letting go - Holly Foster

There is a Sufi story I have shared in class several times over the years, its author unknown. It’s called Mullah Nasrin and the Dandelions, and it goes like this:

One day a man named Mullah Nasrin decided to take up gardening. He loved flowers and vegetables and he became an adept gardener. But when his garden became plagued with dandelions, Mullah became more and more upset. Finally he couldn’t take it anymore. He travelled to the palace of the king and consulted the king’s own personal gardener. The royal gardener gave Mullah instructions on how to get rid of the dandelions. Mullah returned home full of enthusiasm and followed the instructions perfectly. But still the dandelions returned. Really angry now, Mullah returned to the king’s palace and found the royal gardener. “You’re a fraud!” he hollered. “Your remedy was no better than the rest! What else can I do about these dandelions?” The royal gardener looked thoughtful and stroked his chin. Finally he said softly, “Mullah Nasrin, there’s only one thing to do. You must learn to love dandelions.“

In mindfulness practice, we are constant gardeners, tending the landscapes of mind, body and spirit. Yoga teaches us the merits of self-study, Svadhyaya, deepening our awareness to reveal the nature of our true Self. When we take the time to observe things like physical, mental and emotional patterns in daily life, we might notice habits, biases, judgments, or assumptions that are shaped by past experience but no longer reflect who we are in this moment. Once we become aware of these old patterns that no longer serve us, we can choose to release them – to pull these weeds from our garden and make space for new plants to flourish.

Neuropsychologist and meditation teacher Rick Hanson speaks often of our ability to change the way our minds work by attending to our thoughts and experiences (check out his fascinating book, Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love & Wisdom). As human beings, we have a negativity bias that is built into us as a survival mechanism. We learn from our past experiences, and those that caused us physical or emotional harm influence the way we perceive and respond to similar situations in the future. To balance this negativity bias and give positivity a chance to take root, Dr. Hanson advises us to take the time to fully embrace positive experiences, allowing them to be absorbed into our awareness to create a lasting effect over time. In an excellent TEDx talk several years ago, he offered a simple exercise to illustrate this practice: recall a positive experience (e.g., the love of a friend/partner/child/pet), sit with that experience for a short time to enhance its effects (e.g., the warm glow you feel inside as you think about the person), and let those effects be absorbed by the mind and body. The more we allow ourselves to fully experience positive thoughts and emotions, the less room there is in our mental chatter for negativity and distress.

Now, what about Mullah Nasrin and his dandelions? Dr. Hanson might say that Mullah could call upon the warm glow he feels when he looks at his beautiful garden and try to associate that same warm feeling with the dandelions. When negativity arises, this technique does not ask us to push it away or deny it; rather, we infuse the negative with positive, we use the positive experience as an antidote to help release us from the suffering caused by the negative one. This could be an effective tool for addressing difficult or traumatic experiences from the past that are creating unhealthy or unhelpful patterns in our thoughts and actions today.

On the other hand, yoga has another teaching that Mullah Nasrin might find helpful: Santosha. Through the practice of Santosha we find contentment and acceptance, embracing whatever arises in our experience. Struggling against the reality of our experience can only lead to suffering – so instead let’s swim with the tide, let’s welcome each moment, each thought, each emotion and sensation as if we had invited it. Open your heart and your mind. Be curious. Explore. Take the time to notice the blessings and simple pleasures in your life and let the joy they bring you fill your vessel to overflowing. Maybe the joy will displace some deeply rooted weeds in your garden, making space for beautiful new flowers to grow. Or maybe, you’ll simply learn to love your dandelions.

In recent weeks, I have found myself gazing inward – a natural tendency at this time of year, with shorter days and colder temperatures. Autumn is a time for introspection and reflection, a time for nourishing ourselves and shoring up our inner resources so that we are strong and resilient for the long, cold winter ahead. In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), the autumn season is associated with the lung and large intestine organ systems, and the energy of the lungs is said to be one of “letting go”, releasing what no longer serves or resonates with us on our current path. When we reflect within, we can observe habits and patterns, thoughts and emotions, beliefs and expectations that are no longer of benefit, and that might be limiting our growth or even causing us harm. Our task then becomes allowing ourselves to let them go, to release ourselves from the suffering they cause – and this can be easier said than done.

I have always had a great deal of difficulty with the so-called “business of yoga”. Self-promotion runs counter to who I am as a person. I have never been on Facebook. I know almost nothing of Twitter (except its dubious reputation as the primary platform for the Tweeter-in-Chief south of the border). I created an Instagram account simply to stay in closer touch with family that was far away, and later it enabled me to remain connected with friends I left behind as I moved on to a new city (though how ‘connected’ anyone can really be through Instagram could be the subject of an entire post on its own). For me, yoga is about compassion, connection, truthfulness, authenticity – every day embodying the Yamas and Niyamas that are the foundation of our practice. I feel as though much of the business of yoga completely contradicts the practice of yoga, and I find it increasingly challenging to reconcile this within myself.

Lately, my inward reflection and observation has revealed some deeply conflicted feelings – a crisis of faith, if you will. Around me I see business practices that inflict harm rather than do good, that limit access to this practice instead of expanding it, that show immense respect for profits and none at all for the human contribution without which those profits would not be earned. I find it amusing, though disheartening, that I have been discriminated against because I did not do my training at a particular school, because I do not have an established following of students I would bring to a new studio, because I do not post photos of myself on Instagram doing complicated poses, because I am not the right age for the studio’s chosen demographic (this one is my favourite!). None of these things has anything to do with the practice of yoga or the transmission of its teachings, yet here they are, front and centre in what yoga has become in many places in the West.

The conflict that I feel over what I see around me has manifested itself in my body, and it is time for me to pay attention. If we take the time to listen, our body will tell us when we are not living in harmony with our own true nature, our Svadharma. From a TCM perspective, if our lung and large intestine energy is deficient, we might experience respiratory issues like colds and flu, digestive upset, skin rashes; emotionally we might find ourselves experiencing extended bouts of sadness, muddled thinking, and a sense of disconnection. The inner resources we need to strengthen will instead be depleted and our immune function will weaken. If we are paying attention, our body will tell us that what we need is rest, acknowledging the longer nights of autumn by getting more sleep; we must nourish ourselves with seasonal foods; we must spend time in introspection, drawing our attention inward to reflect on the changing nature of our needs, determining what we are ready to release so that we may make space for new ideas and new possibilities. This is not always an easy process, but it is a necessary one if we are to move forward in good health and flourish on the path ahead.

Take a moment now to pause, to reflect, to listen. What is your body trying to tell you? Can you respond with kindness and compassion? Can you acknowledge that there may be things in your life, in your way of thinking and your way of doing, that might not serve you as well as they once did? Pausing in meditative contemplation will not give us all the answers we want in one sitting, but we can remind ourselves that there is innate wisdom within us, that the answers are there if we can be patient in our search. As Osho tells us, “Truth is not something outside to be discovered, it is something inside to be realised.” And as Jack Kornfield advises, “In the end, just three things matter: how well we have lived, how well we have loved, how well we have learned to let go.” Perhaps it is in letting go that we remove the barriers keeping us separated from the truth. Perhaps by letting go of things like fear and frustration and disillusionment, we can release ourselves from their suffering and become free to live our own true nature.

Tag: letting go

Pulling weeds & planting flowers

Our true nature