Recently I helped my lover hang some pictures of Hindu icons in her practice space. As we were looking at each of the images she had chosen—shipped over from India and resplendent with silver paint and glitter—I was sharing some stories about each of the deities. We began to speak about Ishta-devata and who we both felt an affinity for. I proposed that perhaps Saraswati, with her veena, might have a magnetism for my musician partner.
As well as being a patron for the arts, Saraswati, the ‘Flowing One’, the goddess of speech, represents the union of power and intelligence from which organized creation arises[1].
‘Saraswati is depicted as a graceful woman, white in colour, sitting on a lotus with a slender crescent on her brow. She is shown with either two or eight arms. In the latter case her attributes are a lute, a book, a rosary, and an elephant hook…’[2]
For me, the particular component of Saraswati’s imagery isn’t her choice of musical instrument but her choice of feathered companions and the powerful teachings these symbols hold for us as business owners committed to our spiritual paths.
Goddess Saraswati is closely associated with two birds: a swan and a peacock. Individually they hold great meaning and opportunity for reflection. Combined they provide great insight about polarity and difference. In part one of this series we’ll be taking a closer look at Saraswati’s swan. In part two, her peacock.
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Sarswati’s vehicle of choice is a swan, Hamsa. This is why she is also known as Hamsavāhini.
Symbolically, Hamsa represents transcendence, purity and the capacity to rise about earthly ties. However, my most favourite teaching we can draw from Hamsa is its talented beak. According to folklore, when offered a dish of milk and water, the swan can discern the difference between the two and use its beak to drink only the milk, leaving the water behind.
Commonly, this capacity for discernment is discussed in terms of being able to distinguish ‘good’ from ‘bad’ and ‘right’ from wrong’. This is a somewhat blunt or gross way of interpreting the power of discernment that Hamsa represents. A more nuanced interpretation is the capacity to discern between knowledge and wisdom.
Ram Dass is often quoted as saying, ‘Information is just bits of data. Knowledge is putting them together. Wisdom is transcending them.’
In one of my most favourite Yoga resources, the recorded lectures from the then fledgling Naropa Institute in Boulder in 1974, ‘Love, Service, Devotion and the Ultimate Surrender’, Ram Dass speaks eloquently on this idea. As Jnana Yogis, enticed by the pursuit of knowledge, we can become side-tracked with accumulating facts, addicted to ‘knowing’ more but failing to give ourselves the time and space to truly assimilate this information into wisdom, into true Vidya. (You can get these lectures on Audible. The jokes are fantastic. The music in between lectures less so.)
Around the two our mark, he says:
"One of the routes through is the route of the intellect. But the problem is that we often get very seduced by our intellect into knowing things. And we go outward rather than inward and we just keep collecting more and more worldly knowledge.
"You can know knowledge but you can only be wise... knowledge is really groovy and you can flash it. 'Well, I know this! Well, can you quote this?...' It's all so exquisite how much we know... but there is often a considerable discrepancy between knowing it and being it. Knowledge is despair if it's all by itself without wisdom."
If you’re anything like me, reading new books, collecting new trainings, signing up for new ‘quick fix’ webinars is incredibly seductive. If I only knew a bit more… And yet how far does all of this accumulated knowledge actually get us in business?
As business owners, how to we not get addicted to learning more and more and more, while never truly assimilating and digesting this knowledge to bring about actual change?
This is the important meaning I believe Saraswati’s Hamsa conveys to us.
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When I was starting my coaching business I would sign up to any free training I could get my hands on. I signed up for branding, marketing, copy writing, sales webinars. I’d watch the first sixty minutes of these knowing I was going to be sold something at the end, and also knowing I would never buy anything.
I signed up for week-long telesummits, 5-day challenges, list growth seminars, social media bootcamps. I’d buy the latest books from influential business coaches. I also bought a few of those ‘I’ll give you the book for free, you just pay for the shipping’ books, too.
I was ravenous for ALL the information I could get my hands on.
Maybe you’ve had a stage like this, too? Or maybe you’re still in a stage like this. I get it, if you are.
But for me there came a time when I realised that all the busyness of consuming all the information was distracting me from actually getting real work done in my business. Moreover, much of the free info I was collecting from all of these business influencers was contradictory.
Use 20 hashtags!
No, only use 5!
Focus on growing your mailing list!
No, reach out individually to people with DMs!
Launch an online training program!
No, sell VIP events at high prices.
Gah! It was confusing, contradictory and—as I began to see—was getting my nowhere!
As Ram Dass says, and Hamsa shows, being addicted to knowledge without taking the time to BE it, means we are continuing to muddy the waters, often drinking more water than milk! Moreover, my business bottom line was confirming what he said: ‘Knowledge is despair if it's all by itself without wisdom.’
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If you recognise some of your own patterns or beliefs in the anecdote I’ve shared about my own scattergun approach to learning about business, here’s some things I’ve implemented in my own work that might help you too to get out of it:
1. Read widely then discern
While it is important to read widely about your business at the start, continuing to do so may limit your ability to focus. Read widely, and read reviews of those you read, until you settle on a limited number of sources that you are sure are legitimate, trustworthy and knowledgeable. Then focus your attention there and follow those instructions and recipes.
2. Implement fully then evaluate
Once you’ve settled on the right teacher (or a VERY small number of teachers) follow their coaching or training fully. I’ve worked with enough clients at this point in my business to have experienced people abandoning a strategy before its complete. ‘Bright shiny object’ syndrome has never been more of an issue than it is now, with all of our feeds filled up with new ideas, hacks and ‘opportunities’. Discipline yourself to see a strategy through to the end and plan time to go back over what you’ve done and the results you’ve achieved. This is the assimilation part. This is turning your knowledge into wisdom.
3. More milk, less water
The final component to becoming more like Saraswati’s Hamsa in your business is choosing more milk and rejecting more water. In business this means that after completing your evaluation in step 2, above, you replicate the strategy doing more of what was successful and leaving behind the parts that didn’t give you the results you were after.
For example, if you implemented a strategy to sell your retreat that involved Instagram ads, an info session and a letterbox drop, and you found you had enrolments from the first two initiatives but not the last, next time forget the postcards and double-down on the ads.
If you’d like more Yoga-inspired business coaching, here are three options:
Join me on Retreat in Thailand here: https://www.amymcdonald.com.au/retreats
Consider hiring me as your coach here: https://www.amymcdonald.com.au/coaching
Tune in to my weekly Yoga biz training podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/abundant-yoga-teacher-podcast/id1085413029
[1] Danielou, Alain (1991) The Myths and Gods of India, Inner Traditions International, Rochester, Vermont.
[2] Ibid, p260