Avidya

4. Anityasuci duhkahanatmasu nitya suci sukhatmakhyatir avidya.

Ignorance is regarding the impermanent as permanent, the impure as pure, the painful as pleasant, and the non-Self as the Self.

Avidya is often spoken of in metaphorical terms as a veil that separates the illusory world from the eternal truth of Oneness. However, I tend to think of avidya as more of a quilt than a veil. A patchwork quilt, to be precise. With each action that perpetuates avidya, I sew another patch onto the quilt of ignorance. It grows larger and larger, more colorful and grotesque. 

Every time I make statements of identification - "I am this, you are that" - I reinforce a false notion of division. I am attaching myself to temporary states of being by mistaking them for permanent. When things shift, as they inevitably will, I experience suffering in the face of change as a result of my own grasping.

This is not to say we do not each possess unique qualities and characteristics. Those qualities and characteristics are earthly, and do not make us who we are as spiritual beings. It's the soul that travels on, reincarnates, and, if liberated from the wheel of samskara, finds union with the great beyond. All of the "I" statements  - markers of the small self - must drop away.

When I convince myself that my thoughts, words, and deeds are pure, when they are in fact rooted in jealousy, anger, or resentment, this is another expression of avidya. I am not speaking or acting in the grace of satya, and thus avoiding the truth of Oneness.

Emily Stone articulated this dilemma quite poetically in one of her Lotus Flow classes a few weeks ago. She said, "If you have to ask yourself before speaking, 'Does this bring me closer to speaking my truth?', then you should probably keep it to yourself."

Regarding the painful as pleasant can show up in habits that we insist upon maintaining, despite the pain, confusion and suffering they might cause. Take a moment to consider something you do that hurts you but has become acceptable, and yet does nothing to further you along on the path towards samadhi and moksha.

Another way I like to think of avidya is in the context of Lacanian psychoanalysis. I won't go too much into detail, and I will say that there are vast disparities between yogic philosophy and Lacanian theory. In any case, Lacan spoke of language as a system of symbolic references that ultimately fail to get at the heart of the matter. When we speak, we are speaking from history, from ancestry, from the depths of the unconscious. We are saying things we don't mean to say and we are rarely saying what it is we truly wish to express. Our arrangements of words eventually compose our self-images and understanding of who we are, in the broadest sense, but this is a false understanding. 

The "goal" of Lacanian analysis (if you can call it that) is to reach a point at which you can truly speak your desire (the definition of desire here goes far beyond the mundane). Until one reaches that place of truth-telling (and few people ever do), we are weaving tapestries of illusion with failed communications and false transmissions. We are circling and circling without reaching the center. 

For me, this concept embodies avidya to some extent. Avidya feeds on the addition of patches to the quilt, or on the continued laps around a seemingly unending course of language that does not carry truth.