Lacking the subway system of New York, Los Angeles has provided little opportunity for unique social interactions while in transit. The Super Shuttle is one. Being picked up from my apartment in Mar Vista to travel to LAX last night, I sat next to a chirpy fellow who seemed happy at the prospect of existence. I knew the ride was going to be informative.

It wasn’t until we were well along Lincoln Blvd that he started talking, nearly immediately referencing a book he had just written about his spiritual awakening. (The conversation began in regards to the hostel he was staying at, which inevitably turns into a free promo opportunity.) He was nice enough—not intrusive, friendly, inquisitive. Then he mentioned Amma.

‘Yes, I know who she is,’ I reply. His eyes beam at the possibility of instant camaraderie. He had tried to visit her somewhere, once, and it didn’t work out. And here he was, leaving the Santa Monica hostel to a motel in El Segundo, and he finds out that Amma is appearing at the LAX Hilton for the next few days. ‘The universe is speaking to me,’ was something that fell from his lips.

I didn’t have the heart to inform of the corruption and violence tarnishing the ‘hugging saint’s’ pristine record. At just this moment, however, the driver turned and asked what this woman does. I briefly explain that hugging her supposedly transmits some sort of divine healing blessing. Dude next to me chimes in: ‘It’s a spiritual experience.’

The driver guffaws, turning to me. ‘And you believe this?’

‘No,’ I reply.

Dude next to me, flustered though not losing his stoney-eyed luster: ‘Well, you have to believe in order for it to work.’

The driver interjects. ‘You keep saying spiritual. Do you mean a higher power, things like this?’

‘Yes,’ our friend says.

‘Well then hugging someone isn’t going to change your life.’

The van pulled up to my terminal. I didn’t have the time or energy to tell him that belief is not a marker of whether or not something ‘works,’ nor did I mention the discipline necessary for any spiritual endeavor to take root in our lives. I merely shake his hand and tell him good luck on his journey, and he replies the same.

The driver hops out to open the back. As he’s pulling my bags from the trunk, he whispers, ‘This woman, is she hot?’

‘No,’ I reply.

‘Then hugging her isn’t a spiritual experience.’

He put down my bag, shook my hand and drove off into the night.

In both form and content, the work curated by Aghori Babarrazi presents a jagged paradox, true to his pseudonym, that defibrillates the limping heart of yoga philosophy. His crew consistently speaks for yoga-as-egoic-dissolution—through the most singular and eccentric voice of modern yoga literature. They repeatedly invoke the austerity of complete personal responsibility, while delighting in trash-talk from behind the scrim of anonymity. Aghori’s editorial paradox mirrors the dueling desires of yoga itself: to become, but to disappear. His masala of cruel empathy flavours the absurd task of making us naked and strange to ourselves, forcing us to wriggle, shift, and grow in the glare of our own contradictions. It’s a dirty, dirty job, but somebody—I mean nobody—I mean somebody who’s made himself a nobody pretending to be everybody—has to do it.

An article last week finally brought the full tension of Aghori’s project into sharp focus for me. In This is Probably What a Lot of Yoga Practitioners are Looking For, the Babarazzi critiques the “yoga-as-self-expression” trend within today’s yoga culture as the indulgence of the common desires, behavioural patterns and self-perceptions that he claims yoga is actually meant to erode. Babs proposes that doing what one is naturally drawn to do (singing, painting, design, fashion photography, ecstatic movement) and then laminating it with yoga-speak does a vain disservice to the tradition’s (allegedly successful) history of discipline and surrender to wordless authority, not to mention degrading the artform in question with a veneer of faux-transcendence. Babs also makes the subtler point that yoga-washing can become a value-added marketing meme that blesses any unchallenged consumerist activity with a self-satisfied glow.

The yoga-media critic must serve integrity by spotlighting the lines between evolution and self-entertainment, or self-consolation. But if we take the charitable view that “self-expressing” yogis really are nurturing their own integrity as much as self-erasing yogis are (and that further, that it’s arguably impossible to tell the two activities apart), Babs’ critique merely points to an honest problem as old as Indian philosophy itself: do we gain personal freedom and realize interdependence by dissolving or by refining our uniqueness? Babs suggests that this question has somehow been answered in yoga discourse. But it most definitely has not. In fact, the question expresses a key split within yoga philosophy. The ambivalent dance between the two views enriches the meaning of each, and it’s a great story in itself. I think it’s actually Aghori’s favorite dance as leader of Squad Babarazzi, regardless of the austere positions they pretend to take. (And when I say “pretend”—I mean to invoke respectful intrigue, à la Dérrida: “When I pretend to do the thing, I actually do it, so I must only be pretending to pretend.”)

Whether we must dissolve or refine our personality differences towards greater psycho-social-somatic harmony is the internalized version of the metaphysical question common to every system that considers the problems of language. Is “ultimate reality” describable, or not? The dissolution track (Patañjali and the Vedāntins) says “no.” But the refinement track (Nāthas, Babas, Aghõris) says: “let’s give it a try, and enjoy ourselves in the endless process.” In the Indian context, ultimate values that can be described and mimicked by aesthetic actions belong to a tradition of saguṇa (“with qualities”) liturgy. Ultimate values that must be formlessly pondered because we know they cannot be described belong to a tradition of nirguṇa (“without qualities”) liturgy. Using the context of Babs’ post, we could say that yogas that refine or accentuate personal uniqueness are playing in a saguṇa paradigm, insofar as the qualitative aspects of self-expression are emphasized, and felt to mirror the specific graces of the “divine” or “absolute.” Yogas that seek to dissolve differences are playing in a nirguṇa paradigm, insofar as qualitative uniqueness is felt to distort one’s reverie upon the quality-free absolute. Here, and in other posts in which he makes elliptical reference to the nameless beyond and elides the yoga of personality-erasure with the deconstruction of consumerism, Babs stakes out nirguṇa territory. This strikes a chord of common disgust: who among us is not at times sickened at the viral proliferation of memes, simulacra, yoga hoodies, and performed selves? Who is not at times exhausted by the tyranny of endless possibilities? Who does not, at times, despair at the fleeting dross of it all?

The nirguṇa impulse is at the heart of the cultural critic’s task, and surely its affect will intensify with the saguṇa overload of a spectacle society. Simply put, the nirguṇa mood is the reflex, audible as a constant refrain through Aghori’s curation, that says: “Nope. This isn’t it. It can’t be described.” In Nāgārjuna’s words: neti-neti. Nirguṇa head-bobbles with ironic and often bitter laughter, and calls out the foolishness of every platitude and hypocrisy, and every discourse or style that takes itself seriously. It’s a revolutionary impulse that in its highest expression carries the despair of all failed revolutions.

In Indian literature, nirguṇa language shows up in response to the claustrophobic hierarchy of Vedic culture: particularly the caste system. The earliest ascetic protests to the Vedic order say “Nope, this isn’t it” by stripping themselves of clothes, social signs, duties and privileges. They amputate themselves from Puruṣa—the macrocosmic man whose head was the priesthood and feet were the outcastes. Their refusal to participate in the social order harmonized with both their idealism and their democratization of the “absolute.” Ascetics have always, paradoxically, wanted to both leave and level society. They spurn both roles and riches.

But the ancient paradox—which Babs parades in all of its perversity—is that you can’t be a nirguṇa dude without sustaining a morbid fascination with saguṇa life. The energy of your renunciation depends upon the nausea of excess. To yearn for the quality-free involves constantly turning away from something. One can’t meaningfully withdraw to an empty or anonymous space from within empty or anonymous space. And so we witness Babs’ continuous obsession with the aesthetics and social politics of yoga culture. Whether it’s tone-deaf yoga-seva initiatives, or yoga capitalism, or the question of whether Sadie Nardini’s haircut is cyberpunk or steampunk, the world of self-expression is the self-erasure addict’s smack. It feels so good to take it, and it hurts so good to stop.

Often, the nirguṇa impulse seems more defensive or more angry than a simple “Nope, that’s not it.” It can feel triggered by a crisis of overwhelm: “Enough!” I’ve heard enough, I’ve seen enough, I’ve felt enough. Let me be free of the demands of thought, decision, self-consciousness, and being a self. Let me be free of the suffering of others struggling with the same task. I’m reminded of Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory, which proposes that at a certain threshold of social-sensory excitation and complexity, the ventral vagus nerve (phylogenetically more evolved, running between the vital organs and the frontal cortex) begins to freeze, diverting autonomic energy to the dorsal vagus nerve (primal, unmyelinated, running between vitals and the limbic brain). The nirguṇa impulse sounds like it comes from ventral vagus overload—a drive to shut down, a drive towards pratyahara, a drive away from the moment by moment exhaustion of self-creation, re-creation, and re-creation. If we conceive of yoga as a strategy for toning ventral vagus nerve function, we might begin to see the nirguṇa impulse as a practice of last resort: the dissociative yoga you perform when you just can’t deal. You turn the wifi off, wrap a tensor bandage around your head, do some yoga nidrā, and feel self and other dissolve. You know you’ve recovered when the saguṇa begins to slip back in, right on the heals of the I-sense, like waking up from a deep sleep. You turn the wifi back on, and in it pours, this world of things: sweetly at first, and then pornographic. Nausea rises and the critique begins.

But the critique cannot help but to validate the view it is trying to derail: that appearances, styles, marketing memes really do matter. That how we perform our identities and adventures is of crucial importance, because identity is the medium of our being present to one another. The paradox of renunciation is that its poignancy is based upon the rising valuation of everything it renounces. The world denied is like an emotion suppressed: it grows until it bursts.

(Sometimes I wonder: is transcendence often an act? I rarely meet those who are more obsessed with the world than those who claim they desire to leave it.)

While the via negativa longs for invisibility, it can still cast a baroque shadow. Nirguṇa moods and aesthetics can be co-opted by the crowd, drift towards their own hegemony, and establish an unconscious saguṇa order. When the ascetic wanderers of the Iron Age begin to establish first ashram and then monastic life, the nirguṇa ethos becomes a powerful organizing principle. No one is special; everyone should wear a uniform; the teachings are bigger than the individual; the individual attains salvation through his or her group affiliation and adherence to the code—not through their personal gifts. Saṃgha (sharing the truth) is elevated over śramana (personal revelation). The first Buddhist monks were instructed to gather rags from charnel grounds and sew them together, and then dye them uniformly into robes. This was at once an avowal of interdependence (through scavenging), a sign of renunciation and poverty, and a sacrifice of personal affect. The robes conveyed an anonymity that reflected the post-egoic yearnings of the religion.

At least for a while, and only on a small scale. To reject the clothes of your station and wear the style-less rags of the common dead is a radical, nirguṇa act. But just as the band that can never be cool again after other hipsters discover it, the more dudes who join up, the less quality-less the choice. The robe, conceived to erase all uniforms, slowly becomes a uniform itself, an expression of personal allegiance and choice. A new form of self-expression, in fact. Over time, styles of how to assemble the robes emerge. The number of patches becomes an indicator of years of seniority or a mnemonic device for now-ossifying articles of faith. As enlistments increase, new efficiencies in robe-making must emerge. Soon, each monastery has a tailor, and robe-fashion begins to take on adornments of position and status. As qualities creep in, the philosophical emphasis upon no-qualities rings hollow, priming the next generation of those who will say “Nope. This isn’t it,” or, more angrily: “Enough.”

And so the oscillation tilts. Nirguṇa needs saguṇa to enjoy the surprise of its emptiness. Saguṇa needs nirguṇa to give the senses a break. Nirguṇa becomes saguṇa over time, and must recover itself through renewed revolt. Babs needs Sadie’s haircut to reveal the absurdity—but also the ecstasy—of style. And it could be that Sadie needs Babs to remember that for all of the roles she is playing, she is still, like all of us, nobody.

There’s an additional complication that I’m sure Aghori’s inner anarchist is aware of: that nirguṇa mood and diction can have a reactionary affect. As Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad point out abundantly in The Guru Papers, the language of nirguṇa metaphysics—as we hear it ring through both ancient and modern non-dualism—can be used by an authoritarian culture (or even a lone-wolf blogger) to chill the dialogue of learning. It is just too easy for sentiments like “God cannot be understood,” “if you haven’t had the experience, stop talking,” “the mind doesn’t have the answer,” “your reasoning can’t help you,” “practice, practice, and all is coming,” or even “yoga has nothing to do with self-expression,” to be used to suppress the very kind of questioning that is Babs’ food as critics. Such claims of ultimacy are too easily interpreted according to their presumed factual rather than performative value. But Aghori’s curation brings primarily performative value to the table. He farts on the cocktail wieners and tinkles in the punch bowl. He inverts and subverts, but breaks no news. He provides rhetorical disruption, which is its own form of wisdom that plays with the ways in which we make meaning, but cannot itself establish facts. And how in the end could we glean facticity from a writer who is himself fictitious?

Which brings me to the nirguṇa/saguṇa paradox of Aghori’s anonymity, and that of his cohorts. Writing under a pen-name is at once an act of self-erasure, and self-and-other construction. Because he is a blank, a cipher, he can take on any excess of personality he pleases. Aghori is no-one, but potentially everyone, a bald monk with a closet of zoot suits, skinny jeans, Banksy hoodies and rainbow wigs. He’s free to pluralize himself with other anonymous collaborators, which further obscure his individuality while showcasing his internal archetypes. Like some fabulous yidam, his content might cry out for a quieter union, but his form splashes pluralism loud and proud.

Some months ago I messaged Aghori to say I wanted to mail him a copy of my book for entertainment, and maybe to review if he felt so moved. He wrote back and said he had no mailing address. I asked if he had a work address or the address of a friend who might receive the book for him. No, and nope—maybe later. I was briefly concerned he might be homeless, and had an awkward fantasy about sending him money. But then came daily Babarazzi posts at 5am EST for three weeks straight, tightly-written, well-designed, and smartly-managed as the comments flowed in. So I was satisfied he had a roof, high-speed, and was eating protein. But I felt something else while reading the posts compulsively in the pre-dawn: here was the part of me who is anonymous and anarchic. Here was the part of me that after fifteen years of meditation still closes his eyes to see absurdities. Here was the part of me who could be anyone with any thought at all, who could awaken into the world every day with my dream-language unbroken.

In Indian horary astrology, the two-odd hours before dawn is called brahma muhurta: the “hour of expansion” (according to my post-religious translation). It is said to be the most auspicious and efficient time for practice. Perhaps Aghori edits at night, and simply cues WordPress to publish before dawn, so that the post shows up at the top of his readers’ inboxes. But he must know that it is the time of sādhana, and that for his readers who are less-than-completely disciplined with their devices, his absurdist sermons will interrupt and then inform their practice. I’m willing to bet that for Aghori, critique is itself a sādhana, in which he erases and rebuilds both self and other, and one he wishes to interject into the strange, anonymous saṃgha we belong to, by chance or by choice.

But as the morning gathers, the saguṇa thickens, along with its discontents.  One recent mid-morning Aghori posted a lonely request on his timeline: “Friends: give me something to write about.” Part of me felt like he was asking what we ask of each other, and of yoga, constantly: “Who should I be today?”

I answer: write about the anxiety of this threshold between being something and being nothing. Write about the pain of having to be so smart, every single day, and smarter still, as our complexity rises. Write about how the world rushes into the heart until it is too full, and we want to fall blank and silent. Write about the terrible guilt of the critic. Write about how not self-expressing is simply the expression of a quieter self. Write about how it is just as harrowing to share something through the mirage of selfhood as it is to try to disappear. Write about how self-expression is itself erasure, being a palimpsest upon previous selves. Write what you would write if you could never be anonymous again. Write about the impossible ideal of your pseudonym, Aghori, which means “without fear.”

Photos: Sastra; Aghori Baba; Sadhu; Banyan Yogis; Sleeping Sadhu 

Growing up, Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Magic Johnson were the reasons I became the basketball fanatic I was and remain today. I spent countless hours shooting at my driveway hoop to perfect my sky hook. (Ok, perfecting is not the word I’d use.) In fact, while it’s weird that a Jersey boy grew up a Lakers fan, I attribute that to these two men. That said, these 20 Life Lessons from Kareem are brilliant, especially #19:

19. Do more yoga. Yes, K, I know you do yoga already. That’s why you’ve been able to play so long without major injuries. But doing more isn’t just for the physical benefits, it’s for the mental benefits that will come in handy in the years ahead, when your house burns down, your jazz collection perishes, and you lose to the Pistons in a four-game sweep in your final season.

My other favorite? #11: Cook More. Best line of his advice, in regards to cooking for a woman on a first date:

Some women get a little freaked seeing a 7’2” black man with a carving knife and butcher’s apron, but she appreciated the effort.

There is a recent fashion of labeling people who point out the link between radical Islam and terrorism as being “Islamophobes” or simply racist. Sam Harris in particular has fallen prey to this kind of criticism.

This is well-meaning but incorrect. It is based on a confusion that happens a lot in our liberal demographic: equating the critique of ideas and beliefs with the oppression of, or prejudice against, races and cultures.

But these are two very different things. We would not be oppressing Republicans or Americans were we to point out that certain Neoconservative beliefs underlie the Bush doctrine and the invasions and subsequent loss of life in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are not oppressing Catholics when we expose the atrocious history of covering up pedophile preist behavior and consider the underlying problems of clerical chastity and religious dualism around the body and sex.  All ideas and beliefs should be up for critique, and their real world consequences should not be compartmentalized in the name of multiculturalism or misguided tolerance.

Contrary to the ironically trivializing relativist notion that beliefs are of no consequence, they indeed are the driver of our feelings, choices and behavior.

In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, last week’s “Real Time” with Bill Maher  featured Center for Study of Hate and Extremism director Brian Levin, who invoked the specter of Islamophobia. Maher was very direct on his response: “Have you seen the broadway show, The Book of Mormon?” He asked, “Can you imagine if they did The Book of Islam?”

Levin then tried to then assert, quite correctly, that at other times in history Christianity was the most dangerous and violent faith. Bill Maher of course agreed with this red herring and then said, “but we are not in history, we are in 2013.”

Levin continues with another obviously true assertion, namely that there are so many millions of Muslims and a tiny percentage commit acts of violence. Again, no argument! The vast majority of Muslims are peaceful.

But let’s get this straight: pointing out the fact of a direct link between the actual texts, beliefs and values of a particular religion with violence and terror committed by people who espouse, are inspired by and act in the name of that religion is not prejudicial, racist or oppressive.

It would be prejudicial to say all Muslims are terrorists. Disgusting.

It would be racist to say that all Middle Easterners are just murderous fundamentalist zealots. Unfair.

It would be oppressive to say that all Muslims in the USA should be rounded up and kept under armed guard. Horrific.

But it is quite misguided to ignore the fact that the very people committing a specific kind of terrorist act have already themselves boldly and loudly repeatedly asserted the belief system that underlies their actions.

There is only one religious affiliation on the planet right now that combines the endorsement of genocide toward a particular group (Jews), the desire to establish theocratic rule over the entire planet, the notion of suicidal martyrs gaining a place in heaven for themselves and their families, the execution of anyone who satirizes or publicly criticizes their fundamentalist beliefs, the oppression of women and homosexuals, and an openly stated hatred violent intent towards those who do not share their religious faith.

This does not mean no other religion has any problems (see the Catholic Church) this does not mean no Western powers commit atrocities (the USA is a major long term offender) nor does it mean that all Muslims should be painted with the same brush (most are sincerely peaceful people) —but it does mean that those who are most faithful to the most tribally backward, superstitious, murderous tenets of Islam are playing a particular role on the world stage right now.

Do other religions have similar tenets? Certainly. Old world religion is a storage locker of crazy beliefs, prophecies, supernatural edicts, and justifications for retributive violence, its just that in the West something very particular happened about 300 years ago that began the arc toward the kinds of genuine democratic freedoms which even make it possible for us to be so concerned that we might be oppressing nice people of other faiths and cultures!

The 18th century Enlightenment began a journey toward separation of church and state, an imperfectly enacted but undeniable movement toward equality and freedom for all, the end of monarchical power, and most importantly, the constraining of the most intense, delusional and obsessive aspects of religiosity from impacting public and private life the way the crusades and the inquisitions had done in the past.

This particular historical advance did not happen in the Middle East.  A little time on Google can provide a grasp on what life was like in on pre-enlightenment Europe, the Inquisitions etc and provide a sense of what life is still like in several Middle Eastern countries —one need only add the unique twists on martyrdom, establishing a caliphate and the killing of apostates to get a more complete sense of the problem.

Still unsure? Find out more about Theo Van Gogh, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Salman Rushdie. Read up a little on the what happend with the Danish publishing of cartoons about Mohammed.

Fellow liberals, don’t mistake critiquing of bad ideas and dangerous beliefs and the actions they inspire with oppressing or enacting prejudice against a culture or ethnic group. Don’t let the valid fear of ever being a prejudiced, oppressive racist, become itself a way of distorting reality.

To not be prejudiced, form your opinions based on facts, evidence and reasoned analysis. To not be oppressive, be an equal opportunity critic of all ideas and beliefs based on their merits and consequences.

I have no idea if Louis C.K. does yoga. And I don’t particularly care. I file the weird proliferation of yoga studio celebrity sightings into the same bin as anything found on any gossip blog—I pay it no mind. The fact that Lady Gaga walks into a hot yoga studio or whatever new alternative singer has a hot yoga body does not change my practice one bit, nor should anyone really care if someone famous does a few asanas a few times a week.

What really interests me is the meeting point where philosophy intersects culture in unexpected ways. When Thom Yorke discussed yoga and meditation with Alec Baldwin, I wrote about it because what he said was insightful. There was a benefit to the actual content, not the fact that Thom stands on his head before he performs.

With that in mind, the below clip, which ended comedian Louis C.K.’s HBO special ‘Oh My God,’ while hilariously funny (and worth watching on those merits alone), points to the deep rift we humans suffer on a daily basis: the distance between what we think and how we, at least sometimes, act. Or, at the very least, the conflicting chorus of voices that consistently ring out in our heads, oftentimes at the most inopportune moments—what he refers to as ‘Of Course’ and ‘But Maybe.’

While the latter is nearly impossible to resist—we can reorient and strengthen our neural wiring to change thinking patterns, though given that we don’t even know how thoughts emerge or where they come ‘from,’ the task is daunting—one of the main tools offered by the yoga and meditation disciplines is aligning your thoughts and actions so that they’re on the same page. That is, verifying the ‘Of Course’ and quieting the ‘But Maybe.’

Then again, sometimes ‘But Maybe’ gives us insight into realms previously unimagined. That’s important too. As recently reported in the NY Times, the human imagination is part of what helped us prosper as a species, and that involves looking at things from a number of angles. It also softens the stringent blows of certainty, an important component of staying open-minded. So maybe Louis is more a yogi than we expected…and unquestionably one of the funniest men on the comedy circuit today.

I’ve long had a love-mostly dislike relationship with Vice. I’d see the mag around NYC for years and pay it little mind. While I don’t mind sarcasm—I consider it high art, in fact—the snark that has replaced much of journalism in the form of blog posts and scrimpy articles annoys me. While much of Vice’s site and magazine remains full of such trifling writing, there also exists a lot of incredible reporting. Specifically, showing you things other outlets won’t.

Last week I read this piece in the New Yorker on Vice’s rise. I agree that the Rodman/North Korea stunt was nonsense, but also appreciated Vice CEO Shane Smith’s reasoning for meeting up with Kim Jong-un at his residence and the basketball game between North Korea and the Harlem Globetrotters.

“Look, the fact that he came is a big deal. The fact that we’re the only people to meet him is a big deal. The fact that we went to his house was a really big deal.” He went on, “Is it journalism? It depends on what the definition of journalism is.”

The deal was sealed after watching the first episode of Vice on HBO, which is produced by Bill Maher and Fareed Zakaria. (You can watch the full episode below.) I’ve never watched the two stories—political assassinations in the Philippines and child suicide bombing—in such graphic detail. You will see severed hands and decapitated heads, piles of children lying bloody moments after a bombing, parents screaming in a frenzy trying to locate their son or daughter.

You’ll also learn about how over a thousand politicians have been murdered in the Philippines in the last decade, predominantly between warring political parties. You’ll hear personal stories from children who were told by Muslim elders that vest bombs would only explode outwards, not back at them, so they would be safe. Others were informed that the vest contained secret documents, until, of course, it was remotely detonated.

The footage will make you uneasy. But it’s also real. This is what actually happens in our world. As Smith says in the New Yorker article, he doesn’t care if you love them or hate them. He just doesn’t want indifference. So while I am indifferent to the hipster cynicism passing off as writing, I am fully appreciative of this new show and the places the staff travels in order to talk to people most media ignore. Suddenly, through this lens, some of the people we in America immediately write off seem a lot more like what we all are: human.

As a huge Radiohead fan for over two decades, it made me happy to hear singer Thom Yorke mention yoga in an interview with Alec Baldwin on Alec’s exceptional WNYC podcast, Here’s The Thing. I don’t know if Thom practices yoga, outside of admitting that he stands on his head before going on stage, nor am I advocating that another ‘celebrity’ is talking about yoga. It’s what he actually said that inspired this post.

In the interview, Alec keeps mentioning that Radiohead’s music has a ‘spiritual quality.’ While Thom agreed, he reiterated that it has nothing to do with the musicians per se, but the relationship between the band and the crowd that causes the euphoric lift that some would describe as ‘transcendent.’ While discussing his take on singing, he references the ajna chakra, or pineal gland, as the region to focus on while performing.

They say in yoga and stuff, whatever it is, I can’t remember, that spot at the top of your forehead. Most singers, like Neil Young used to say, he sings into that spot in his head. What he’s singing, he’s already heard the song, and he’s hearing it come out. The same with Bjork when she’s singing—she’s singing what she’s hearing. There’s no force; it’s a force in itself. It took me a while to get that.

Thom invoked another yogic concept in terms of in his approach to music as a spiritual endeavor. For anyone who thinks that spirituality is an intentional, forced attribute of the human experience, Thom’s take on the instantaneous rapture of the moment is much more in line with what I’ve experienced in the ritual of the arts—or, as he puts it, ‘when the waves fall into place.’

Singing is nothing but, probably like acting, being in the moment. That’s it…You just gotta learn to be  there with it when you do it. You’re not trying to prove anything, you’re not trying to get anywhere, you’re not trying to achieve anything, you’re not trying to get this emotion across, you’re not in this space trying to get this space across, you’re not trying to get this mindset across, or anything. You’re just letting it happen.

Lastly, I really enjoyed the story of how the band formed. Thom was brought up with no musical training—his family had no sound system in their house. He had to go out to his father’s car to listen to cassettes of Brian May, which inspired him to become a musician. He fell in love with the guitar at seven, and when hearing that Brian built his first guitar, tried his own luck at being a luthier at 10. By age 16, when Radiohead formed, Thom’s process of picking bandmates at his school—all of whom, 28 years later, are all still in the band—is quite amazing.

I got Ed because he dressed like Morrissey. He had some cool socks and I saw he had a guitar, though I had no idea if he could play or not, and I didn’t really care. I got Colin because I knew Colin could play very well and I needed a bass player that could play very well, though he had never played bass before. And his brother Johnny was this mythical, musical prodigy, so I roped him in. And then Phil was the only drummer we knew anyway. And he had a house down the road we could rehearse in.

And girls, Thom added. They would come around during rehearsals. Thus the deal was sealed.

I have been overwhelmed by the politics surrounding gender issues in the United States in the last week. Not only are we fighting for marriage equality but, in a related way, we are fighting for women to be seen in a more complete and accurate fashion. Mayhem broke out when Victoria’s Secret CFO Stuart Burgdoerfer claimed that girls as young as 15 want to be like older girls who, in the case of VS product, might wear underwear that has “Call Me” on the crotch. A quick look on the Victoria’s Secret FB page—not sure if they’ve removed the comments of outrage since then—show how many parents were upset that VS appeared to be sexualizing young teens.

A couple of days later and there are more articles trying to quell the anger and express a different kind of outrage, this time toward parents who were supposedly making much ado about nothing. Turns out the line “Bright Young Things,” which takes its cue from the fine apparel found on the former boardwalk of the Jersey Shore, was designed for college-aged girls. Amanda Marcotte thinks that anyone who was outraged at the issue to begin with is “righteous” and needs to give “teenagers a little freedom to do the growing up that they need to do.”  It’s okay. Nothing to worry about. It’s older women who will be wearing “Feeling Lucky?” on their asses instead.

Such activity does has a strong tradition in our country, especially during spring break which, not surprisingly, is when all of this hubbaloo has taken place. Perhaps getting upset at VS was wrong, or perhaps was the reason behind our anger. Why are we upset at a company for marketing to kids, when our kids are already fully aware of what that company sells and have already been sold because every woman they know uses the product?

When Burgdoerfer claimed that 15-year-old girls will copy older siblings (or even older mothers), he wasn’t wrong. That’s Advertising 101. Perhaps we were only upset by the message because, for once, we could not sit in denial and pretend to be unaware of the reality of our daughters or younger siblings, nieces, students, or friends: advertising, song lyrics, and films are constantly encouraging them to put a suggestive message on their vaginas, one that will remain long after the cheap underwear falls apart.

From the film “Spring Breakers.”

From Victoria’s Secret’s PINK line, which will carry the “Bright Young Things” segment.

There is not much difference between the colors, focus, or spirit of the photos; that is no coincidence. Moms were outraged by the suggestive wording of “Call Me” or “Feeling Lucky?” but the supposedly benign PINK line they are familiar with, which many of them might wear themselves, still encourages people to READ YOUR ASS.

The end result of this two-pronged advertising campaign, which is actually losing revenue by as much as 15%, entails the same message: have decadent, brainless fun that ends up in meaningless sex. In reality, some students on spring break want to do more meaningful things. In Indiana, for example, college students helped those less fortunate. The underlying meaning behind the ad blitz is that young women who actually want to use their time for something worthwhile should think otherwise.

Weren’t we already upset when VS started taking up prime time television space to air an even dumber version of the Miss Universe Pageant, where the women don’t even get to talk? Tragically, inane interviews support these messages. For example, Selena Gomez, one of the actors in Spring Breakers, recently reminisced that her father would take her to Hooters when she was in pigtails and spend half the time with her and half the time with all the cute waitresses that came over. I’d like to thank my father right now for not ever screwing me up like that.

Vanessa Hudgens takes it a step further by creating culture that links with the overall message to young women that they need not think much and should just use their bodies—or let their bodies be used. “Stop being so clever/You could do much better/You will be alone tonight,” implies that using your brains will result in blue balls in her new song, which features Spring Breakers clips. She believes it to be a ”good date night song.” I suppose that’s true, if ear hemorrhaging over dinner is your bag.

Ford Motors doesn’t want to knock S&M lovers, either, as long as those tied up are women. Recently, some ads that had yet to go through the approval stage were leaked; Ford apologized. This video describes the ads as “racy,” never mentioning “misogynist” or even “sexist.” In other words, the issue isn’t that the ad depicts three women who are crying and bound and gagged in a trunk, driven by a former Prime Minister. The issue is that some might find the ad too “sexy.”

I never knew that kidnapping and torture were sexy.  I certainly understand that some people like this or that, but the ad does not depict women who are approving of S&M in any way. They look like they’re being driven to warehouse in the middle of nowhere by a creepy murderer. Not funny, not sexy, not racy.

Similarly, the way we have shaped the language around VS behavior is wrong. It is not that all of a sudden they endangered our young women. The real issue is that they have always promoted sex in an extremely passive, male-oriented way to all women. There is absolutely nothing feminist about the VS woman; I don’t care how much money the models make. Should Gloria Steinem have remained a Playboy Bunny? Perhaps some men might have preferred her that way.

We know that if a VS catalog comes to the house and we have a partner at home, he/she might take a gander.  We’re all human.That is what keeps us buying sweatshop-made underwear. We want to be attractive, correct? I decided a long time ago that I had to be attractive in my own way. I’m not a superhuman that hasn’t succumbed to the pressures of everything I have outlined here —advertising, music and film—but I try on a regular basis to create my own idea of what attractiveness entails.

In high school, a former friend of mine asked me why I “didn’t dress sexy.” While my first thought was, “You are such an idiot,” I replied, “I do dress in my own attractive way.” He wanted me to conform to some fantasy that is just so narrow-minded and overused and boring. Why not grow the dendrites and create some new imagery, for heaven’s sake? But no, as if to underscore the imagery that VS and films like Spring Breakers promote, the lyrics of our young men, within the appropriated hip hop industry, are so crude, plain, dull and lifeless, they seal the box of that brain-deadening fantasy my high school acquaintance was so desperately trapped in. Find some of the recent male-written lyrics and images created by people who have big, cold, empty holes in the center of their chests where their souls should reside, here and here and here.

My husband Vincent and I heard the lyrics of “God Damn,” found through the last link, when we recently sat next to a young man in the train station. We laughed at the inane lyrics and tried to mock them when we were far away from the fan, but as a woman, I wonder what will happen to such a man who listens to such alienating lyrics. Will he feel like it’s okay to pull a Steubenville on someone? What will happen to women who buy underwear not for their own pleasure (or, God-forbid, necessity), but because they know they better be sexy for someone else, because if they aren’t, how could they possibly have a good life?

Will women who have this message ingrained in their psyche ever allow other possibilities to take hold, other options, other much more exciting adventures other than a spring break filled with alcohol poisoning and shallow “friendships” in the name of supposed freedom?

The Vanessa Hudgens video starts out with a clip of Selena Gomez’s character saying, “This is our chance to see something different.”  I wish that it were.  There is nothing different about spring break or the messages in the media highlighted here.

Something different is a grandfather who sees his granny wife walking in the snow and looks at her with shining eyes because she has given him a lifetime of amazing memories—something I’ve seen my father do over and over and over.

Something different is my dear friend Mario and his partner Bob, who have been together my entire lifetime and who I admire for their wit and grace. Something different is male and female friends creating arts organizations, or helping Sandy victims, or staging plays or writing songs about the Katrina tragedy, or just talking for hours, sharing their lives, no dating drama to be found because it’s all about the friendship.

Something different is having a husband who will move across state lines in order for his wife to obtain the highest degree possible, no complaints, only support, which is what Vincent did for me—and which I have had the honor to do for him, as well.

I guess it seems like what I’m writing about isn’t different because it is so common in my life, but I assure you, it is different. I’ve worked extremely hard to surround myself with innovative people, with people who have vision and ambition, with people who can see and create a better world. And that is different.  That is the most radical thing anyone can ever do, and it is the only thing that saves a life bombarded by the common mediocrity of sexism and gender bias.

Julian Walker recently argued that “moral questions have to do with human well-being, and human well-being is something that we can look at through the lens of science.” I agree with his assertion that the scientific method can help us explore answers to moral and ethical questions, but I would argue science cannot lead us to a set of objective ethical values. By extension, I think it’s wise to unpack the practical limitations of scientific technologies and methodologies, and more importantly to explore moral questions that cannot yet be ascertained through the purview of science using logic, rationality, and empathic understanding.

Sam Harris, whose recent book The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values inspired our lively conversation at a YogaBrains meeting Tuesday night, asserts that science can not only inform moral decisions, but that the scientific method can be used to determine moral value. Moral values, according to his definition, are “the set of attitudes, choices, and behaviors that potentially affect our well-being.” After working in a Psychoneuroimmunology lab for nearly four years, I question whether science, in practice, can provide enough information about what promotes well-being to sufficiently ground a set of objective moral values.

If we are to use the scientific method to explore the question of what promotes well-being and flourishing, we must first agree on an operational definition of those concepts. In my experience (and I think both Harris and Walker would agree with me), well-being and flourishing are complex and convoluted concepts to study in science: they refer not only to what promotes health/happiness/cooperation for an individual and society in the short term, but also to the long-term consequences of a given behavior. An accurate definition of well-being should take into account social, political, and economic consequences, plus how such consequences might affect other conscious beings, both now and hundreds of years in the future.

I realize that Harris and Walker are not making the claim that science has all the answers to questions of what is moral and immoral right now. But as I understand it, they are asserting that, given enough time and information, the scientific method will eventually provide us with an objective set of moral values. The problem with that argument, as I see it, is that the scientific study of well-being itself requires a quantifiable definition of well being. But how we quantify well-being is to some extent subjective, reflecting the values/biases of the researcher (as well as his/her culture), and often changes over time. Is well-being individual happiness? Length of life? Rate of violence in a society? Is it all these things, and if so what if they conflict with one another? How do we decide how much weight to assign the many components of well-being, and on what basis do we make the decision…. if not on what we value, which is subjective?

Imagine we want to know whether driving a car promotes well-being. A researcher does an experiment and finds that people who drive cars everyday have lower cortisol levels and higher quality of life, as measured by self-report (both frequently used measures of “well-being” in psychology research). The researcher concludes driving promotes well-being.

The next month, a scientist in a neighboring lab (who just so happens to hate driving) does a similar study using different measures of well-being and finds that people who drive cars everyday are more likely to be overweight, become violent when provoked, and die an early death than their non-driving counterparts. That researcher concludes that driving does not in fact promote well-being.

Ten months later, another scientist looks at the economic impact of people driving cars everyday and finds that the car industry provides employment opportunities for unskilled workers and increases cooperative trade opportunities with neighboring countries. She/he concludes that despite the negative health consequences, frequent driving does promote well-being for society in the long term.

Then, ten years later, another researcher does an experiment and finds that people who drive cars everyday are pumping a dangerous gas into the atmosphere that is causing catastrophic weather events. By that time, hundreds of people are dying in floods and super-tornadoes, and within another five years humans are wiped off the face of the planet!

Okay, I got a little carried away. But hopefully you see my point? Scientists can only measure well-being and flourishing using our present technologies and tools (which have their limitations), and all scientists must choose a measure based on what they subjectively deem important. Moreover, our measure of well-being will be limited by its point of assessment — even longitudinal studies will only measure the effect of a given variable over 5, 10, or however many years. Basically, we measure “well-being” using approximate measures that only provide insight into brief snapshots of time.

I am by no means suggesting that just because the study of well-being isn’t seamless we should stop studying it altogether or that science has nothing to add to our consideration of moral questions. Quite the contrary, I do think science should inform our debates about morality, and I think empirical evidence should be the most important (if not the only) determinant of public policy. But in terms of defining a set of moral values, I think the scientific method will forever leave us with insufficient evidence and an illusion of certainty about the “rightness” or “wrongness” of a given behavior where in fact there is none.

Life is a temporal process, and no matter how thoughtful our attempt to consider all the different possible outcomes of a given behavior, human beings have proven over and over again that we miss things (if you don’t believe me, watch this), even when we’re using the scientific method. I think we are much better served by acknowledging the limitations of our methodologies, which leave us with insufficient information to determine an objective set “moral values.” It is only with an honest and realistic approach to how science can inform our understanding of morality that we will have access to the open-mindedness and mental flexibility needed to contemplate alternative ideas and make new discoveries in the study of well-being and flourishing.

So how, you might ask, are we to determine moral values if not by the process of science? Shall we leave that sector of philosophical questioning to religion, intuition, our evolutionarily-endowed emotional responses to the hard questions in life? I would argue that part of the process involves a philosophical discussion about what we value, using justification that includes not only the scientific method, but also rationality, logic, and yes… sometimes our own subjective empathic feelings. When no other evidence exists, our gut feelings provide tentative ideas that can later be submitted to empirical testing. When testing isn’t possible (e.g. with the question of whether killing Osama Bin Ladin was “right” or “wrong”), I think we have to acknowledge the fact that any absolute stance on the “rightness” or “wrongness” of a given decision is to some extent a personal judgment, not a statement of fact. Any conclusion we make about what is morally right or wrong will always be relative to the questions we’re asking.

Does this mean that I think that morality doesn’t exist, or that no one can ever say what’s right or wrong because everything is relative? Of course not. We live in a world where we often have to make policy decisions before we have sufficient evidence, which is why I find it important to distinguish between moral questions and policy questions. We don’t presently have enough evidence to determine whether owning guns causes more violence in a given society, but policy-makers have to vote on legislation nonetheless.

In addition to acknowledging the relativity of morality, I would also suggest that any useful definition of morality should exist on a spectrum, reflecting what empirical evidence suggests about well-being so far. More importantly, recognizing the complexity of moral questions should encourage us to consider how we resolve moral questions that cannot, at this point, be calibrated accurately using the tools we have today. When it’s not clear how something will impact well-being, on what basis do we make our moral judgments? How do we resolve conflicts between equality and freedom, love and health, or other decisions that appear incommensurable with current scientific tools? What do we do when the scientific jury on what promotes well-being is still out?

To provide a real world example, one morally-fuzzy question that frequently comes up in the work I do is whether therapists should offer palliative care to individuals with treatment-resistant anorexia. In a recent article in the International Journal of Eating Disorders, Michael Strober argued that in some cases psychologists should “concede to the reality that there may be little to do to alter the course of a patient’s [eating disorder].” Essentially, he suggests that therapists should support chronically treatment-resistant anorexics in making their starvation-induced suicide as comfortable as possible, rather than trying to “fix” or “change” their illness — which is unlikely to work and will only cause the last months of their life to be wrought with suffering.

What is the morally “right” thing to do under such circumstances? Who gets to decide what well-being looks like for an otherwise mentally-sound individual who claims that death is preferable to the suffering they endure being alive? Such questions of well-being are difficult (though perhaps not impossible) to answer using scientific methodologies. Similar questions come up with the care of patients in persistent vegetative states and in debates about medically-assisted suicide.

Finally, and this is a bit of an aside, I want to point out that many of our moral questions will need to be rewritten as scientific questions in order to be examined empirically. Scientific questions must be testable — that is, they must be stated in the form of a hypothesis that can be supported or refuted by way of experiment. Many of the questions we ask in moral and ethical debates (e.g. “Is female genital mutilation wrong?”) aren’t merely asking if something will promote the well-being of a person or society in a given moment of time, but whether they are right or wrong in an ultimate sense. I don’t think science (and especially not religion) can answer that question, but I do think it can provide insight into how we make our personal judgments and policy decisions.

It is not uncommon for nouns to become adjectives. What begins as a solid and fixed identity often, over time, gets applied more broadly. One only needs to look at the history of music to understand this: jazz very quickly became ‘jazzy,’ while hip-hop, the rhythmically poetic son of spoken word and reggae, is now infused in just about every genre imaginable.

Maybe yoga was always an adjective. The discipline’s origins are murky; it is generally agreed that the yoga that ended up influencing us today involved a diverse confluence. While jnana and bhakti can work harmoniously, they are distinct paths with, at times, little overlap. Even their ‘goals’ differ: one, complete self-absorption as a form of self-recognition; the other, absorption into some facet of divinity.

So it should not surprise us that yoga has become an adjective. I resisted this reality for some time—I had hoped there was one clear path amidst the thorns and desert cascades to tread. And, of course, I had hoped I was treading that particular one.

For a while this seemed like safe, understandable territory. There’s Ashtanga, which I loved, yet could never master due to knee and hip injuries; Iyengar, great for alignment principles but, to me, not enough of a workout; Vinyasa, what I have ultimately dedicated myself to due to the range of possibilities in movement and sequencing. This is a very short start to a large folder of styles.

It all unraveled from there. There’s yoga and wine, sometimes chocolate; yoga with weights; yoga retreat centers in underdeveloped nations; yoga with pilates, and probably with lattes too; karaoke yoga; even Christian yoga (and Christians attacking yoga).

Then there’s yoga teacher training programs that last under two weeks, which boggles the mind for its lack of responsibility. Yoga is definitely an adjective in such cases.

A common thread between all these adjectives has long been Yoga Sutra 1.2: yogas-citta-vritti-nirodah, or ‘Yoga is the restriction of the fluctuations of consciousness.’ To find a state of equilibrium where your brain is not churning out a million thoughts a minute—a nice place to be. Even better: To focus on exactly what you are doing at any given moment…a true challenge in the age of multitasking.

Yet is there a place that can be too quiet? Turns out there is. Fluctuations are a necessary part of existence. We’d might like it otherwise, at least theoretically, but it is a fluctuating world that spawned us and all other life. We might imagine our species as a tranquil stream, though a lot of cosmetic uplift went into carving those caverns for the water to trickle down. We can embrace our diversity if we know how to channel each element.

Perhaps it is space yoga helps with most: between our muscles and bones, shoulders and neck, between breaths and even thoughts. Yoga is designed for these in-between spaces. If the practice can be consumed in a variety of ways and yet still maintain its ability to offer sukha, ‘ease,’ then perhaps, as they say in Buddhism, it doesn’t really matter what vehicle you arrive in.

Adjectives seem a better fit for yoga anyway. Nouns tend to become quickly fixed, and fixated. For a discipline that prides itself on transience, best to dress it in the most appropriate language. Everyone will try to carve their own noun into the tree of yoga anyway, blind to the bark shavings lying on the ground. Humans have been declaring territory for as long as there’s been breath to breathe.

I recently met a woman whose uncle is convinced that the only ‘true’ yoga was taught in Russia in the 1960’s, and will argue that point with anyone who challenges him. If only I could be so strong-headed! And yet, so inflexible all the same.

This year marks twenty since I was first introduced to the source texts of yoga and fell in love with the anthropomorphized animal deities and blue-skinned warriors of those epic mythologies, along with the body-denying philosophies that seemed so appealing to a young man living away from home for the first time.

Every year since I’ve searched for that elusive noun that would define who I am and why I practice, instead of enjoying the wild variety of adjectives that color the discipline. There’s something inherently disappointing about finding only one crayon left in your box—you paint a very lonely and flat picture of existence.

Images: Banyans Yogis; Gyan