Journey into the trackless waste

In ancient times, Buddhist seekers would retreat from civilization into "the trackless waste" to find truth, according to Touching Enlightenment, by Reginald A. Ray. There, in the chaos of the wilderness, with no intervening authorities or rules, the practitioner could directly experience primordial reality, or truth. As the forest has receded and become domesticated, Ray writes, we now turn to the "forest" of the human body, "a new terrain of chaos," leaving the thinking process behind, to explore "our most irreducible person."

And that, in a nutshell, is yoga—a walk on the wild side.