Santosha
Navigating challenging waters through the practice of contentment
Love is like the sea. It’s a moving thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from the shore where it meets, and it’s different with every shore. ~ Zora Neale Hurston
Remember, remember, this is now, and no. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to be become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted. ~ Sylvia Plath
I don’t need to tell you that it’s been a tough couple of years. We have carried and endured so much collective grief and trauma, we are all living in our own personal worlds of every day difficulty and heart break, and many of us have also experienced devastating personal losses, even as we have lived through this background of perpetual anxiety.
One of the things that has kept me grounded and relatively sane, has been the twice weekly “Practicing in the Curve” conversations, started at the very beginning of the pandemic and still meeting regularly. These conversations, originally meant to meet just ten times, considering each of the five Yamas and five Niyamas (ethical precepts of yoga) and how they might be practical for our everyday life during the pandemic, are still going even now, more than two years later. While we have also considered different sutras, we generally come back to the Yamas and Niyamas. Friends from Samarya will remember this as the topic of the month.
The community that has developed has been consistent, vulnerable, thoughtful, courageous and creative. The conversations include some yoga students, Christians of all stripes - Mormon, Catholic, Lutheran, practicing Buddhists and people who are completely secular, some who identify as more than one, some who may identify as none.
These conversations are plain talk, connecting on what is happening in everyday life, and how we can use the tools of our spiritual or religious life to manage what is difficult, as well as to truly appreciate all the opportunities life brings. They have provided the spiritual nourishment that many of us have craved and needed during these taxing times.
Last month, our topic was santosha, or contentment. I was so glad for the time we had already spent developing our shared values, trust and fellowship so that when we got around to this topic again, we didn’t begin with any easy illusions.
I mean, how do we even begin to talk about contentment when everything around us seems like it’s falling apart? How do we talk about contentment without turning it into some easy intellectualized idea, or some lazy theology that attempts to sugar coat the bitterest pill, or a simple practice that asks us to just be grateful for what we have, without acknowledging the profound suffering happening side by side?
Like yoga itself, the practice of santosha is both the means and the end. We practice being content to be in the state of contentment.
We started by taking the time to define the word contentment. After all, it’s only a single word translation from Sanskrit, meaning that, whatever our sense of the specific word “contentment” might be - many said something like “satisfied” or even “a milder form of happy” - we had to also acknowledge that perhaps it is an imperfect translation and most likely, that even though contentment is a word we all know, we might think of it or use if differently.
We often begin with the etymology of words to get a deeper, clearer understanding. The word content can be traced back to the 15th century, having roots in both old French and in Latin. One etymological definition states: "to rest or be satisfied; to give satisfaction to," from Old French contenter (from content (adj.) "satisfied") and Medieval Latin contentare, both from Latin contentus "contained; satisfied," past participle of continere "to hold together, enclose.”
“Containment” especially felt right to the group. Contentment might be the capacity, or the state of, being able to contain all of it - the grief, the confusion, the sadness, the loneliness, the longing.
Contentment is about finding stillness and even comfort in what we have, even if we are not feeling particularly grateful for it. Gratitude may be considered a practice to create the experience of contentment.
As I worked through the month, I was able to recognize several insights about contentment, grateful that we were focusing on it and talking about it as a group.
A simple, but crucial, insight was that when I don’t compare what I am experiencing to what I think I should be experiencing, I often really am content. But when I create a story about how my life or my day or this moment should be, I start to lose that feeling of contentment, and it is replaced by longing and dissatisfaction or sadness.
This can start with simple things like a day at the beach on my own. I am perfectly happy to be at the beach by myself. In fact, often I prefer it. But all too frequently what starts to creep in is how much better it would be if I were with more people, which leads to wishing I had more friends, which leads to wondering why I don’t have more friends, which leads to thinking about what is “wrong” with me…. And you see where it goes. Maybe it even sounds familiar in some way.
I recently learned a phrase from the 12 Steps that has really stuck with me. It is the state of being “restless, irritable and discontented” which is a signal that we will soon start looking for a way to find ease and comfort. If we don’t have the tools to recognize that state in the first place, and then we don’t have tools to ease that state in a healthy way once we are aware of it. It is very likely i that moment we will turn toward whatever is easiest for us, whatever we know. That might be alcohol or drugs, but it also might be a depressive state, or it might even mean just living with the irritability. We become accustomed to being restless and discontented, and we stop even looking for a way to move beyond it. We accept it as part of our personality, or our process.
Hearing this phrase made me realize that I honestly feel as though I have lived in a chronic state of “restless, irritability and discontent” for many years, facing multiple personal losses amidst our shared trauma. I have become so accustomed to that state, sometimes dulling it, sometimes just bearing it, that I often have no energy - or even real awareness - to change it. Like it has become my personality.
I completely understand what that’s like. It’s easy to fall into that and lose the perspective that things could be different. I have been there.
But we have tools to recognize that state of restless irritability and practices that can counter it, both when we experience it, and perhaps even preemptively. That is not to say I am always successful at using them, but knowing they are there, knowing they are something I can return to have helped me time and again come out of the confusing and lonely place. And every time I do, I strengthen my resolve and my ability to use the tools.
An image that I have of contentment may be helpful. Our life can be likened to an ever flowing river. There are times and places in that river where things are flowing beautifully, serenely, predictably - if we were in a kayak or on a paddle board, this would be when we might just lie back, close our eyes, let the sun warm our face and just trust in the flow. There are other times when we might get stuck in an eddy, and we feel like we are just circling around and around, perhaps not in any real or immediate danger, but feeling like we cannot move forward, we are stuck. Then we might have to work a little harder in our boat or board - it is helpful for it to be stable of course, but we can navigate these waters by using a little extra strength, a little extra resolve. We have to push off and make a change happen. And then there are times when the river is flowing wildly, treacherous rapids that put us in real crisis. At this time, we need more than anything to know that our vessel is steady, that we have a strong connection to it, and that we can hang on because we can trust our boat.
We develop contentment not because it is suddenly going to make everything ok, but because it helps to create the stability we need to face the hardest times in our lives. Even when whatever is happening is definitely not ok, WE can be ok. We can make it through. Like our boat or board, we can find the stability - through the practice of contentment - to respond to the flow of life, however it is, with discernment and grace.
Saint Ignatius would describe this experience of contentment as a state of consolation. The opposite is what he calls desolation, or what we might think of as that restless irritability. Ignatius reminds us in his second rule - using the language of his time - that it is in these states of desolation that the “enemy of man” or what he often refers to as the evil spirit” “bites, saddens, and place obstacles, disquieting with false reasons, so that the person may not go forward. And it is proper to the good spirit to give courage and strength, consolations, tears, inspiration and quiet, easing and taking away all obstacles, so that the person may go forward in doing good.”
Ignatius offers us the tool of discernment, in order to become aware of the “motions of the soul,” something we might also call “the fluctuations of the mind stuff” or chittavritti. Saint Ignatius - not unlike Patanjali- describes these interior movements as consisting of '“thoughts, imaginings, emotions, inclinations, desires, feelings, repulsions, and attractions.” Spiritual discernment of spirits means becoming sensitive to these movements, reflecting on them, and understanding where they come from and where they lead us. In Ignatian terms, we are encouraged to “Become aware, understand and take action.”
So thinking about these various spiritual, philosophical or faith based perspectives, what are some of the practices that might help us to find that stability, to become aware of those interior movements, when the waters were the most agitated?
Here are few that we came up with over the course of the month.
1. We can take time to be still, and to just listen to the inner stirrings of both our heart and our mind. We can develop a true meta awareness of what is “good enough?” We can truly stop and notice those moments - washing the dishes, repotting plants, walking outside - when we have this deep inner feeling of being “ok” no matter how fleeting it may be. Just this. Just now.
2. We can use our meditations and prayers consistently to create new neural pathways, ones that are moving towards quietude, towards introspection, towards God presence. We can talk directly to God - to Spirit - and ask for guidance, ask for peace and contentment with what is.
3. We can acknowledge those moments when we are creating a story about what could be better - if it is something simple, like the day at the beach, a day alone, a simple life, - and remind ourself that we actually are content right now.
When it is something much bigger, like a death or other huge loss, we can also notice when we are spinning in what could have been and allow ourselves to pause, find our breath, find the floor beneath us, and remind ourselves that we are just here, just now, and we are ok. Again, “this” may not be ok, but we are ok. We actually can find contentment inside of grief and sadness, just this moment. Content to lie here, content to eat this, content to stay home, contained.
4. We can learn and practice too, to be content not to be exceptional. We don’t have to do extraordinary things to be extraordinary. We are exceptional because we are the only one of us. I know it sounds perhaps trite, but it is a big one in my life, and a big place where I find those feelings of restlessness and discontent.
Contentment is simply that state of grace and ease. It is a way for us to find and honor the little bits of hope that are all around us. It does not keep us from having preferences, from reaching, or enjoying or wishing something were different. But, like the white water analogy, it requires us to find steadiness, to find stability so we can navigate what life is going to give us anyway. We practice that steadiness to arrive at that same state.
Like the name of our twice weekly conversation group - to which all are invited and welcome - we practice in the straightaway what we will use in the curve. For many - if not most - of us, we are in the curve now. We are holding on, finding our way, making it through these rough waters. Our boat is steady, even when the flow is not.
We are all in this together.