what am i actually practicing when i practice?

This is Ashtanga Yoga Tech Support. Real questions from the yoga community, answered.

The Question

I get that the practice doesn't have a destination, but what am I actually aiming at? Is there something real and permanent to orient toward, or is that just another idealistic cliché that doesn't hold up in the Mysore room?

— from a MJH note

Our Response

Compassion. Not as a mood. Not as something you summon when you’re feeling generous. As an orientation.

Yoga’s whole inquiry is about distinguishing the real from the unreal, the permanent from the impermanent. If you take that seriously, compassion starts to look like one of the permanent things. Extended infinitely — the ability to hold the suffering of all creatures without having to look away — that’s godlike. It’s okay that you can’t. But it’s something to aim at.

The Mysore practice doesn’t have a destination. But it has a direction to face. That direction is toward infinite compassion, not at it. You’re not going to arrive. But you also don’t get to write it off as impossible in this life just because it’s hard. That’s the easy way out, not the honest one.

“It’s okay that I can’t, but as an aspiration” — that sentence is the whole teaching. You show up. You practice. You fail. You try again. Not because you’ll perfect it, but because the trying itself is the work. That’s what you’re practicing when you practice.