#4 Thai Yoga Wai Khruu or Puja
By Anthony B. James DNM(P), ND(T), MD(AM), DPHC(h.c.), DOM, RAC, SMOKH Academic Dean SomaVeda College of Natural Medicine and Thai Yoga Center (SCNM).
Thai Yoga Wai Khruu or paying respect to the teachers (Pratyahara) means to give credit where credit is due. Make acknowledgment a way of life. We also look at Thai Yoga Wai Khruu as the practice of spiritual copyright, of emotional, mental copyright. It’s the idea to give credit where it’s due.
When you pay respect, as the Thais would say, to your teachers and the origin of the information that you use. When you pay respect to to your co-creative facilitation, the harmonizing of your life experience in your human biologic transformation machine you are given access to other levels of understanding, behavior and being that you can get to no other way. It’s a universal principle. Acknowledge where things come from. It is another way of creating these frames, these thought frames.
Acknowledgement gives rise to specific kinds of frames which allow you to think thoughts which are more beneficial to the behaviors that you want to create in yourself. It gives rise to thoughts which are supportive of your evolution and your transformation. This is a formula that we’ve been given from the ancient times. Wai Khruu in Thai means to do a Namaste to three teachers. There is a secret thing here, which is to acknowledge the law of three. You have three forces in everything that transpires in life. You have an active force, a passive force, and a reconciling force. In Ayurveda we say you have a Rajas, Tamas, and Satvas principles in everything that exists. You have the mother, father, and procreative result sometimes called child energy. There are three teachers in Thai: Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha.
What is the Buddha? The Buddha is whatever you would conceptualize as original or conscious influence-direct influence and information and energy and teaching. This information is first generation, coming direct from conscious influence. Some people might say God, Jesus or gods or deities of some kind or whatever is that concept for you of original conscious influence. In a practical way it interferes or intervenes with human life. It could be angels or demons. I pay respect to that influence because I believe I see a conscious thread of influence in the life of humanity. All of the progress of humanity, to me, does not appear to be random. I believe since we crawled out of the goo that there has been extraordinary influence at work.
The second Wai Khruu is the Dhamma. The Dhamma is a metaphor for the teachings, the derivative teachings, the books, the literature, the art, the sculptures, the geometries, the math, and the philosophies codified from the interaction with original conscious influence. The Dhamma or Dharma is the collection of the Buddha’s writings and all the commentaries, and all it’s offshoots including your own personal thoughts in your journal. The Dhamma body of literature also includes people whose names we might recognize. Dhamma is not to be narrowly defined as only coming from the “Buddha”. Even the Buddha said he wasn’t the only one. It literally means the resulting information or truth in any form. Dhamma, in my mind, is a metaphor for codified truth in any form.
Sangha, the third teacher we Wai Khruu to or Namaste to, is the orders of brothers and sisters, of men and women who practice and follow the teachings codified and descending from original conscious influence. The Sangha is a community of men and women who share ideologies, ways of life, common existence and common support. They work together using tools, teachings, and algorithms for enlightenment, conscious development, and self-realization.
We do want to pay respect to each other. This is necessary. It is very important to acknowledge the flesh and blood people, the spiritual beings you find yourself with in life. It’s very important that you do that, that we don’t get caught up in the minutiae and forget why we’re here. Wai Khruu is not something we do once in a while. Wai Khruu is a continuous state of being. Give credit where credit is due. Pay respect. Pay respect to everybody. Give respected to the girl at the checkout counter at Publix. Pay respect to the mailman. Pay respected to the service processor who brings you the wonderful notice that someone is going to sue you today. Don’t be rude to them. Pay them respect because all lessons originally come from spirit, no matter what it looks like.
We Wai to the origin of sacred teachings. We Wai to the sacred teachings themselves. We Wai to the blessings of having these ideas to consider and are blessed to be able to do so with other people. That’s part of the algorithm for success. We all have an Achilles heel. We all have an itch we cant scratch. We all have something we absolutely need to know to be a happy balanced person that we can only get from another healthy balanced person. That’s an algorithm for success. That’s the holy triad that we Wai Khruu to. That’s why we Wai three times. Thai Yoga Wai Khruu is an integral part of our Puja practice.
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