Ocean Vuong and Yoga

It’s all prakriti, yes.

War is a product of impure thoughts that turns into Violence. Hatred.

War is imagined before it is real. War is languaged before guns and ovens are fired.

War is made reasonable and justified by a moral absolute. Whose?

**

It’s avidya, yes. The hunger for power fueled by insatiable hunger for ‘more’.

The asmita of supremacy.

The abinivhesha of disappearance.

The dvesa of disconnection.

The raga of entitlement.

It’s all Story, yes. Stories come from bodies as witness to tears, to care, to the weight of living in a culture afraid of Other.

**

The Yoga of awareness and the recognition of who I have become through the mirror of Ocean Vuong.

The awareness of vanishing and loneliness because (English) language fails.

Language fails so Purusha remains out of reach except in the gift of wordless glimpses

In the absence of words appropriate to the longing to belong

I sit in a circle where there is a silent meeting of minds

Do not bypass this road on the way to Purusha

How is my story connected to yours?

How is Ocean’s story connected to mine?

**

Dear Ocean — I cried hearing your story about your mother sobbing because she never thought she would see old white folks clapping for you. I cried because you realized she has spent her waking life kneeling in front of white women at the nail salon and, therefore, the moment of her tears was a victory. A big deal. I cried because it made me realize that these are the same moments of awakening that I have lived for in the last few decades of my academic and personal life. The power of transformation that is possible when people like us seize the narrative and speak and write our truths informed by the wisdom of our “illiterate” ancestors and elders. The “illiterates” who have been consigned to the scrap heap of a History built upon Wars of conquests.

Yes, it was War that brought you into this world. I am here, too, because of War. Wars never end. We know this. Eventually, we take up the space that brought us here and we make a life. I made a life. I wrote books, seeded a movement, mentored many. You, too, at 31, have already made your mark and will continue to do so. I look forward to bearing witness to your journey.

I am 67 now. I never thought the day would come when I would feel the need to be emptied of all that I have become up to this time. This time is called post-anthropocene, post humanist, post activist, post materialist — oh, but all of these are only the ways that academics make sense of their own place in the hierarchy of ideas. Outside of the ivory tower and beyond the walls of the modern mind, the winds of Change are blowing hard, furious, and persistent.

Right now there is a virus pandemic that is visiting the planet. Is it strange that I do not believe any of the stories sold by corporate media and even scholars? Instead I am drawn to the voices of indigenous elders and the Cassandras of today. They are not surprised. They have known all along that this is the peril inherent in modern folks’ beliefs and actions in the absence of a living relationship with the Earth and Cosmos. The ancient voices know of cycles of extinctions and creations. Birth. Death. Rebirth. 14B years in the making and there is no End.

I am drawn to Yoga’s ideas like Prakriti and Purusha. Of avidyas and tamasic, rajasic, and sattvic states of being. I am drawn to pranayama, asanas, meditation. In this lineage, the emphasis is on cultivating a quality of presence in the moment and in our actions.

Ocean, you are a Zen Buddhist and you practice a death meditation. In an interview you said you live across from a cemetery. I think of how powerful this practice must be in liberating the shackles in your imagination, in shaping your language of living, in bearing the weight of your living in this place.

Zen is about emptying the mind, isn’t it? But what do we mean by it? What are you emptying yourself of when you write? In my stories, I’ve written about rejecting the projections of the imperial and colonial gaze on my Filipina self. Like you, I transgressed all kinds of rules, fences, boundaries to make my voice heard.

I would like to think that when Yoga asks me to clear myself of avidya I am being asked to expand the arcs of small circles of knowing and being. These arcs that belong to this life on Earth encircled by larger arcs of cosmic and multiverse proportions. These larger arcs that can only be glimpsed in the stillness of meditation and felt in the vibrations of a chant.

The small arc of modern History has had the most impact on my awareness. This 500-year old story has not been good for my soul. So I went searching for another story to tell and I find that where I am from in Southeast Asia, there are many ancient and wondrous stories that have been buried in the onslaught of modern encroachment. I belong to the generation that bought the story of progress, of civilization, of linear evolution in human consciousness. These are the stories of Avidya if you ask me.

Ocean, I’ve listened to many of your online interviews and read your online essays. Am still waiting for a copy of your book. The familiarity and the tone of your voice in your stories resonates with mine.