Coming Together: Our Story of Samskara

There’s a time-test idea in yoga that I want to share with you today called samskara.

Even after a year that has illuminated our ability to make massive changes in the way we get through a day, there are still so many examples places we are stuck, places we find the shadow-side of ourselves and our world. I’d like to think we live in a country with more transparency than in the past, more tools to develop insight, and more channels to share through and learn from. I can’t help but feel frustrated by the ignorance that guides many decisions, including of course, my own. And the suffering that shows up while we continue on a road of “progress”.

We inherit this moment from the past, our “self” of yesterday and our environment. In yoga, we call this vehicle samskara, the non-random collection of ingredients that influences our actions, both personally and collectively. Samskaras are a recipe that makes it easier to repeat a past outcome rather than forge a new path of experience. They are related to what we call biological neural networks, but they can also be held in the fascia of our bodies, or as interpersonally habits, or societal norms.

I’m currently taking a microbiology course. It’s fascinating how living and non-living systems, from very tiny to very large, look to do things the easy way. It’s about thermodynamics, it’s about comfort zones; what is, energetically, the least expensive way to exist yet get what we want? Samskaras allow us to persist with a “good enough” model for living, even when other conditions have changed. And that works to a point.

We don’t tend to notice a samskara / habit / process until it causes suffering either in ourselves, or we witness the suffering of others. For many, a samskara may exist but be completely under the radar. For others, or ourselves in a different situation, that same samskara may be a challenge or even cause pain. Although we can’t change the past, if we don’t intentionally examine it and decide on a different future, the past is the model things will take shape by.

In a packed Kitsilano Yoga studio back in 2011, I listened to Michael Stone give a talk on samskaras. Although it wasn’t the first time I had heard the word, it was the first time I related it to the many anchors of our existence; words, concepts, memories, culture. He spoke about yoga, and more specifically meditation, as a way to recognize and reshape our relationship with these patterns, and each other. Spiritual practice is not an inward facing process, but a way cultivate the courage to recognize our interdependence.

“So maybe now is the time to recognize what kind of tools you have, that you’ve learned from working with the difficulty in your own life. Share those with other people, instead of getting over your suffering and creating more suffering for others. Connect your own wounds to other people’s wounds.”

May all beings in the world be free of suffering.

Karen