shankar

 The first word in the Yoga-Sutra...atha—literally means now...what is here in this moment..... Yoga begins in the present moment.... Yoga is the present moment....

concisely translate ....Yoga begins now..... The teachings of yoga orient us toward this very moment, rendering the future invisible and the past no longer in reach..... yuj...to unite...which turns yoga into something one does..., a form of willful activity..... In thinking that yoga is the act of uniting one thing with another... breath with movement, body with mind, self with other..., we confuse yoga with the doing of yoga..... 

When we use the term in this way ...I’m going to practice yoga....we confuse the techniques or the technology of practice with the experience of yoga..... In every unfolding moment, in any meeting with any person, even in meeting ourselves, everything is complete..... this completeness doesn’t mean that everything is put together in some master plan..... It means that everything is interdependent ...and that yoga is not something we seek outside of ourselves... or a willful attempt at union...., but the recognition, in the present moment..., of the unification of life.....

 The inherent interconnectedness of existence reveals what we call nondualism....the collapse of separation between subject and object..... when we experience relaxed openness and attentive awareness,.... the world reveals its inherent completeness.... When we move through the world, concealed and wrapped in thought,... there is no direct contact with reality ...and we know not who or what, we are..... Yoga begins with the gesture of a gentle bow, in service of the present moment.... is a way of being and a mode of existing.... Existence is a play of interconnectedness,... and the more we clarify our perception... and ways of organizing our experiences..., the more openness and compassion we bring to the profound and sometimes confusing undertaking of being in the world..... 

The authentic practice of yoga is an unremitting attention to present experience..., whether in mind, body,  heart,  or hips..., making breakfast, or balancing the breath in a headstand..... the only place to begin an investigation of yoga... of anything for that matter...is the present moment,... because this is all that is actually occurring..... the future has not yet arisen and the past is passed.... the only thing there is to investigate and the only way to begin paying attention... is within this very experience as it unfolds right now, right here...