Stan McDaniel
Yogasayings
What might I tell you, prospective reader, if you picked up this book
and asked ``What is this?''
Highly condensed, at first glance aphoristic, Yogasayings is the
exemplary essence of the logic of nondualism. It expresses, not as a
fixed reality but as a guide to experience, a transactional philosophy that
describes the dynamics of relationship. It is a weaving, a fabric which
when taken whole can arouse experiences of profound healing. There is
something very potent and focused in Yogasayings, and yet it is not
``pointy'' or aggressive. It seeks not to penetrate but to arouse communion.
For me, the experience is one of poetry, the arousal of the possibility of
connections which I have lost or forgotten or never knew. The progression
of ideas (or ``stimulants'') explores the more obvious dualisms such
as the mind-body split and weaves into more subtle issues such as the
evolution of consciousness itself, and its present apparently alienated
role in the universe.
Consider this book a guide to both thought and contemplation, if in
thought you relish the free play of abstract ideas, and in contemplation
you seek relational understanding: ultimately a healing that is synonymous
with knowing, with wisdom. Yogasayings is a guide to yoga in
that it is a symbol to be practiced, a symbol to be invited into one's own
personal experience in constant companionship. (It is the meaning of
this constant companionship that Yogasayings seeks to instill).
Yogasayings is a rare gift. I'm grateful for it. Take time to enter into its
weaving.
Robert Greenway
Port Townsend, Washington
March 1991