place,time & substance (yoga-5)

a sculpture of growing life

By Kulamarva Balakrishna

Vienna,Wednesday,January 9,2008:Yoga deals with
life and environment,the system was developed several
thousand years ago.When we apply the system today
we need to take into consideration place,time and the
substance,in this case life itself together.This helps in
understanding life in sum.Its relation to the environment
of the place and time.Some would substitute space to
place.Then we should be clear that place is a minute
part of the space,which covers the universe we live in.
What was valid several thousand years ago is valid
today in today´s circumstances.The old Ashoka Pillars
remain even today made of the best metal that we can
derive from the state of the art technology.The secret
is in the know how of the time.The basis of the know
how as we know today NDA or non destructive assay,
to put it in proven nuclear technological terms.That
should make us aware we are traversing to the old
know how by a different physical parallel route.

I would like to give a more recent example.In Hasana
district of Karnataka we have two great architectural
sites at Beluru and Halhebeedu.These temple sites
are our inheritance of a time almost four hundred years
after the naked 17 metre tall Jina statue of Gomateshwara
was carved on a single stone at nearby Shravana
Belagolha.The story goes the architect, mason,who
was responsible to build there was Jakkanacharya.
He was at site for years as work was on.He was missed
by his wife and son.When the son of the architect,
became a teenager he went in search of his missing
father and reached Halhebeedu,where he saw the master
guiding building work.A stone was being prepared for
use as a sculpture.The teenager immediately noticed,
the stone was unsuitable for the purpose.He told the
master that it was indeed an unsuitable defective stone.
The master was surprised to ask the young man for
reason.The boy took a palm of water to sprinkle on a
particular place on the stone.The stone absorbed the
water at once.Then the master asked to cut open the
granite block selected for the object.They discovered
a small frog inside the block.This was indeed the NDA
technique of the time.The teenager had inherited
this know how from his father very early,so his father
could then identify his growing up son.Today we have
new approaches to the non destructive assay,NDA and
a patented instrument for the purpose.

It is so in every sphere of life.We are reinventing know
how as the musician reinvents music.The past is lost
but sequentially reinvented.Coming back to yoga, it
is about the understanding environment and working
efficiently under given place and time.In simple language
Bhagavadgita described it= yogah karmasu kaushalam=.
Yoga is proficiency at work.

Now we come to substance,which is matter,the mass.
Without substance we can have no effective sensibility.
The granite is the mass base from which 17 metre stone
sculpture was unveiled!Thus when we approach yoga
we approach a guide book to Buddha hood, the path
of enlightenment,knowing ourselves from within and
outside.As the mass substance, the outside was part
of us,from where we were unveiled as growing life.
(end)