2.1 Saucha and Purity in Yoga
Purity in Yoga
If the Yamas in the Yoga Sutras describe how we should behave toward those around us then the Niyamas are designed with self-work in mind. How do we behave, practice, and cultivate yoga internally? Like the Yamas these practices are complete and layered in ways that appear strait-forward but that are also complex and impactful on our path of Yoga.
The first of the Niyamas is the principle of Saucha, or physical cleanliness and purity of body and mind. This means staying clean and presentable, washing yourself so that you are free of disease and dirt, which helps to signify an orderly mind and spiritual practice.
We feel different when we interact with someone who is tidy and washed versus someone who is not, and the yogis believed that this symbolical cleanliness was part of the sincere aspirant’s practice. Remember that yoga has been practiced for thousands of years and usually by forest ascetics. Keeping clean would be no small practice. It would take effort and ritual. It also helped support the basic hygiene and health of the practitioner.
Cleanliness also relates to how and what we take in to our bodies through food, air, and exercise. Is our food healthy and pure, not harmful to the body? Are we taking deep breaths and allowing the lungs to regenerate and circulate out toxins? What about our physical bodies- are we moving the body through asana or otherwise in ways that clean the skin, the digestive tract, the organs? Sweat is an important way of drawing toxins away from the physical systems.
In word, mind, and spirit of the yogi what does it mean to purify? Purity is a concept that has very different meanings depending on the spiritual tradition or religion that you were raised in or have practiced personally, or even that is defined by your dominant culture. It’s important to understand what exactly it means to find purity in yoga.
Unlike some Western religions and spiritual practices, where purity is an almost unattainable state that is evidenced in our behaviors (typically the behaviors would include sincerity, a conservatively demure attitude and social persona, and adherence to all non-disruptive social rituals), in yoga purity does not relate exactly to how we act.
Yes, social rituals and personas do matter, but for the sincere aspirant of yoga, this is an outcome or a byproduct if you will flowering from a much deeper and quieter process of self-investigation into the movements of the mental/emotional self. The yogi is not cramming the large personality into a social construct and trying to tow that line to be culturally accepted- the yogi is trying to get to the bottom of that large personality altogether in a difficult and scientific process that sweeps away the constructs of the self layer by layer.
Am I my body? Am I my thoughts? Am I my emotions? What remains when the movement of sensation, thought, or feeling passes? What was there before? What is there during and through that movement? Who am I really?
It is taught in the multitude of traditions that might broadly be called Yoga, Tantra, and Vedanta that purity is a transcendental state that is already our basic nature. We don’t necessarily have to “earn” this purity through outward acts. Especially in the Trika lineages of Tantra, the exact opposite practice is observed: to draw our attention and our focusing mind onto a single point and concentrate there (dharana) is the very path from which the purity of our own consciousness is slowly and self-evidently revealed.
In Sloka 16 of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra (VBT), it is stated: “The essence of ultimate nature is known to be free of dross (that is, pure) and pervades the entire universe. This being the nature of the highest reality, who is the object of workshop and who is to be pacified by worship?”
The commentary follows: “Here for the first time we get an inference of (consciousness) essence, which is vimalam, or ‘full of purity.’ Most religions have a concept of the highest reality or God as being immaculate and pure, but this purity, which is known as vimalam, is not purity in a religious sense. Purity here indicates the homogeneity and wholeness of the supreme awareness that is bhairava (consciousness). Here purity means absence of duality, or subject and object.”
Entering the non-dual state. Here is a clear and concise definition: the merging of subject and object. In non-dual states the practitioner sees first hand (not intellectually) that the person-character is a modulation of the whole: what are you made of really? The most basic and fundamental building block of our experience might be called awareness.
I am aware of my perceptions. I am aware of my thoughts. I am aware of my emotions.
These expressions of life (in fact, all expressions of life) are made out of the knowing of them. Even before you claim the most basic things about yourself, ask: How do I know my name? My gender? My race or culture or family rituals? I know these things by being aware of them, and only then does my belief in these traits have a solid ground to anchor on. Even our most fundamental beliefs are resting on the rather nebulous ground of our awareness.
My body, my thoughts, and my feelings are not separate things that swing me around like a piece of seaweed in a strong current, but are one continuous thing that concentrates to singularity when you follow it all the way back to that most basic building block called awareness.
This understanding allows us to start asking the really interesting questions. The questions around who am I?… or what is this thing called me?… life?… reality?… become less interesting because they are fundamentally un-answerable.
Once you see that you are just made out of your knowingness- or your awareness- then these kinds of questions lose their urgency. I know I am awareness first, and then all the other qualities and movements and choreographies spiral out from there.
The really interesting question, then, is more of a statement of wonder than an outright question: “how in the world is consciousness possible in the first place?”
Am I really so vast that I am fundamentally undefinable? What a miracle it is that this expression that I call me exists in the first place! What a gift is this awareness. What a gift is this body that moves and breathes and feels pleasure and pain. What a gift are these thoughts and feelings that direct me again and again into the seat of my heart; to ask these questions in the countless ways that we ask ourselves through our thoughts and feelings the perennial question. How does this happen?
Wonder, gratitude, and open intimacy. These are the bulbs from which the deeper purity flowers. Not social constructs like being forced to act polite with neighbors and colleagues (then judging them in privacy while at your kitchen sink).
For what makes you different from your neighbors, your friends, your weird and sometimes downright awful family members? When you are all made of your awareness then these relationships are naturally washed in the purity of your wholeness. For you are whole. Completely and utterly already whole- purity is your nature. So we stay clean in our bodies, we choose foods that support and nourish us, we take deep breaths of clean air that also support and nourish us, we move and sweat and wring out our organs and muscles, and we continue to take this practice of cleanliness into the practice of spirit until the whole of our being glows with vitality.
Through cleanliness and purity of body and mind (Saucha, Shudhi)
comes a purification of the essence (sattva),
a goodness and gladness of feeling,
a sense of focus with intentness, the mastery and union of the senses,
and a fitness, preparation and capability for self-realization.
— Patanjali, YSP II.41