“Study brings us wisdom, wisdom brings us life.” Rabbi Hillel
Life of Pi, a novel written by Yann Martel, is a story of a teenage boy who survives a shipwreck by finding refuge on a lifeboat with another passenger, who happens to be a Bengal tiger. The story begins when Pi, now an adult with a wife and family, is interviewed by a reporter who wishes to document his experience of being adrift at sea for 227 days. What unfolds is a tale of how Pi and the tiger learn to trust each other to survive. Pi tells the tale of his efforts to balance keeping the tiger alive while maintaining his distance from a vicious animal who was keen on eating him. His narrative includes fantastical encounters at sea, full of glowing fish, storms, and an island that breathed. He recounts to the reporter how, when he was rescued, he told his tale of survival to the officials leading an inquiry into the shipwreck. The officials listened carefully but rejected it in disbelief. Pi then offers the officers another version of what happened--a story that is gruesome, full of violence and despair, lacking the fantasy and magic of the story with the Bengal tiger. At the end of his second narrative Pi asks the officials, “Which one would you rather believe?”. Ultimately, they choose the story of the Bengal tiger.
The author of Life of Pi, Yann Martel, tells us that Life of Pi can be summarized in three ideas: life is a story, we have the freedom to choose the story, and that our most compelling stories incorporate the power of the Divine. Through its narrative of survival on a boat with a Bengal tiger, in Life of Pi we see how the stories we chose to believe shape and direct our lives. We find a similar message in the last two Niyamas, Svadhyaya and Ishvara Pranidhana.
Humans are natural storytellers. Throughout history and across cultures, many of our codes for living are stored in the form of a narrative. Our affinity for storytelling may have started as an evolutionary tool that helped keep our ancestors alive. Research shows we are much less likely to remember facts than we are a story; people remember information that is woven into narratives up to 22 times more effectively than facts alone. Narratives provide data that is woven with emotion, bringing facts to life and making them easier to remember. Telling someone not to swim in the river because the current is too strong does not have the same power as telling a story about a cousin who was pulled under by the current and tragically drowned.
Stories help to organize and make sense of our endless stream of thoughts, images, and sensations. Our minds never stop--we are thinking all the time, even when we are dreaming. Stories help to corral our thoughts and gain control over our world. They organize our experiences, helping us find patterns in the chaos, and create meaning when there is randomness. Stories also impact our capacity for social connection. People are more likely to be compassionate and empathetic when they are exposed to compelling stories of hardship, survival, persistence experienced by others. But they can also instigate fear and distrust; exposure to stories about crime, murder, and danger cause us to pull up the social drawbridge and retreat from a world that is seen as a dark and dangerous place.
Our propensity for storytelling is not abnormal—it is part of being human. We don’t choose most of our thoughts—they pop up spontaneously as an endless flow of comparing, judging, evaluating, criticizing, planning, and fantasizing. It is only natural for the human mind to seek some measure of control by weaving thoughts together into meaningful patterns that take the form of narratives. In this way, stories can be thought of as a form of existential problem solving that provides both structure and inspiration as we move forward in life.
Stories become problematic when we confuse them with the event. Thoughts are just that—thoughts, a collection of words organized in a particular way. The stories they tell are simply a representation of a past event, they are not the actual experience of what happened. The trouble starts when the lines between our narratives and reality get blurry. This happens when we believe our stories as being the truth rather than our experience of an event. I knew a woman who was in a miserable and unhappy marriage for over 50 years. She and her husband fought constantly, openly expressing their disdain for each other. Her children encouraged her to get divorced, offering her a place to live and a chance to reestablish a new life. She refused, stating that she and her husband “could not live without each other”. Despite the evidence, she grasped on to her story that they were meant to be together, that there was no way out, even though she had very real options to build a better life.
The fourth Niyama, Svadhyaya, translates as “self-study”. The first part of the word, sva, means “self”. The second part comes from the verb root dhyai, which means to “contemplate, recollect, or call to mind”—which translates as studying one’s own self. The type of self-study proposed in Svadhyaya does not translate to the Western desire for self-improvement. It is not self-study with the intention of fixing ourselves. Rather, it is one in which we notice the ways we identify with our egos, falsely believing that our thoughts, beliefs, and stories are who we are at our essence. The self-study of Svadhyaya is one in which we learn to shift our identity away from our ego to the true Self within. We call this Self by a variety of names—God, Yahweh, Atman, Buddha, Christ; some prefer to think of it as our Divine Nature, Mother Earth, or the Universe.
Svadhyaya is a call to step out of the flow of our thoughts and to pull ourselves up onto the bank of the river so we might watch our thoughts stream by. It encourages us to develop an observing mind rather than a thinking one. Self-study is not about finding ways to stop creating stories or to change the ones we have, but to hold them lightly, understanding them for what they are—just thoughts, beliefs, experiences. Labeling them creates space so that we can see them clearly for what they are; we can then begin to unravel them from reality. This process of self-study requires an observing mind, one that allows us to step back and watch our thoughts without following them. Whereas the Western version of self-study involves identifying a problem and then fixing it, Svadhyaya counsels us to simply watch, noticing our conditioning and understanding how we have created our reality. Seeing our patterns—not necessarily changing them—is the essence of Svadhyaya.
The final Niyama, Ishvara Pranidhana, is frequently referred to as the “jewel of surrender”. This type of surrender calls for us to let go of our egos and allow life to be the way it is, encouraging us to be active participants in the fluidity of the moment while opening our hearts to the mysteries of what life offers us. Ishvara Pranidhara presupposes there is a divine force at work in everyone’s lives. In Buddhism this force is described as the soft spot found in our hearts, that gentle dimension of our being in which we find compassion, openness, and clarity. This Niyama reminds us that the more we identify with our minds rather than our essence, the less freedom we have. The task of Ishvara Pranidhana is simple, but it is not easy; we are asked to simply let go and receive each moment with an open heart, responding to the needs of the moment and trusting that the process will lead us to where we need to be.
What is the story of your life? How has that story shaped you, guided you, influenced who you are today? In Life of Pi, a stranded Pi had the option to frame his experience in two different ways. In one narrative he was called to surrender to the demands of the moment and tame a dangerous tiger. Inspired by a sense of purpose, it was a tale of compassion and the capacity for connection. The other narrative was grim and dark, lacking hope and devoid of meaning. Pi chose the story of the tiger, one in which he responded to a calling from life itself to trust the purpose that was hidden in his experiences adrift at sea. Much like Pi, the final two Niyamas of Svadhyaya and Ishvara Pranidhara remind us that our lives are a story which are ours to write, and narratives that are guided by a divine essence have the power to shape our lives for the better. The narrative is always ours to choose. Which story would you rather believe?
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