19 Jul 2008 @ 10:59, by Erle Frayne Argonza
Among all thought modalities coming from the East that are most valuable for bringing human awareness to its next level—under the rubric of Asian Renaissance— yoga meditation stands out as the most potent. Having studied and practiced this Asiatic science for almost three (3) decades, I can testify to its efficacy for effecting quantum leap in awareness and intelligence.
Following from the foregoing declaration, I would posit that yoga meditation, or simply meditation, would serve very well the ‘peace project’. The task of building peace is a grand and complex effort as it operates on three (3) levels: (a) inner peace (intrasubjective), (b) outer peace (objective world), and (c) ‘interpersonal’ peace (intersubjective).
Erle Frayne Argonza
Among all thought modalities coming from the East that are most valuable for bringing human awareness to its next level—under the rubric of Asian Renaissance— yoga meditation stands out as the most potent. Having studied and practiced this Asiatic science for almost three (3) decades, I can testify to its efficacy for effecting quantum leap in awareness and intelligence.
Following from the foregoing declaration, I would posit that yoga meditation, or simply meditation, would serve very well the ‘peace project’. The task of building peace is a grand and complex effort as it operates on three (3) levels: (a) inner peace (intrasubjective), (b) outer peace (objective world), and (c) ‘interpersonal’ peace (intersubjective).
Any peace program from whatever quarter that would be so over-focused on outer peace would be astigmatic and malnourished in content. Unless that, perforce, constraints to a program would only allow delimitations manifesting as a focus on the ‘outer peace’ facet of the project, the same program would be deluding itself as the most efficacious, grand, and complete.
If one were located today in the West, and by ‘location’ I just don’t mean geographic but weltanschauung-wise, the entry point to understanding meditation would be Hegel and Kant. One could always go back to thinkers of earlier epochs, but as a matter of consideration for cognitive constraints, I would recommend the backtracking to Hegel and Kant.
From both thinkers one would notice the possibility of becoming an ‘object to oneself’, this being an essential human element. In any effort aimed at reflecting on the human condition and self-knowledge, one begins with the introspective task , and must necessarily employ methods aimed at drawing attention to oneself, regarding the self as ‘object’. As the process deepens, one can possibly find the recondite and perplexing bridge between unknowable and the knowable (a synthesis of the Hegelian and Kantian presuppositions) and derive truths of a higher order. One had undertaken synthesis, after which the next problematic will present itself demanding its solution.
The same Western-located knower cum practitioner can then move on to examining Heidegger and Husserl, and discover anew (from a Western vantage point) how one can move from the ‘surface structure’ to the deeper level of reality. The possibility of a presuppositionless modality becomes the opportunity of the moment, through a ‘bracketing’ of presuppositions, this then leading the knower-practitioner to the deeper level. That would somehow put greater methodological viability on the effort of making one an ‘object to oneself’ and, hopefully, bridging the unknowable and knowable in a higher order of things, churning out more recondite truths beyond doubt.
That, Partners in peace and development, is the very dead end of Western thought constructs. Dead end, because the same thinkers, no matter how ingenious they may be, failed to present exact and practicable methods that could allow such tasks to be solved. Incidentally, certain Western thinkers themselves solved the deep gap or deficiency in Western thought, precisely by looking to the East where they discovered the science of yoga and the practice of meditation. I refer to the likes of Carl Jung, Mircea Eliade, Abraham Maslow, Walter Benjamin, and Ernst Bloch among the contemporary thinkers who attempted to provide solutions to that that deep gap.
It was precisely in consonance with the ethos of knowledge-derivation, in both theory and practice (social technology), that certain university professors, such as Filipino psychology pioneer Dr. Alfredo Lagmay, who, after realizing the deficiency of behaviorism and other Western streams to which they were overly exposed, discovered Eastern thought streams and the science of yoga. From Dr. Lagmay did I learn my first lesson in yoga meditation, right inside the university classroom, when I was a mere senior undergraduate..
Incidentally, like the noblesse gentlemen of the cloistered academe who found yoga through that route, did I discover diverse esoteric and mystical thought streams right inside the university. I was already three (3) years in my own self-discovery of esoteric-mystical-Eastern streams when Dr. Lagmay conducted a workshop in class on yoga meditation, on the essentials of meditation breathing (this is the starting lesson of any meditation practice, from Vedic to Zen). I have already devoured humungous volumes of lessons by then, including multi-dimensionality problems in calculus, quantum physics (Schroedinger-Heisenberg, Planck, Einstein) and ‘hyperspace’ problems of bridging ‘lower’ and ‘higher spaces’ (Hawkins), ensuring that I was prepared for the ultimate science of yoga.
As to how yoga dovetails into the ‘peace project’, this problematic requires conferences and tons of papers read on the subject, interspersed with workshop sessions. Yoga meditation should never be treated as a fad, by attending a workshop session as a matter of mere curiosity, and then bragging later that “I attended that workshop.”
A summary of the expectations of yoga’s relevance to the ‘peace project’ would be as follows:
• Inner Peace: Sustained practice of meditation, whether in solitary or group meditation, would help one to stabilize the emotional-social, mental, intuitive, and higher selves. Anybody who is at peace with himself/herself will always be in a better position to be at peace with others. All peace and reconciliation professionals and volunteers, for that matter, must strive to be at peace with their own respective selves first as a precondition for taking on tasks at harmonizers and peace builders. Neurotics, sociopaths, schizophrenics, and borderline personalities should in no way be permitted to lead the engagements in peace efforts, as they may prove to be burdensome to the efforts.
• Outer Peace: Building the peace condition from the community level up through national and global levels. Collective meditation efforts would be most fitting for related practices. The late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, guru and master of transcendental meditation or TM, was able to demonstrate, through the volunteers and yogis he trained, that criminality in a big city can drop by half, should a group deign to focus thematically the same aim of reducing criminality. Reducing wars, armed conflicts, and nipping global conflagrations in the bud can be done if fairly large enough numbers of participating groups and individuals would meditate on the mega-conflict themes.
• Intersubjective Peace: Perfectly done during team building sessions, with yoga and natural healing therapies integrated into the workshops. The practices, such as doing yoga breathing while standing and touching one another’s arms and/or shoulders, would instantly break interpersonal ‘electromagnetic’ (aura) barriers, interconnect everybody in the workshop group, remove energy center blockages that would precipitate ailments including sociopathic tendencies, and increase the empathic abilities of all participants. Post-worpshop participants consistently expressed the difference in their pre-workshop and post-workshop conditions, signifying a quantum leap or non-linear change.
There are more benefits to meditation practices, but for the moment I would have to conclude it here. Suffice that I was able to articulate the efficacy of this Eastern science and practice, by demonstrating how it dovetails on the ‘peace project’.
[Writ 26 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
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