Rhymes with mascara

I’m the first to admit I’m not perfect (see the title of this blog).  I have my own idiosyncrasies, bad tendencies, and vices.   My saṃskāras show themselves in full force when I’m off guard or when my practice has taken a trip to Vegas and forgotten to leave me a ticket.

What the heck are saṃskāras?  Saṃskāras – three syllables, rhymes with mascara – are our emotional and mental patterns, those little, or not so little, bad habits that pop up when things get tough or when we’re taken out of our comfort zone.   Sometimes they manifest themselves through our actions, for example eating a tub of ice cream while watching a marathon of home design shows, or as physical stress or self-deprecating thoughts.  In more serious situations the lack of an ability to cope with our mental patterns can lead to serious addictions.   For me, my emotional habit is to send myself into panic mode where I feel the need to vent my frustrations and “get it all out”.   Facebook is a perfectly good avenue for this, right??

Yoga nerd alert: Yoga Sutra (II.16) states, Heyam duhkham anagatam, or “Future suffering is to be avoided.”

I joke the best way to nip these saṃskāras in the bud is to drink your weight in wine.  I’m not sure this is what was meant by Sutra II.16; I’ve felt the wrath of a post future-suffering-busting wine binge.  Suffering often begets more suffering.

A much healthier, mature way of breaking our tendencies is to 1) become aware of them (others are really good at helping with this, just ask your spouse), 2) let go of your attachment to them, ask yourself, “Are they really helping me?”, and finally 3) break your habits by creating new positive tendencies, “When this happens, I’m going to do this instead of that.”

Keep it up and you’ll soon find you’re feeling a whole lot better and enjoying some serious emotional growth.

Sidenote: When I Googled saṃskāras while looking for an appropriate image for this post, I found this:

http://creativebinge.co.uk/blog/samskara/

Apparently funk can help too.