way less drama. More often a deep okay-ness with everything was present and an ease materialized. Watching this shift was a lesson to me in the superficiality of things I had previously believed to be permanent.

It is important to note here that the preferences were no longer important or defining. It was not just that some dissolved, but more that the image of self built around them eroded away and that allowed an ease of being to emerge. As yogis, we are not asked to completely eradicate our preferences but rather to be less controlled or managed by them. The invitation is toward equanimity or a softening the intensity with which we seek the pleasurable.

Holding onto the idea of what we like and dislike with a firm grasp generates an internal division which is at odds with our capacity to touch the quiet ease of emotions equally and fully without discrimination. The willingness to go with what life has to offer

is like taking a bite from every item on the buffet. Recognizing that all these experiences’ shifts and changes move us toward an ease of being that trusts in life and embodies peace.

Ananda then is the internal state not dependent on or created by external circumstances. Joseph Campbell coined the phrase “follow your bliss” to translate saccidananda, sat (being), cit (consciousness), ananda (bliss), before it was co-opted by the hippie / New Age movement. Campbell’s suggestion here was not to avoid pain or love but rather that the adventure of following our longings was the reward. Here, we listen deeply to the whole of the experience of aliveness without shunting off aspects because we don’t like them or we don’t want to feel pain / discomfort. This is not about getting what you think you want but to, as Rumi said: let yourself be drawn by the strange pull of that which you really love; it will not lead you astray.
And, what we really love is found by listening to the voice of the heart — and then expanding it outward.