The source of all suffering – you’ll never believe who’s responsible…
In sanskrit the word ‘vidya’ translates as knowledge. There are several types of vidya that are discussed:
Apara vidya: knowledge that is limited and keeps us in suffering. Earthly facts, things that may assist us in someway in this lifetime but will not extend us to any greater freedom from the gross.
Para vidya: knowledge that helps us to cross the ocean of suffering. It may be measurable by science, it may be beyond. It expands us beyond the superficial, beyond the body and the matter.
And then there is Avidya: not knowledge. To be more precise, avidya is that which we think is knowledge but is not. Whenever I’m in reflection on avidya, a small smile always spontaneously appears on my face - even now as I’m typing! A giggle in acknowledgement at my own continuing ignorance; of how present it is in every day of my life, in so many of my actions, even with so many years of practice and self-study. Avidya is so, so busy. It is like a sneaky ninja constantly moving with all of our thoughts stealthily throwing a veil over everything we see as soon as our eyes turn and land on something or some situation! It’s been doing it for so long and so covertly, we don’t even know it’s happening! We simply believe that what we see, is what is. And then we fight to defend it.
Without the awareness of avidya’s presence, our belief is - ‘I can see it with my own eyes, therefore it must be real’. But across many spiritual teachings, there is a common known reality - what is being seen by the mind and the mind itself, are one and the same, so the same situation has as many ‘truths’ as there are minds processing it. As many versions of me exist in this world as there are people who’s paths I have crossed.
In the middle of great upheaval, such as where we are right now, we can see the qualities of avidya playing out accentuated. When we become groundless in what was once familiar, when our footing is lost in what we believed held us steady, in such moments we have better eyes to see what is really within us. At this particular moment in time, the attributes of avidya are playing out on grand scale - if we are willing to have our eyes open, we may seize the opportunity to see this within ourselves. Pre corona, we may have thought ourselves a courageous person or someone who is calm in the face of crisis but all of a sudden, in the reality of many changes, we may see that this is not really true. We have become fearful beyond what is real or suddenly realized we have fears about things we didn’t know we had fears around. We may have discovered that when crisis comes, we take an every man for himself type approach - we were first to buy as many things as we could to put in our own stores rather than remain conscious to the same needs that exist for all people. We may have discovered that there are things in our lives, things that are now temporarily unavailable, that turned out to be what we relied upon to provide us with happiness - it could be a certain food, going to the library, attending our favourite yoga school or sitting at a cafe and enjoying our tea. The sudden absence of this thing we desire has created a suffering.
It is not easy to see avidya, as avidya encompasses anything that prevents us from seeing a circumstance as it truly is. It is the sheath the covers the whole mind, it morphs and distorts - and we’ve looked through it for so long, we believe it is the world. But it is much, much easier to see it’s four branches - ego, desire, aversion and fear - the lenses we are constantly wearing that cause us to constantly get into difficulties.
Avidya develops uniquely through our own previous experiences, from this birth or any other and decisions born from avidya will have consequences in this lifetime or any other. This is all of the basis of the karma theory. The complete dissolution of avidya - in all of it’s four forms: asmita (I-ness), raga (desire), dvesa (aversion) and abhinivesa (fear) - is the everything we are doing in yoga, bit by bit, breath by breath, posture to posture, kindness to kindness, so that there is no lens left, there is only incorruptible love. To free ourselves from incorrect comprehension, is to free ourselves from suffering.