What is Sattva Like? Ayurveda's Perspective 2 of 4

Transcript

when balanced Safa brings many benefits to the person remember that satva is considered to be the happy holy personality in indian philosophy saatvik people are characterized as comp contemplative and detached and that's because in indian philosophy a calm mind is a superior mind consciousness and awareness is the principal aim of indian philosophy and detachment is prized and so the suffolk duck the diet is designed to lead a person in that direction generally saatvik people try to live a virtuous life and the virtues make a person happy a sapphic person may be more empathetic or they may seek to a perspective beyond their own ego they try to see beyond their own ingo they try to see beyond their emotions at the moment they're willing to accept delayed gratification something people try to be flexible consider what others have to think and that's a great thing involved individuals satva expresses itself as clarity openness and subtleness but the people in general are open to spiritual ideas and they like to see connections between things in Pitta people satva expresses itself as knowledge and understanding right judgment in kapha dosha Safa expresses itself as forgiveness love and compassion so all those are wonderful things what about satva out of balance what happens then well the question is a bit of a contradiction in terms actually because in the our vedic texts Safa is defined as balanced satva is the natural state of the mind and so the Orthodox position is that safa is bounced so how could we ask and talk about Safa out of balance is that a contradiction well many modern practitioners you have a different interpretation of sattva rajas tamas and it's the one that we adopt in our course instead of seeing sattva Rajas and Tamas as levels of virtue we discuss them as different personality types you know there when like just like in the doshas no one dosha is better than the other it's not like we think of Vata as better than Pizza or kapha or kapha is better than pit or Vata each dosha has positive negative qualities and that's the what we that's the take that we're gonna use on sattva rajas tamas seeing them as different personalities not levels of virtue so what can we say about Safa when it goes out of balance well in excess Sanford people are stuck in their head and a little bit disconnected from their body think about the perpetual student who gets degree after degree but lacks life experience I wouldn't exactly say that the graduates every graduate student is a saatvik person I think this actually happens a lot in the realms of purity like satva people try really hard to be pure and they end up becoming disconnected from their body in that way not by studying books after book but it could go it could go in either direction I want to introduce a term called Gnosticism not the system not Gnosticism is any philosophy where awareness consciousness or enlightenment or knowledge is the supreme path to spiritual advancement so you'll recognize immediately that most of the Indian philosophies especially Buddhism yoga Sankhya philosophy have a real Gnostic tendency that they are seeking consciousness awareness and enlightenment and and specifically Gnostics will seek higher levels of consciousness you probably may have heard that term well professors most professors in academic institutions love Gnostic religions because professors love the mind and and they see enlightenment as the crown spiritual achievement instead of love well you know they're not mutually exclusive right if you are seeking enlightenment I think most people are seeking enlightenment believe that the enlightenment will help them be more loving and of course I think that love also makes a person enlightened so these are not mutually exclusive but which one is your principal focus is a great question are you seeking love or are you seeking knowledge in your life both of those are good by the way to seek knowledge and to seek love or both great virtues so but Gnostics intend tend towards the knowledge side of things they believe a specific conscious state or meditative practice will lead them to spiritual transformation all right well when that runs amok the person with excess satva can have intellectual pride they may have a holier-than-thou attitude a self-righteousness they may think of themselves as more evolved you know if you've heard people talk about though that you are used those terms but you know we should always recognize that many forms of spiritual progress and don't involve knowledge as the supreme goal you know such as working in a soup kitchen or raising a nice family or even just having intellectual humility now you need knowledge to do anything well in this world but that doesn't mean knowledge is your aim and goal some heart oriented people are very holy to here's another thing I want to mention with satva that the mind loves to boil life down to patterns and formulas and a person who's stuck in their head have a formulaic way of dealing with the world and that ends up being a little impersonal a little aloof a little detached right instead of seeing each person as a unique thing the person who's stuck in their head may just be applying a method or a formula over and over again even there are even I think many Gnostic systems will propose some kind of formula for God like an Eightfold Path or the Four Noble Truths or things along those line Ayurvedic does this Ayurvedic oils imbalances I don't think I rate it does this to excess but but but individuals can Ayurvedic boils health problems and imbalances down to a series of patterns such as guna taste and OSHA and Ayurveda says hey these patterns are really helpful when approaching a client and I couldn't agree more those patterns are helpful but we can never pretend that patterns reveal the essence or soul of the client we can't use formulas to penetrate deeply into the client's nature or even God's nature we have to remember that formulas are just a very helpful overview orientation and tool for improving health right we still need to get to know the person in a deeper way well perhaps I should have pose it as a question what about you where do you what do you think can life be described by formulas and patterns that's the great hope of math it was the great hope of Pascal a early 20th century mathematician all right I mentioned already that sapphic people are focused on living a very pure lifestyle and that could lead them to rejecting nearly everything around them from people who aren't saatvik enough food that isn't Suffolk enough environments that is in Suffolk enough and they become overly scrupulous right scrupulous 'ti is a real trap for saatvik people and and what is it it's in then in the it's a person who has this very holy very sacred desire to be pure or good and and they you that desire ends up making it impossible for them to love anything or forgive anything right this world is an imperfect world and we have to figure out a way to love it right and if we're so focused on purity that that could lead to rejecting anything that doesn't exactly fit the model that you know perfect saatvik model and this is I think this is always a danger that a person on the spiritual path has to watch out for be constantly on guard for scrupulous 'ti there's many examples from my clinic where people who are following a sattvic diet of purity ended up having very restrictive diets and and ended up either ortho x''k or even worse anorexic so be on guard if you're living a life based on formulas if you're eating if you're choosing foods from a rulebook that's a bit rigid could lead to asceticism a bit of stoicism and really undermine your happiness instead of giving you that natural free saatvik happiness Safiye people are universally minded and and and so they tend to because they see they they like to watch things from a distance sort of thing you know looking at that perspective instead of that egotistical approach sometimes they can have a real unstable identification with themselves they feel what others feel really easily but they have trouble figuring out what they feel themselves now I had a client who referred to her body as the body and she would say the body is sick right now or the stomach is nauseous and I thought that was very odd so I asked her why are you speaking in about your body and as if you know in the third person and she said her guru had told her to do this so that she wouldn't be too attached to her body and I just think I just you know I I just want to pose that question to this student like is that extremist so sometimes Suffolk people began border on the ethereal this particular in particular had a very far off spaced outlook almost as if she was living life in another world she spoke very softly but she was also constantly taking advantage of so because a detachment a soffit person can lose their instincts around what is desirable pleasurable or even necessary for basic human survival or satisfaction I want to say that we're not just trying to survive but we're trying to thrive it's part of you know part of that you know that belief you know in some ways if we believe that the world is an amazing place that's one way of praising God right like it's like oh god you made you you're so great God that you made a great world and if you know and and so if we don't relish this life or we lose a taste for this life and we see the the world as as not good or something that's not desirable not pleasurable and in some ways that can be you know a a way of thinking that oh maybe God didn't do such a good job you know there's a there's a kind of when I see a beautiful mountain Vista or a beautiful sunset it naturally leads me to to praising of the of the Creator the grand architect of that and and so if we're you know if a soffit person is a little too attached too detached they may lose that relish and taste and even connection to their own sense of pleasure so sadly people tend towards austerity and delayed gratification and and they may see everything as truth or everything as an illusion or everything as an expression of the divine and that can lead to a lot of confusion or trouble discerning what is good or bad for them their family or their community and I mentioned this cuz it happened to me I was really into the saatvik lifestyle and you know lots of meditation and I became very confused through that and lost my relish for the taste of life and like the anorexic you know it's really hard to get that back afterwards I remember and still on some levels you don't really struggle with that