Durga’s Joker

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The following post is written by Laura Ward, who is an Anusara-Inspired teacher recently transplanted from the Bay Area to Santa Fe, New Mexico. She specializes in yoga therapy for musculoskeletal rehab and is preparing to earn a Doctorate of Physical Therapy. She plays her jokers wild.

If you’re an Anusara Inspired or Certified teacher, yesterday was the day to renew your license.

Durga

At this point, there’s a seeming consensus that John Friend is a false guru. If you are enmeshed in the Anusara scandal by virtue of your license to use the trademark, the time of reckoning has come.

If you haven’t made up your mind consider this: if John Friend is not a guru, he may be an archetype, and, since we in the Anusara community like made-up things, like, say, Shiva-Shakti Tantra, we might indulge in a new kind of myth. One in which John Friend, a false guru, springs like Kali, fully-formed from Durga’s grimace to annihilate the ego – that is, our egos about being Anusara yogis.

Except, I find John Friend more like a Tantrik joker than a deity. And the joke is on us.

We need levity so badly. The Grand Circle morphed into the grand scandal and a rapid exodus of “senior” teachers signaled that, yes, something was rotten at the core. The power structures at Anusara, Inc. didn’t admit the questions that may have kept John Friend’s “God delusion” in check.  But don’t you feel just a little bit hung over? We have radical freedom. We chose to get high with John Friend.

In this case, there’s tension between our actions and our expectations of other people’s ethics, and it’s a problem for the whole kula. You, John Friend, and me, after all, were “co-creating with the Divine,” and so we’re complicit in making him guru.

The tension is also in spiritual accountability: whom do we answer to on the yogic path? This is what Tantric scholars Douglas Brooks and Chris Wallace discuss, in part, in their recent, infamous, Facebook throw-down:

Douglas Brooks: I find no transcendence in my life that does not entail our responsibility to the immediate (i.e., judgmental) tasks of human civilization.
Chris Wallace: Maybe that’s why so many Śaiva Tantrikas, at least in the depths of their hearts, rejected civilization and embraced the wild magic of nature, of the dākinīs, of pure energy howling and pulsing through the new-moon night.
Douglas Brooks: All very poetic, I agree. And, yes, many did reject civilization. I come from a south Indian Shrividya that is, well, not much in consonance with those views. We’ve spent our energies entirely in attending to [the] messy business of civilization.

The discussion here suggests that where you practice your yoga is where you’ll get your ethics. (If you practice in a community, you’ll get an ethics of community.) To be blunt, the pervasive conformism of the Anusara community and a hegemonic refusal to discuss much (even if we are in agreement), I believe, has altered our commitment to yoga as a spiritual practice.  If we are yogis, every issue turns on spiritual accountability.

Let me be clear, it’s not that most of us, as teachers, were behaving badly. But we consistently did not have the kinds of conversations we needed to about what our yoga is about: asana? liberation? making a living? We, as teachers, seem to have accepted Anusara dogma as dharma, and have been “caught with our pants down”, so to speak. (On multiple counts, including the viability of teaching yoga as a job.)

Now that we are compelled to talk about the ethics, and the economics of Anusara yoga, we must deal with the consequences. Even if John Friend is stepping down it is unfair, really, for him to ask us to renew our licenses right now; it’s asking for a vote of confidence when we have very little. But I’ll just consider that $50 a loan to the kula. Like I said, this is our comedy of errors, as much as it is John’s. I’m pretty clear about what I want from Anusara, Inc., so for now I’ll throw in my lot with the kula and John Friend. I expect to be paid back in self-reckoning.

If you’re still considering whether to renew your license, here’s what I think. When you meet the joker on the road, “kick” his ass – but don’t “kill” him.

As a postscript, I should acknowledge that we all have our personal relationship to John Friend, the person. To him I’d say this, in the words of my current favorite Florence & the Machine song:

I’m not calling you a liar, just don’t lie to me.
I’m not calling you a thief, just don’t steal from me.
I’m not calling you a ghost, (but) stop haunting me.

This last line is for Durga’s joker:
And I love you so much, I’m going to let you kill me.

For a more complete overview on what’s been happening, please visit: Anusara Controversy: Overview and Timeline

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