Essential Qualifications of a Student

By- Sangeeta Balasubramanian

What triggered this post is a storm brewing in the Ashtanaga Yoga community in the West and allegations of inappropriate behaviour by a teacher towards their students causing a lot of harm and sadness.

The coming to light of this incident got me thinking as to the reasons of recurrence of such incidents every now and then. It took my mind to something I had read a long time ago. Tatva Bodha is a small text attributed to Sri Adi Sankaracharya. While it packs a punch as is the nature of all texts scriptural in the Indian tradition, the part we are going to dwell upon here are the qualities and readiness of a student who is a seeker of the ‘Truth’. Now this sounds very esoteric and far removed from our daily lives, but I request the readers to bear with me here and perhaps we might find things that make sense , or at least titillate the contemplative nerve. Furthermore, Yoga after all is one of the six identified paths in the Indian philosophical system in the pursuance of Truth and a parallel can be found in the ‘Yamas’ and Niyamas’ in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.

Before we became teachers, we were students and once we took on the mantle, we became students for life…at least the good ones do! So this post might be relevant to both the teacher and the taught. According to Tatva Bodha :

The guru used to tell to a new seeker: ‘First of all, practise the four-fold sadhana of viveka, vairagya, shat-sampatti and mumukshutva; and then only, I will give you the knowledge of the subtle truths of philosophy and Vedanta.

These four qualities or pre requisites were termed as “Sadhana Chatushtaya”. Just like a farmer prepares his field before sewing the seeds, the acharyas and gurus of the past understood the enormous importance of preparing the student’s mind, body and intellect before introducing them to higher learnings. According to the gurus, unless the student’s mind was prepared and ready to receive the knowledge, they will neither be able to understand in full or retain what was being passed on. It required a certain purity of mind and subtle intellect.

Lets unpack these terms to bite sized pieces , so we have some brief insight into what was required of a student in the ancient times . Mind you, the concepts have been over simplified here. The purpose is just to grasp the underlying meaning in a way we can understand and put into practice.

Viveka pertains to the ability to discern, discriminate. In simple terms, the ability to identify the truth from the untruth, correct from the incorrect or simply being able to judge well in a given situation.

Viragya translates to dispassion. It can be described as a state of detachment from desires and worldly objects which is regarded as crucial in the path of spiritual growth. It doesn’t mean we give up the joys of life, but that we don’t get every attached to pleasure and pain .

Mumukshutva, the fourth quality is described as a keen and intense longing for emancipation or Liberation.

Shat Sampatti, the third in this list consists of six qualities of inner wealth, Shama, Dama, Uparati, Titiksha, Shraddha and Samadhana.

Shama, Dama and Uparati all deal with the dance of the mind with the senses and how one manipulates the other as we get drawn deeper and deeper into sense desires, making the mind restless and confused, losing sight of our goals and wandering away from our chosen paths.

The text advises that the seeker should exercise tri-fold withdrawal: Withdrawal of the sense from sense objects; withdrawal of the mind from the senses , and lastly, if all else fails and the sense desires have made it to the mind, then train the mind to be a witness of what’s going on rather than getting drawn into it and become engulfed in the excitement or disappointment it provides. Simplifying it even further, its telling us the direction of progress which is moving towards ‘inward looking’ and away from outward sense enjoyments.

Titiksha feels very similar to Tapas described in the Yoga philosophy. It means to hold one’s ground especially when things get uncomfortable and not to lose sight of the goal or the path we chose. It teaches one to persevere.

Shraddha loosely translated as faith is the absolute conviction towards the path and the goal with unwavering dedication .

Samadhana  pertains to achieving mental stability, one-pointedness, and composure, allowing for a consistent focus on the inner self or goal devoid of the ego.

Now that we have familiarised ourselves with the terms, what does it have to do with these unfortunate incidents in a Yoga classroom one may ask. Lets take a prism to the way we are conducting teacher trainings in the yoga space left right and centre. The primary focus in these trainings is almost always asanas and very little time or resources are attributed to these subtler albeit very important aspects of a practice and philosophy, where asanas as just about a tenth ( an eighth to the pedantic!)of this vast ocean of wisdom.

Ashtanga Vinyasa practice in particular is a very tough and transformative practice. There is a lot of movement of energy and an immense amount of churning that one undergoes in the mind and in the body. Even the non subscribers to the energy theory would have felt a small dopamine rush after a run or a good day at the gym or a calm feeling after a nice swim. So yes, energies do get manipulated and we have to equally prepare our minds just as we do our bodies to absorb these changes and keep an equanimous mind. Incidents occur when our egos get bloated with very achievement, very improvement and we transform a calm and contemplative space into an ugly and competitive one.

Certifying organisations like yoga alliance and others, albeit well intentioned have failed often to keep a check on quality control. This in a large part is also due to the fact that Yoga like many of the oriental disciplines relies on experiential learning which is hard to measure.

Meanwhile we continue to inundate the yoga space with more and more teachers, not pausing even once to reflect upon the how grounded the candidate is ; whether we are preparing them holistically to pass on a practice that has stood the test of time; Is it time that we put our energies to strengthen the traditional systems and look deeper into their system of sharing knowledge .

I am all for modernisation and accessibility to all and fairness and all of it. I myself am a beneficiary of this system. However, when it happens at the cost of diluting ancient, very well thought out and deep wisdom, and, distributing it a dime a dozen, the purpose is lost.

As long as we don’t respect and fully understand, be a stakeholder and take responsibility, as long as we pick and chose what we want to learn and teach, as long as we do not address the big hidden monsters of Ego and and Desire( and this is different to the intense longing to seek the truth), which all of us have in varying proportions, we will continue to have incidents like this unfortunately. No matter how skilled and dedicated a person is towards the practice, if the mind space has not been equally prepared and the intellect stimulated, the best of us will continue to “fall from grace’ and in some sense, we are all responsible.