Episode 03 - Yoga's Journey to the West featuring Nishanth Selvalingam

Or listen & subscribe in your favorite app: Apple Podcasts

SHOW NOTES

Yoga's Journey to the West

Nishanth Selvalingam grew up learning yoga at his grandfather’s ashram in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Now a 500-hour certified yoga instructor from YogaWorks, a guitar player, and a teacher at StayOm Yoga and Yoga World Heart he shares with us more about the journey of yoga from east to west starting with the Rigveda to Ramakrishna, to Swami Vivekananda, and Yogananda.

IN THIS EPISODE:

Nishanth Selvalingam answers questions about yoga. We discuss:

• Was Swami Vivekananada’s influence in the United States also responsible for an increase in yoga and how it was practiced in the east?

• Asana is the third of eight limbs in the process enlightenment through yoga as written in Patanjali’s sutras around 200 BC. What does asana practice in the east look like?

• Definition of yoga by Swami Vivekananda: "To the worker, it is union between men and the whole of humanity; to the mystic, between his lower and Higher Self; to the lover, union between himself and the God of love; and to the philosopher, it is union of all existence. This is what is meant by Yoga."

• There is a lot of talk of cultural appropriation of yoga. My limited view is that Indians came to the US wanting to share yoga. Did we get it wrong? What is the biggest part of how we practice yoga in the west that is missing?

• Yoga in pop culture and more.

LINKS

Nishanth Selvalingam is a Yoga Instructor, Reiki III (Shinpiden) Practitioner, musician, and philosopher. Find his incredible resources online at:

Instagram: @itsalloveman

Twitter: https://twitter.com/itsjostmeman

Yoga with Nish: https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnish

Yoga World Heart: https://yogaworldheart.com/nishanth-selvalingam

Podcast - For the Love of Yoga, with Nish the Fish

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dark.wolf1

TedxTalk - How to Actually Be Here

Nish the Fish, the musician:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/3lNffK26CGgdt0ctrIlUsG

https://soundcloud.com/poetstree

TRANSCRIPT

Note: Please excuse any errors in the transcription.

Monica Phillips (00:05):

Welcome. I'm here with Nishanth Selvalingam and I'm so glad to be here with you. We are in YogaWorks 300-hour Teacher Training. We're finishing our last couple of weeks, and I love how you share your knowledge in the classes. And I was so excited to invite you to share more of that on this video podcast. So thank you for being here.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (01:04):

It is an honor, Monica. I've so much enjoyed sitting with you and your energy. Also, when you mentioned you're doing a podcast, I was so excited. I'm so humbled.

Monica Phillips (01:12):

You do so much. And I just learned you teach middle school speech and debate. Incredible. You are a musician. You play at least, I mean, I can see from the background, a few different kinds of guitar.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (01:25):

I make a pretense of being able to play that thing. But yeah, I have a deep love for guitar playing.

Monica Phillips (01:30):

Your grandfather runs an ashram in Malaysia, in Kuala Lumpur.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (01:35):

Yeah. So my grandfather, he has always been a very devoted, Shivite, meaning follower of the God of yoga, Shiva. What he ended up doing was he created an annex in our house. So we have like our family home and then he created an annex in our house because he was starting to get very deep in his practice in his later years. So he wanted a kitchen that didn't, uh, was a purely Sattvic kitchen where he could cook meals that were Holy Sattvic and he could offer them as Prashadam to the deitis like an offering when he wanted a space where he could just sit, pray, meditate, sing, because he was very big into chanting. He was a temple singer, but what ended up happening was there was some temple politics that caused him to move away from our neighborhood temple. So that's why he started his little annex.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (02:19):

That little spot, he would invite people every week to come and learn, they'll get lectures and that kind of thing. So it was a very beautiful space of learning and spiritual congregation. As a child though, he sat me down and he had me memorize the scriptures and sing the Sivapuranam. And I was kind of bored.

Monica Phillips (02:38):

You have to spend the time with your grandpa.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (02:40):

I really loved it. He was in my childhood, my best friend. I spent the most time with my grandfather. He would teach me Tamal and talk to me about his life in Sri Lanka. It was all really great. That's kind of his project.

Monica Phillips (02:51):

And that sounds amazing. So what is the difference between a temple and an ashram?

 Nishanth Selvalingam (02:55):

Temple is a more formal structure. It usually is more in its architecture, a big Spire often in South Indian style of temples. And you circambulate the temple and there are different deities. And each temple is consecrated usually to one deity or like a family around that deity the glory days of Kashmiri Indian civilization, the temple much like an Egyptian temple was a place not just for ritual worship, but also for social affairs. There would be mathematicians and legal professionals. And you would go to the temple kind of like the center of social life. And ashram is a little smaller scale. It's usually associated to one or maybe a family of teachers. It's usually somebody's house. Ashram or Ashurama literally means school or place of learning. And you go there for more specific instruction. They share similar functions, they are different in scale. The temple just has broader range of functions.

Monica Phillips (03:52):

Well, thank you for that. So we're going to talk mostly about yoga's journey from East to West. I know that Swami Vivekananda, I'm probably saying that not quite right, but he came in 1893 and he spoke at the World's Fair in Chicago. And that's kind of the mark of what we know as the launch of yoga in the United States. Tell me more about that journey.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (04:16):

I think we have to start actually, not to pull you all the way back to 3800 BC, but I do think we do have to start there because the journey of yoga to the West is encapsulated in the line that we find in the Rigveda book, not book, but text 1:164, and the line goes "ekam sat viprā bahudhā vadanti," the sanscript there translates to "truth is one, though sages call it differently." At the core of the Vedas and the core of the Upanishads, which as you know, is the foundation for yoga philosophy, there is already this kind of syncratic concession that truth is a singular experience. It's not a concept, it's not a dogma or a belief. And Jesus would later articulate this in Matthew when he says, "I am the truth." He didn't say, "I know the truth." He said, "I am the truth and the way and the life." There's this concession, that truth is an experience. And you can describe that experience in different ways. So that already sets the stage for the interaction between Indian, spiritual practitioners and subsequent interactions. I know Alexander the Great invades and he doesn't get all the way into India, but there's a historian, Diadoris Seculis, who talks about interactions between the philosophers of Greece and the Northern Indian philosophers known as the gymno sofist or naked philosophers, especially yogis.

Monica Phillips (05:37):

As you're saying this, I'm thinking, was it easier for people 5 or 6,000 years ago to connect to truth and spiritual connection, Samati, because we had fewer distractions? I'm wondering if we have taken ourselves too far into perception that is not true.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (05:59):

Unfortunately, I can't really comment on that because I wasn't around. So I'm not really sure what life conditions were like back then. Scripturely speaking, when we consider the, Yugas or the Ages much like the Greek notion of like the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, there are different moments or epox in which our spiritual maturity is at different levels or different degrees of transparency to truth. The reason Hatha yoga in the 12th century becomes necessary is largely because of urbanization. And now a lot of people are living in cities. And today we have the brain of the taxi cab and the public transport back then it was the brain donkey. At the same time you're living in a city now, life is busy. You're probably stressed. So there was methods of purification, namely the Shatkarmas and hatha yoga and Asana and pranayama, all of that prepared you for the task that seems to have come so easily to our predecessors.

Monica Phillips (06:53):

Okay. Cause I was thinking Patanjali talks about Asana as the third step in the eight limbs to enlightenment, but it was different then?

 Nishanth Selvalingam (07:00):

Yeah. Cause remember, Patanjali's version of Asana means a meditation seat. Cause the word Asana from the Sanskrit root Asi means to sit so, even pose is not a good translation or posture because it really does mean a very sedentary thing. Scholar Harish Wallace argues in his book, "Tantra Illuminated" in tantra or 9th or 10th century Indian philosophy, the word Asana no longer even had the connotation of a literal meditation seat. More so meant the Lotus seat that your deity sits in, your device for meditative visualization, if you will. So in tantra, there was a dance that was often performed in states of rapture. When you performed a tantric ceremony, if the ceremony was successful, you would be imbibed with the Holy ghost. And often you would break out into spontaneous dance and hand positions. These were called the Karana. So a pose like Viparita Karani is one of the oldest names because in the beginning you didn't have Asana, you had dance, you had Karana.

Monica Phillips (08:02):

Did we call them mudras then also?

 Nishanth Selvalingam (08:04):

A mudra by the way, meaning seal is not just in the hands, it's the whole body.

Monica Phillips (08:08):

The whole body.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (08:08):

Technically every asana is a mudra. You'll see in the hatha yoga Pradipika concepts like Mahamudra, which means the great attitude.

Monica Phillips (08:16):

Are you familiar with the Power Pose. The video has been seen millions and millions of times. And it's all about the power pose. And people were talking about this recently, connections of mine were talking about this on LinkedIn - what's your power pose? How do you take it? How does it help you? And I do think there is a sense of in yoga feeling your energy is a big part of it. And so then we were talking about our favorite power poses and someone talked about - a lawyer who's a Yogi talks about what he does on a plane when he's seated - mountain pose - he was joking. I just talked about a seated forward folder. There's so much power for me in letting go. It's so interesting to think that all those are also seals, mudras, and it gives us strength.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (08:53):

The power pose, the sass and the when you study great saints. Anandamayi Ma or Sri Rama Krishna, who is Vivekananda's teacher, they often break out into spontaneous mudra and Asana. They've never gone into instruction in those things. They just do it because that's how the body deals with onslaught of psychic energy coming in, in a Samadhi state. Matsyendranath in the 12th century starts to formulate the practice of Asana. It's interesting because we today think that Asana is a tool to become spiritual, but really Asana is an expression of the spirituality you already are. So you don't perform Asana as a practice to get somewhere. You perform it as an expression of your innate already enlightened state.

Monica Phillips (09:33):

That's beautiful. So in Patanjali's eight limbs why do you think it comes third?

 Nishanth Selvalingam (09:39):

The thing about Patanjali is that here's the confusing thing about yoga Sutra, Patanjali before he puts the yoga sutra together is a grammatician, so he teaches grammar. When he teaches the yoga Sutra, it's not, I think as formulaic or systematic as we make it out to be. So when we say Ashtanga yoga, there's this idea that Patanjali is providing us this complete system, but not really because he seems in other places to say, one of those limbs is enough to be considered the whole of yoga, one Sutra. He says Ishvara Pranidhana is all you need - devotion. And in that he's talking about Bhakti yoga. Then in other places he's talking about Gyana yoga and in some mantra yoga. It's not so much I think helpful to see, Patanjali yoga sutra as a system, although it's tempting to do so. Patanjali is a dualist. And so his philosophy, I find a little lacking. I think, as a technical manual, it's good as a philosophical manual, it's a little weak. And the reason why is because he doesn't reconcile how Purusha and Prakriti are linked. For that, you need to go to tantra. And I think it only helps in so far as you contextualize potentially in the wider scope of philosophical systems like Samkhya compared to non-dual Shaiva tantra, et cetera. It's a world, it's a pretty big world.

Monica Phillips (10:58):

So we were talking before a little bit about the religious nature of yoga. Yoga exists on its own outside of any religion. And it exists within Hinduism, Buddhism, Janaism, and Hinduism exists without yoga. I found this quote by Swami Vivekananda. So he says "to the worker, it is union between men and the whole of humanity, to the mystic between his lower and higher self, to the lover union between himself and the God of love, and to the philosopher, it is union of all existence. This is what is meant by yoga." And I read in that it can be our own path, just like you said, in the Asana, it can be our own path and expression of our own spirituality. How do you see that? And you've talked about it with this oneness of the Rigvedas. How do you see that in religious terms?

 Nishanth Selvalingam (11:48):

Yeah, no, that's a really beautiful Vivekananda quote. I love that one because truly yoga is kind of like a non-word it just comes to connote, whatever. I think the Indic philosopher, George Feuerstein makes the point that before the word yoga was used, its stand-in word was Tapatia or tapas, which means austerity. So I think in the kind of cultural understanding of Indian spirituality, yoga is austerity practice. It's a practice that is used to get to a certain state, however, Patanjali uses the word yoga, not as a practice because for him, the word for practice is sadhana. Yoga for him is a state or an attainment. That's the sense in which Vivekananda talks about yoga, the state whereby you have union with whatever it is you're trying to unite. For Patanjali it was union between the knower and the known or the meditator and the object of meditation.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (12:41):

But for the karma yogi, a person who works selflessly in the world, it's that moment where they really feel in their service where their sense of self dissolves into a greater cause. And they're looking across the soup kitchen table into the eyes of the person they're serving and they see their own eyes reflected back to them. Ahhh.

Monica Phillips (12:58):

That's so beautiful.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (12:58):

In a Bhakti yoga center, you're singing to your beloved Jesus maybe, and you're singing and for a moment you dissolve completely into the object of your adoration. That's yoga. That's why I think Vivekananda and a lot of philosophers use that word as broadly as possible because it's not one thing nor is it one practice.

Monica Phillips (13:20):

It's interesting you share that. I've had a couple of major pivotal moments in my yoga practice or my yoga journey. And one was, I started, my mom practiced yoga. So I knew about it as a kid. It wasn't something I really looked into that much, but we had the Bhagavad Gita and I would read here and there, but never seriously. I didn't take my first class in a studio until I lived in Paris in my twenties. When I was 37, I went to a class in San Francisco. It was then Urban Flow. It was yoga for the people with Stephanie Snyder, and it was Bhakti flow. And I took this class and I was joking with a friend before because the studio was so well-regarded. I was living in Washington DC and, and everyone there was, "Oh, you know, Rusty Wells and Stephanie Snyder" to my friend who had been practicing with them regularly.

Monica Phillips (14:08):

So I go, okay, I have to go see what this class is all about. Yoga for the people and everyone shows up with $200 clothes and $200 mats and this and that, but this is yoga for the people, right? Okay, I definitely had some judgment. And I got there and everyone was so grateful, full of gratitude. I could feel it. And there was a sense of, wow, we get to be here. We get to show up on our mats. We get to practice. And then I felt it, I felt this letting go. And it was incredible. I was hooked instantly hooked and I was, "Oh, Bhakti flow. Okay." And then in 2017, I went on a yoga retreat to an Ashram. Part of it was the series of waking up at 5:00 AM, meditating, then practicing Asana, then eating breakfast. And we had lectures during the afternoon. And then we had another practice of meditation in the evening, and it was really a beautiful process. It was not the sweaty I'm going to work out and have a thin waist practice that I had been used to experiencing. And I realized how I had to let go even more of this physical self. I had to let go of what I was trying to get in my waistline. It became what was inside of me. And that's when I decided that I probably did want to become a yoga teacher

 Nishanth Selvalingam (15:15):

When you connect it to the deeper vibration of yoga. That essence of asking who am I beyond the mind and the body.

Monica Phillips (15:23):

Yeah, completely.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (15:24):

Christopher Wallace makes this great point. He says yoga without the theory and understanding of what it's about is quite dangerous because yoga will just give power to you. So if you're a jerk, it makes you a more effective jerk. As you can see, with many instances of yoga teachers who are strong in body and mind who have charismatic personalities, but don't have that deeper. And I see this now in our modern day, new age, culture, healing trap, we're all trying to heal, but it seems like a veiled attempt at self-perpetuating that the ego loves to have. So if you're not building a monument or taking other people's lands, so you can be alive forever, you're trying to create a body and a mind that's immortal. Yeah. It can be a trap, but you felt in your own practice that there is some kind of sweetness. There's a beauty in completely letting go of this clinging that we have to our personality, to our mind, to our body.

Monica Phillips (16:15):

Exactly. That's where the beauty of life comes in. That we can see more clearly everything.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (16:20):

You know, Monica, I would say that is the origin of yoga's journey to the West. That vibration that exists in the Vedic era gives this culture or this tradition a sort of power that's allowed it to interact well because when the Muslim invasion of 12th century happened, there were people fighting it. And there was a lot of religious oppression. Sure. But there were also poets like Kabir. And I think the story of yoga to the West must involve poets like Kiber because they were syncratic poets. They talked about Allah and Ottman interchangeably because they could see that in Islam, there were ideas that were concurrently true, your Kiber, and then the British invasion. So with Vivekananda, you start the story with Rama Krishna because Sri Rama Krishna was India's, he's our foremost Saint. We call him the modern avatar. What makes Rama Krishna special is that he first achieved enlightenment or Nirvikalpa Samadhi with a tantra female teacher. Then he went on to achieve it with a Vaishnava male teacher. Then he went on to do it with a non-dual teacher. He realized every version of Hinduism or in that time, Indian spirituality was legit. It all took him to the same place. So he went and he gave up all of his Hinduism. He wore Muslim clothes, hung out with Muslims and prayed exclusively at the mosque. So he became in effect a Muslim. And he became enlightened that way. And he tried it with Christianity. And so in a sense, he's the first world's teacher, because he truly went deep in every religion and found them all to lead to the same experience of yoga, which is oneness

Monica Phillips (17:53):

In religion there's a lot of argument about what came first.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (17:57):

Right?

Monica Phillips (17:58):

I say that and then I think, I don't know if that's true anymore. I guess it is. I know enough Christians and Muslims, at least who will argue about their religion being more important than others. I don't know any Hindus who say that actually.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (18:10):

Good observation, Monica. A big part of that is because Hinduism is like kind of a misnomer. The word Hinduism is a word coined by colonial England to group together a lot of different schools of thought with very big differences between them. For instance, as a Shaiva tantra practitioner, I do not practice dualistic forms of worship. Though I do but a Vaishnava does. One is dualistic. One is non-dualistic yet we're both called Hindus.

Monica Phillips (18:35):

Even just in your description of Patanjali and understanding how that informs how we show up and practice or what we know about our practice.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (18:43):

There's a unity in diversity, as Vivekananda said, that is the motto of the Indian. So Rama Krishna is an exemplar of that. He's a role model. And when you went and studied with Rama Krishna, he would speak to you in terms of your own faith. If you were a Muslim, he would talk to you in terms of Allah and the Koran.

Monica Phillips (18:59):

That's so smart because when we tell someone they're wrong and we take this approach of anti, we push them away. But when we invite them in and we acknowledge their truth and we invite them in to learn more, they get curious about the world and what's possible globally. And even the sense of the yoga - the unification - of all of these different ways we've shown up. And I think in the religious transitions, there were different - Jesus, Prophet, Muhammad - different people who came forward and they all spoke to Moses, right? So there are these unifying forces throughout where they all acknowledged the existence of each other. No one ever says, Oh no, no, that never happened. They just maybe don't call it the same thing.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (19:41):

Precisely they have different languages. And most of them are trying to point beyond the concept. The Buddha says, do not confuse the finger pointing at the moon with the moon itself. And the map is not the territory or the religion, which is a set of symbols is not the thing to which those symbols are pointing to. And even Jesus says, "beware the brood of Vipers. They say, Lord, Lord, Lord. Yet. They know me not." The idea that there are many people who claim to be religious, but they're using it as a machine for power and control, et cetera. So in every religion, there's always been a cast of people known as mystics or the esoterics. And in Islam, we call them Sufis; in Hinduism, we call them yogis; in Buddhism, we maybe call them Zen, Tibetan Buddhists, maybe. So there's always kind of a sect in every major world religion that is preaching this universality.

Monica Phillips (20:26):

It sounds like those sects, the mystics, have come together to create more than what's possible with one.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (20:33):

And we recognize each other, you go to the marketplace and you look into someone's eyes and you see in their eyes of presence. And you know, therein lies one who is awakened and we're doing the work together. Interestingly, Rama Krishna was that voice in India. He was a unifying and you couldn't have Gandhi without Rama Krishna or Vivekananda. He was the lifeblood of Indian unity and getting together. So Vivekananda, he grows up with a father who is a lawyer who was very interested in Islamic art and Islamic poetry. So his father was a man of the world, very broad-minded and his mother was a lover of the Indian epics, Mahabharata and Ramayana. And so Vivekananda was already raised in a syncratic kind of household. As a youth studied because it was British colonial era, just about the advent of British education in India. He started to study Western philosophy and rationalism and rigorous deductive reasoning.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (21:23):

And he saw that a lot of Indias social ills came from the dogmas of the Vedic religion. There was a lot of backwards, social mores of the time. There was a rigid caste system in place that prevented all social mobility. The idea that India is this some spiritual utopia, isn't true. It degenerated. And there was a time when this beauty of the Vedic era, a time of truth and poetry turned into this degenerate caste-ridden. We call it Brahmanism where even the people who are the priests didn't know the meaning of their rituals. India had fallen asleep. And so without the British invasion to slap us on the wrist, we might've degenerated into senility. So thankfully Vivekananda was educated as a British person. So he became very critical. That was important because when you met Rama Krishna, he was able to bring that Western grounded reasoning and combine it with his innate Indian spirituality. He was a rare breed of rigorous philosopher poet.

Monica Phillips (22:18):

It's almost like if you can't see any trouble, you don't know why you're supposed to heal yourself.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (22:24):

Right! And he could see that he could see the ills of his culture. And he knew that India, what it needed now most was not spirituality. It had lots of that. What India needed was what the West had, which is the ability to socially progress, technology, science, et cetera. What the West needed was not more of that. The West didn't need more luxury. The West needed the meaning for that luxury. So Vivekenanda's thing was that he realized if he came to the West, he would create a brotherhood of humanity, a brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity. Um, and that was his mission. So around the time of 1890s, he was walking around India. He was starting to see India's poor. And he felt for them, he felt for the plight of the Indians. And he knew that the only way India was going to get help was if it showed itself on the world stage as having something to offer. So Vivekananda came to trade, believe it or not. He came to exchange spiritual lessons for material lessons that he could take back. In the words of Swami Nikhilananda, if man is the most or men and women are the most divine creations of God, then in both sides of the world, she's being crucified in different ways. In the East, she's being crucified with lack of social progress and technology. In the West, she's being crucified with lack of spiritual understanding.

Monica Phillips (23:37):

It was kind of a turning point. And did it change the way India saw yoga at the same time?

 Nishanth Selvalingam (23:44):

Yes, tremendously. A lot of people in India at the time didn't think yoga was for them. It was something that the Brahmin elite practiced and maybe a few wandering mendicant Sadhus or people who had dropped out. So a lot of these people were held with respect and reverence. The culture of India has always throughout its history, had a special place in its heart for spirituality. I mean, you can't take spirituality to India. So people respected it. They would give money in alms to those Sadhus, but they themselves didn't feel like they could access it, or they couldn't read the Sanskrit. So they didn't understand some of the theories and Vivekananda comes from that school of Indian philosophy known as non-dualism, which suggests that there's only one thing. You are it. So the question, who am I, and what is God has the same answer because Brahman equals Atman. Meaning "yourself is the all" you don't find this in Patanjali's half-baked philosophy. Patanjali has this weird, everyone's got an individual Purusha, but then there is a Vishesha Purusha. I don't know, Patanjali doesn't really do a lot there, but Vivekenanda, Rama Krishna, point out that you at your core are the only thing that exists. And if you believe this, then gone is the caste system, because what separates the King from the beggar if in essence, they both turn out to be this one thing. So it's a powerfully, socially empowering idea.

Monica Phillips (25:05):

Is there a sense of reincarnation in this journey?

 Nishanth Selvalingam (25:09):

There is, but it's not that important because it's seen as relatively true. In non-duality, this world is very dream-like substance. If you were to study your states of consciousness, waking, dreaming, and sleeping closely, you will notice that in all three of those states of consciousness, there is one thing that stays the same and that is you, the knower or you, the witness. And you, the witness, is very different from the Nish of the waking world, the Nish of the dreaming world and the no Nish of the sleep world. So what I turn out to actually be is not my waking world Nish, nor I am, whatever rockstar fantasy I'm having in my dream, nor I am the absence of deep sleep. I am, that which watches all three. So when you ask the question of reincarnation, who is it reincarnating? It's not me. It's Nish and Nish's energy body and his pranamaya kosha.

Monica Phillips (25:55):

So you're not a rockstar yet.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (25:57):

Nish, the drunken monkey is.

Monica Phillips (25:59):

So you have this stage name, Nish, the Fish. Is that right? Okay. Tell us about that just for a minute. Cause I want to hear more about the music you play. I've watched a little bit, I'll share the link.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (26:10):

It's funny because while Vivekananda came to the West to teach yoga, I came to the West to play guitar in a rock band. That's why I came to LA. I just wanted to play guitar.

Monica Phillips (26:18):

And now here you are merging the two, maybe through music.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (26:22):

I think so because in the temple, there's like a rock and roll in a temple, heavy music. And I found that with Sabbath and Zeppelin and all of these heavy metal bands that were exploring spiritual themes. If you listen to Sabbath music, it's really spiritual. It is very biblical and it talks about God and it's pretty deep. So I love that stuff. And Nish the Fish is just a fun stage name I have for my act. We're a three piece, just me, a bassist and a drummer. And we used to play up and down the strip until everything closed down. We haven't played a show in some time. We'd try to live stream a month ago and it just didn't feel the same. So we're not playing anywhere anymore, but we're still releasing stuff on Spotify and that kind of thing.

Monica Phillips (27:01):

That's super cool. So the Beatles, they went on an extended stay to India with Maharishi Mahesh yogi, their guru, in 1968. And I think about these moments in connecting humanity, the Beatles were so mainstream. And so their recognition of yoga, I think probably helped as well. Like there are these steps where we can say the Beatles are doing it. Why not me?

 Nishanth Selvalingam (27:26):

Yeah, precisely. Right. I love that observation Monica, because you're right at 1893, that was the moment where the first echo of yoga gets heard in the West. But then Paramahansa Yogananda comes and this is the early 1930s sets up in California. And this is important because Lake Shrine in California and Pacific Palisades and all that, that is a little more - cause Vivekananda came, went to England, came back, left, went to India - but Yogananda stayed and he left. So by the time you get to the early 1960s, you already have a lot of people interested in Eastern ideas, especially since the material straight jacket of 1950s, America is starting to loosen and young kids are looking for ideas. So that hippie movement really there's an influx like Alan Watson shown up and you're right. The Beatles eventually as the cultural mouthpiece of the time, they can't help, but be swept up by this. Ravi Shanker can't help but bring the forces of yoga, which are beyond you or me or any of the play things of nations brought together Ravi Shankar and George Harrison to study. And George Harrison with a lot of respect and reverence studied at the feet of Ravi Shankar and Ravi Shanker with a lot of respect and reverence came and studied in the university here. That was the true sign of our cultures exchanging though with Maharishi Mahesh and the stuff like that. I think it started a guru phenomena, you know, as well because you had Yogi Bhajan come over with the...

Monica Phillips (28:46):

What is a guru phenomenon?

 Nishanth Selvalingam (28:46):

An obsession with teachers. Have you seen The Love Guru?

Monica Phillips (28:51):

I haven't. Tony Robbins will say, right, "I'm not your guru." And every yoga teacher, "I am not your guru." Or they say that it is not, I think one person's job to be the guru for someone else, that we do have this actually even my yoga mentor, Tiffany Russo, she says, if you put yoga on a pedestal, it will fall off. Anything you put on a pedestal will fall off because anything you idolize so much will start to lose its luster. And maybe that's what happened in India. When they were wanting this so much, then they forgot why they were doing it because then they had it. And then they didn't even realize what it was for.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (29:23):

Precisely. They turned the Buddha into a celestial King God figure and robbed him of his humanity. I mean, the Buddha was an ordinary man who had extraordinary questions.

Monica Phillips (29:34):

He practiced Hinduism?

 Nishanth Selvalingam (29:34):

He practiced with yogis. To call it Hinduism is anachronistic cause the British hadn't shown up yet so that word hadn't yet. But definitely he was a Prince in Northern India who, when he realized that old age, sickness, and death were a thing, he set out to study with yogis. They're known as Samanas or maybe Shamans. And he realized that their way was totally off because they were demonizing the body and the mind, which is what happens by the way, with the dualism of Sankia and Patanjali because in Patanjali if you separate Parusa and Prakriti, and you see Prakriti as separate from Parusa, how long until people start demonizing, Prakriti as an obstacle to Parusa. And you'll notice there's a lot of hatred of women that comes with dualistic schools because you came into the existence through the womb of your mother. If you start to see this life as a bondage and a trap, then you will start to resent the womb of the mother. And you'll start to see every woman as an embody - notice that in Tantra, which develops Patanjali's philosophy, there is an embrace of the goddess. It's more into goddess worship and embodied forms of practice, asana and mudra.

Monica Phillips (30:35):

Even the energy line of our body starts in Shakti, the feminine energy.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (30:39):

That I think is mature, Indian spirituality. So I kind of hear, I'm trying to move away from, Patanjali's philosophy and bring people more into the non-duality of tantra.

Monica Phillips (30:49):

Why do you think we study the sutras so much in yoga philosophy in the West.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (30:54):

You know, it beats me. I think the Hatha Yoga Pradipika would've made more sense.

Monica Phillips (30:57):

I have that. I've read what was assigned, but we didn't study it as much.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (31:01):

I have no idea why there's this obsession with the yoga sutra. As a textbook for meditation, there is no equal. It's an amazing textbook for meditation. It's sadhanapada, has a lot of gems - the Four Locks and the Four Keys.The self-help culture of the 1970s eats that stuff up.

Monica Phillips (31:15):

I think you're right, because yoga in the West really had a deep connection with the hippie movement because they were open to new ideas. And so that even there isn't a strong association because I live in California, strong association with hippies and yoga. And look, I was raised by hippie parents. I know yoga. And so I think there is a deep connection. And then when I read the Upanishads, the Sutras rather, there are so many beautiful moments, even how we see truth, the Four Locks, 2:33. I love that one. I love so many of the sutras and I'll read them and then I'll see these moments in pop culture. So do you know The Good Place?

 Nishanth Selvalingam (31:53):

I've heard a lot about the series.

Monica Phillips (31:55):

It's a great show. It has so many interesting moments of wisdom. I really love it. It has lots of coaching moments.

Monica Phillips (32:02):

There's this one moment. Jason's character, who's from Florida and is portrayed as not very smart. People make fun of him a lot. And the demon of The Good Place is talking and says, "you were a failed dancer. You led a failed dance troupe." And he said, "no, we weren't a failure. We were just pre-successful." I love his insights. He has these moments where he'll share something. And I think we try to make the person who has the most education from the best school, the smartest in the room. And it just takes one person who sees it differently to see the truth.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (32:34):

Precisely.

Monica Phillips (32:34):

Because they don't have, they're not hiding behind all this education and layers that we add on. And so sometimes it's moments, when you make it so simple. What if we all lived with that idea? Oh, I'm pre-successful. I love this idea that there's more for me and I can keep working on it. I can practice every day. I can show up and I can practice and I can enjoy the practice. And then maybe it will become more than that.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (33:01):

It's beautiful because you're right. It's refreshing, isn't it. When you get this simple outsider perspective that - in Vivekananda's speech, he got a standing ovation after his first sentence, because he was the only one at the conference who didn't prepare a speech. He didn't sit down and write one. And so he addressed the audience as a human to another human. And he opened his speech with - and mark his phrase - he said "sisters and brothers, my sisters and brothers of America," He said sisters first beautiful.

Monica Phillips (33:28):

Beautiful, right.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (33:28):

Isn't that beautiful. Cause he learned that from Rama Krishna, the goddess worship, the love of the sacred feminine Shakti. So he said "my sisters and brothers of America," he got a standing thunderous ovation, he spoke to them with a simple, direct language. And I think that's what you're pointing out. We need that.

Monica Phillips (33:45):

We do need that. So you said that visit changed yoga in India. What happened? I understand there isn't the same kind of asana practice in India.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (33:54):

See, asana, when you talk about Hatha yoga and the practice of using poses and the Shatkarmas, it's all very fringe because after all you have to remember, this was created by nine scruffy skinny fellows, the NAF school, and it was an underground indie rock yoga. Cause this was the Muslims had invaded, all the temples were destroyed. So these fellows were underground. So it's really weird, right? The story of how Krishnamacharya gets interested in this niche underground thing. And then he goes to Tibet and he learns about it and his Tibetan guru tells him to come back and teach it to the people. And then there's a Maharajah. And Mysor who's obsessed with it because he likes British gymnastics. How Asana comes back into the Indian mainstream consciousness is a very interesting story. It happens in the courts of Maharajahs who want to fetishize it almost in a way, because it is cool to see people's bodies twist in all those ways. So India, I don't think had much use for that. They mostly practice chanting. Chanting is the core of India's spirituality. Almost every house has an altar and almost every night at sundown, they will perform something known as the Arthi or Pooja where they'll wave light and sing. That's really what most people do. Some people meditate, but most people just sing.

Monica Phillips (35:09):

You didn't grow up practicing hatha yoga.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (35:12):

Not at all. No. My first Asana was at age 17 or 16.

Monica Phillips (35:15):

What was that like?

 Nishanth Selvalingam (35:15):

It was cool because in a way we're bouncing ideas off of each other, the East and the West. So I learned at my grandfather's feet, all these ideas that they weren't making sense to me. And then I saw star Wars and I loved it because George Lucas was repackaging Eastern ideas. Cause Jedi order is essentially even monster got mace maze, Hindu, like it's all sorted. But anyway, George Lucas is repackaging these ideas. I, as a kid, ate it up. I wanted to be a Jedi. I really identified with it because that's what the saints and sages looked like.

Monica Phillips (35:47):

Isn't the Jedi mind trick, the controlling of the mind, which is [inaudible] the, I love star Wars too. And I love making these connections with yo.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (35:57):

Okay. So I was 14 and I got interested in Ram Das, Terence McKenna, all those young youthful 1960s voices. So I got "Be here now." And I loved it because it was a young Western way of packaging the stuff that I had heard in the Sanskrit that my Tamil lectures that my grandfather gave me. So that made it more appealing to me. And at the back of Be Here Now, there is something called cookbook for a spiritual life. There's a section on Asana. And I was like, I'm going to give this a try. So I started practicing the Asana and I was immediately hooked. Cause I found them to be a powerful way. It's like rocket fuel for meditation. It helped me and all of that set the stage when my mother took me to see Sai Baba in an ashram in Puttaparthi, India, this Ashram is huge.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (36:39):

There's a hospital, a university. Sai Baba is a Saint. And we went and that was where I think it happened for me. I was 14. I was sitting there and there was a Bhajan hall where we all sang songs together. And I saw in the hall people from all over the world. There were Europeans there, there were Japanese there. It was the United nations over there. They were all coming together to sing. It was like the Beatles song, Come Together. It was the ultimate hippie paradise. And everywhere you walked in the Ashram people would smile at you and say, hello. If you go to a Kundalini retreat, they're all saying Satnam, you don't have to do that. Hey, something happened. I wrote a letter to Sai Baba. And the letter was, "What are you? Why are you a Saint? What is God? What makes you special?" I wrote almost these pretentious questions. Cause I was very curious and I paused right before I put the letter in the box and something made me not put the letter in the box. I kept the letter. That day we went home to the hotel and I bought my first copy of the Bhagavad Gita and started to devour it. So I think something happened at Sai Babas ashram that created a new hunger in me.

Monica Phillips (37:42):

I love that you talk about this, how you experienced it because what I hear and you said this word earlier is access. When we create something in a way that allows another person to see it and absorb it, we give them an opportunity to learn. When we present information only even with learning modalities, you're a teacher, some kids learn visually, some kids learn orally. You have to understand, even in touch, in Asana practice, put your hands on your hips. Can you feel your pelvis? Is it parallel? So just feeling it in your body, this proprioception right, when you make it accessible, when you show someone through music, then they might find a new connection to it differently than a lecture from an uncle or an auntie or something like that.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (38:23):

Yeah, precisely you've got to see things many different ways. And that's why I would encourage everyone to check out the Rama Krishna mission's seal or it's emblem, Vivekananda designed it. And the way it looks, there's a serpent and the serpent represents Kundalini or Hatha yoga. It encircles a choppy ocean, which represents karma yoga, the yoga of selfless action. In the middle of the ocean there's a Lotus which represents the devotion or Bhakti aspect. On the horizon there is a rising sun which symbolizes philosophy or Gyana yoga and all of that culminates in the Swan at the center. The Swan is a symbol in India for a free soul or Jivanmukti. So the idea there is that you cannot approach it from any one way. It takes a holistic learning where you do some Bhakti, do some Gyana, do some hatha and you bring them all together to create in an alchemical event, this liberation.

Monica Phillips (39:17):

That's incredible. Tell us what you're teaching right now.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (39:20):

I currently teach two philosophy classes on Monday nights with a studio called Stay Om Yoga. I teach at 7:00 PM.

Monica Phillips (39:28):

I love that name.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (39:28):

Yeah, Stay Om Yoga. So great. My friend Annie started it.

Monica Phillips (39:30):

It came together in COVID times I imagine

 Nishanth Selvalingam (39:34):

It was my friend Anne Wasserman, who started the project. She brought me on after she had started it. And we had this collective of teachers. A lot of them were fresh out of 200 hours. We were just a bunch of people and we had Kirtan singers. We had dance teachers. We had art teachers. I was great, but people started to kind of get busy and fall off until there were only two teachers left - me and my friend, Emily Anderson. So Annie went up to Yosemite to work on a recipe book for peanut butter based cuisines. While she's working on a recipe book, she handed over Stay Om Yoga to me to watch over for a while. That's cool. My friend, Dawn Stillo, who is a YogaWorks teacher. She and Jennifer started a studio called, Jennifer Elliot, they're both YogaWorks teachers. They started a studio called Yoga World Heart. It's another virtual studio. They were kind enough to give me a slot on Thursday teaching philosophy. So I do that every Thursday night at 7:30 with Yoga World Heart. That class is a little more heavy. It's a little more technical.

Monica Phillips (40:30):

Well, and if you would like a more deep dive on yoga philosophy, you have an incredible hour just from a couple of weeks ago I believe, that I was listening to that is a great, deeper dive on the whole yoga philosophy journey from East to West.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (40:44):

Right? Yes. The deepest ideas in yoga, I call it.

Monica Phillips (40:47):

I kind of got to derail you a little bit with other questions. This has been amazing. Anything else that you'd like to share.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (40:53):

Maybe in closing, just going back to that Rigveda quote, that truth is one, though sages call it differently. The only thing I would love to say to everyone is just that all religions and even all scientific schools, all look different on a surface level, but a deep study of anyone shows a coherence and a unity that can be found in all of them. And if anybody still feels, no, this is different. I invite them to come and have a conversation and I will do my best to show them that it's not.

Monica Phillips (41:21):

It's this deep human need to know what are we, where do we come from? Why am I here? What is this all for? How did we get here? How did this all happen? It all was there. And how do see yourself in the world? What do you want it? What do you want your experience to be in this oneness?

 Nishanth Selvalingam (41:38):

Then one day we can look into each other's eyes and we can realize that it's just us looking at us and there's this feeling of there's no other, there's a perfect unity. Now I get to appreciate Monica, which is a specific form that the infinite took to express a specific divine mission that is mine, too. And that just makes me so excited about everything you're doing because to support you in what you're doing comes from a place of knowing that it's selfish. It's what I'm doing.

Monica Phillips (42:04):

Yeah,

 Nishanth Selvalingam (42:07):

Then we can look at each other and really be in love and not in that possessive way of otherizing, but really be in love together, which is to be in that space where there is no self. Just you and me.

Monica Phillips (42:16):

I could keep talking with you forever. I think of these coaching moments that I use, and it's something that I constantly practice, which is abundance versus scarcity. There is enough for all of us and we all can share in this together. And when we do, we actually create more space for everyone to belong. And the scarcity mindset takes all of that away. And what you're talking about really helps me see it even in another way, whereas this oneness and this love - in my cheesiest way, I do believe that all we need is love in this world because how could we hurt each other if we all had love.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (42:52):

At the end of the day, this scarcity of thinking that somehow these ideas will get diluted or diminished is hubris because the ideas are strong in themselves. They point to a truth and a reality that can be verified and felt by anybody anywhere. So in that sense, yoga is not in danger. Yoga never has been in danger, never will be in danger. If you wiped out all of the scriptures and all of the Indian, sub-continent our name for this tradition is Sanatana Dharma, which means eternal law or eternal truth. So how can we think that there's a scarcity when this is something that is always is and will always exist? I think Indians need to be a little more generous in sharing their culture and they tend to be. Most Indians generally are excited when they see a Caucasian person wearing a sari.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (43:39):

Although there are certain Hindu nationalists and maybe even groups in America that get really upset because they call out things as appropriation and all of that. But in my own experience, my grandmother loves it. When my Caucasian girlfriend wears a sari. My people love it when other people try to learn Sanskrit and get involved. And my people love to learn what everyone else has to teach. So I hope that we can all get this abundance mentality you were talking about, whether there's enough to go around there's enough knowledge. We don't have to paint it and sell everything.

Monica Phillips (44:07):

I have a sari, and I've worn it a few times and I haven't worn it in years, but I love it. And I think I need a reason to wear it. And I was thinking maybe I should just put it on. I think of this from cultural appropriation. Didn't Swami Vivekananda come here to share?

 Nishanth Selvalingam (44:22):

Yes, exactly. Yoga is known as Sarva Bhoomi meaning it's for the whole world. It's an art for the whole world. It's not like there are Caucasian problems and Indian problem. Iyengar points that out. He says there are just problems. You dont' say there's an Irish science and a German science. And yes, the characteristic of those nations influences how they do science, but it's still science.

Monica Phillips (44:42):

Look at the COVID-19 vaccine and where it came from. And these scientists developed this for the world. Not for just Germans.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (44:51):

Exactly. It's this idea, if you came up with a vaccine that could solve a global pandemic, similarly, if you discovered something that can solve the global pandemic, anxiety and depression and suffering, wouldn't it be for the world? There is a way I think, to respectfully practice other people's culture. I would love to absolve some of the trepidation and reservation that a lot of really well-meaning people here in the West have about practicing yoga by telling them that you are meant to have this. Many saints have come over to give you this technology and to give it to you in the most holistic way. So if you want to do Bhakti, it's there. If you want to do Gyana, it's there, but it's for you. You're meant to have it.

Monica Phillips (45:29):

Thank you.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (45:29):

A lot of people will be inspired to go back to India and teach women to read and write. And a lot of people want to bring social empowerment to India. And that's ultimately the goal that we might bring the best of both our cultures together for a more dignified human experience.

Monica Phillips (45:44):

If there are problems globally, then they're problems for all of us to address.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (45:48):

We're all in this together.

Monica Phillips (45:50):

Yes we are. And so thank you again. This has been such a pleasure. I will have all of the links in the notes below to join you in one of your classes, to join you on Patreon and to listen to more of your incredible lectures that you share so kindly. So excited to be on this journey with you through YogaWorks.

 Nishanth Selvalingam (46:08):

I'll see you Saturday, huh? Have a beautiful day.

Monica Phillips (46:12):

Thank you. Have a beautiful day.

Monica Phillips (46:14):

Thank you for joining me for Yoga Philosophy for Everyday Living. Please learn more about our guests in the show notes and check out their awesome yoga classes, subscribe, like, and share this podcast with a friend. And please send me your feedback. I would love to hear from you. You can learn more @ www.sparkpluglabs.co.