Don,
There are a lot of people who realize that existence cannot bring satisfaction. They are people who are suffering from depression, anhedonia, chronic pain, or other types of illnesses. Are such disabilities a "gift" that helps motivate people to get on the path? Is the path mostly full of people who are searching for a solution to these kinds of problems? Were the great teachers suffering from an illness? These questions are provocative but I don't mean to be antagonistic. I first conceived them when I began studying and practicing Buddhism. What do you think?
Also, what type of yoga do you practice and are there any on-line sources of information that describe the type of yoga you practice? Do any of your books describe your yoga practice, or provide information on how to practice yoga?
Thanks
Hi Jim
Thank you for the intelligent questions. I do not think they are mean-spirited questions, but thank you for indicating explicitly that was not your intent. In fact, they are intelligent questions that any rational person should come to with a little reflection. I think both of your posts can be answered together because the questions, and therefore answers, are related.
The short answer is: it is shades of gray. By which I mean, having personal difficulties can certainly challenge a person's belief system. But in general, this is not why someone embarks on the yogic path. Look at the story of Buddha, who, on the surface of things had a perfect life: he was rich, a king, had every material thing anyone could want, was perfectly healthy, had a wonderful loving family, etc., etc. Why then did he reject all this and go on the path of yoga?
The answer is not easy to express because it depends on what level a person's thinking is on; again, shades of gray. Someone still enamored by the world, or someone who lacks the imagination and curiosity to deeply question existence will not understand why anyone would want to do this. And that is fine. The world is there for such people. In fact, the purpose of the world is for such people. Whether they have happiness, or suffer and overcome, or get challenged and win, or fail, or all the myriad other experiences the world provides, that is where such people are at. The yogic path means nothing to them, nor should it mean anything to them. It is like expecting a second grader to write a college thesis. And this is not meant to be a condescending view. It is not condescending to recognize that a second grader has different needs and capabilities than a college student. It is simply a fact.
It is the same with how people use the world. There are seemingly infinite ways to use the world, one of which is the path of yoga. When people become interested in this path, that means they are loosing interest in what the world has to offer. It doesn't at all have to do with physical illness. It is a much deeper thing than that. There is an emptiness, a uselessness, a futility, in all acts that the world provides. People caught up in the world cannot see this aspect of the world: it is invisible to such people. But some people do see this emptiness. That is what Buddha saw. There is something extremely deep and fundamental lacking in this world full of all its infinite diversity of experiences. When people realize that this super-important thing is missing, then they go try to find it. The methods to try to find it are yoga.
No, one does not "join" after they die. Obviously, no one alive can speak to what happens after we die. But there are many experiences that living people can have that can be interpreted as glimpses of what happens after death. Some traditions, such as yoga (and there are other traditions too) have very rich ideas of what happens after death. They generally agree that, in some sense, it is a continuation of what happened in this life. They use the metaphor of waking up tomorrow and continuing yesterday's activities. You don't radically change during one night of sleep. They suggest it is analogous with physical lives. Each life is a "day of being awake". Then you die (go to sleep), and stuff happens there, but it is basically the same you, maybe changed a little bit, and then you "wake up" again, that is, reincarnate, into a new physical life, and pick things up pretty much where you left off in the previous life. Of course, the details get more and more complicated the more you look into this, and that is one of the places you may begin to discover this emptiness, is in questions about life after life after life stuff.
So no, one doesn't get automatic enlightenment when they die. If you didn't care about enlightenment when you were alive, you won't care after you die.
To wrap up, one turns to yoga because nothing in this world satisfies them anymore. They see the emptiness of it. They want to fill that emptiness with something. In the West, this level of realization has been codified by philosophers called "existentialists". But they only recognize the problem, but they have no solutions. Yoga is a set of solutions.
I practice Patanjali's Ashtanga Raja Yoga codified in the Yoga Sutras. There is almost unlimited information about it. All you have to do is look. The more you look, the more you will find. It is shocking how much information is out there once one starts to look. In fact, it gets to be a jungle. My book
Experience is designed to help people wade through this jungle. Another
great article to help orient you is by SwamiJ. In fact, his whole web site
http://www.swamij.com/index.htm is really excellent.
I hope this addresses your questions. Thank you for the conversation, Jim.
Best wishes,
Don