What’s In A Name?

When I starting thinking about incorporating my yoga practice into this site, I asked myself is “More Sweet Than Bitter” right for a yoga practice?

Bittersweet (adjective): pleasant but including or marked by suffering.

For most of us, this is a very apropos way to describe the holistic practice of yoga. It’s work that can feel like suffering which can result in immense gratification and the most pleasurable highs. Which led to me searching for a Sanskrit equivalent…

Suḥkhayoḥ (of pleasure and pain) or Sukha-duḥkhayoḥ (in happiness and distress)

so ’py etayā caramayā manaso nivṛttyā tasmin mahimny avasitaḥ sukha-duḥkha-bāhye hetutvam apy asati kartari duḥkhayor yat svātman vidhatta upalabdha-parātma-kāṣṭhaḥ

Translation: Thus situated in the highest transcendental stage, the mind ceases from all material reaction and becomes situated in its own glory, transcendental to all material conceptions of happiness and distress. At that time the yogī realizes the truth of his relationship with the Supreme Personality of Godhead. He discovers that pleasure and pain as well as their interactions, which he attributed to his own self, are actually due to the false ego, which is a product of ignorance. (Source: prabhupadabooks.com)

I willfully admit I’m ignorant and my ego gets in the way of my practice everyday. Pain and suffering, pleasure and happiness are just are things we’ve made up in our minds and hold on to. Not to say we shouldn’t recognize them, but we shouldn’t get attached to them. This passage is a great reminder of what one should be striving for in yoga - Nirvana, to be closer to the Divine, freeing the mind in a transcendental state to be beyond the perception of distress and happiness.

No big deal, right? Maybe my consciousness will get there…one day. In the meantime, this yoga definitely is More Sweet Than Bitter. ;)