The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Peter keeps talking about BALANCE and how asana is all about balance : The groundedness of the feet vs the lightness and lift in the body as we reach the crown towards the heavens...... the left vs the right, the front vs the back.... An asana is a constant juggling act : we move, move, move till we find the edge of balance, then just as we are about to topple over, we move, move, move back again, to re-establish that delicate balance.

It brings to mind a book that I just finished. (The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milann Kundera is now on my Top 10 favorite books list.) The book tells the story of a husband, his wife, his mistress and her lover as they each struggle in their respective prisons : The prison of commitment, of freedom, of betrayal..... It's a beautifully tragic story with no answers but it got me thinking, and that's a welcome change! :) Even the title of the book is beautiful.

If life is nothing but a sequence of calculated coincidences orchestrated by God (God is used interchangeably here with the Universe, the Divine or any other term to signify a greater power than man), then nothing we do is of any real consequence. We are not in control, but merely pawns in someone else's warped comedy. We are not laden with the burden of responsibility and can lead life in "the lightness of being".
"In a world that rests in the non-existence of recurrence, everything is pardoned in advance, and therefore everything cynically permitted."

Conversely, in Nietzsche's world of Eternal Return, life is not transitory but permanent in it's recurrence. Everything we do is repeated an infinite number of times and with this repetition bears with it what he considers "the heaviest of burdens."

But, the real debate isn't here, it is in the dichotomy between weight and lightness. We assume that "weight" is negative, and "lightness" is positive. Kundera didn't think so, hence the UNBEARABLE lightness of being.

"In the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment.
The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?"

As always, I think the answer is in Yoga. It's all about balance. To find that delicate balance where we can lead a life with sufficient weight and responsibility so that our time here is real and true, but lead a life that is light and free, so that we are able to soar high above the earth and grasp all the wonders that life offers. And above all, to lead a life filled with love and compassion.

Note : I had a hard time grappling with the concept of Eternal Recurrence. Put simply, the universe contains a finite amount of matter, whereas time is infinite. And even though, matter can change states through time, the number of permutations is finite hence the same state will eventually have to be repeated. Time is therefore not linear but cyclical.