Contextualizing Yama and Niyama

Practitioners of yoga talk about the Yamas and Niyamas described in the yoga sutras - roughly translated as the internal and external disciplines, that are expected of an individual in order for him/her to evolve from being a ego centric person to being someone whose sense of identity involves all of creation. Some of them are ahimsa (non-violence), asteya (non-stealing), satya (truth telling), aparigraha (not wanting more than basic needs) and santosa (contentment) (the others are also pretty important but am not taking them right now because they are a little out of context, will come back to them later). Sadly, most people are content with naive interpretations of these important tenets.

Yoga practitioners speak of ahimsa all the time and may even practice it in their daily lives (in terms of their relationships with others including servants, bosses, friends and relations), but, might go ahead and work for a mining corporation which might be actively involved in sponsoring violence on tribals in order to grab hold of their land. If not, one might write software that helps these corporations accomplish their business needs. Even if none of this is true, we might consume so many products relentlessly thereby continuously pouring money into the hands of such corporations. While mining is only one instance of corporate violence, there are so many other means in which violence is unleashed on people by corporation. Does participating in all of this constitute ahimsa?

Asteya (non-stealing) and satya (truth) are great philosophies expounded by all religions and moralists. Patanjali, too, emphasizes on their importance. While, as yoga practitioners, we might be honest in our daily interactions, we might go and work in corporations that make their profits primarily through shady means, euphemistically termed managing the political climate, or might write software that help the stock markets, which no doubt are the ultimate centers of greed, falsehood, non-contentment and violence, to function. Making money through the global economy primarily means exploitation in some corner of the globe. The global economy is necessarily powered by greed and non-contentment (santosa has to necessarily be kicked out of the window before one can join the globalization bandwagon). How can hoping to make profits, careers and lives by participating (or living out of priorly made money through such means) constitute asteya or satya? While any act can be made legal by suitably passing a law through contacts with the high and the mighty, from the perspective of being morally apt, most acts of corporations come a miserable cropper. There certainly might be the occasional squeaky clean corporation (though I doubt it, being the silent beneficiary of some wrong somewhere is usually needed to make it big), they might still be promoting greed as a way of life and have to actively promote a highly environmentally unsustainable way of life so as to make profits for themselves. Would Patanjali approve of the same. I am quite confident that if he were to be alive today, he might be tempted to release Yama and Niyama v2.

Many yoga teachers talk about aparigraha (not wanting more than basic needs) but happily go and teach in rich countries or bring rich foreigners home and teach them thereby earning in a superior currency. Why not teach yoga to people from some impoverished nation like Ghana or Somalia? Why go to New Zealand and Canada and charge in USD? The local poor person does not even understand the amount being quoted. Obviously nothing wrong in teaching people from any particular country (ultimately all these national boundaries are stupid man made conceptions), it is clear that the reason most yoga teachers attract people from rich first world countries is the money. At the very least, is the money being obtained from the well to do channeled to the not so well to do? Sadly, this is mostly not the case. The institute might be functioning successfully in a hut, but the moment they make some money by teaching for money, they go and construct a building thereby getting to the cycle of needing to spend more time teaching for money. Is this aparigraha?

There is a desperately urgent need today to contextualize these high tenets of Yoga and not be satisfied with naive interpretations of them. Do we have the gumption to do so? The right action might vary for each individual but without a sincere acknowledgement of how our choices wreck havoc on other humans and the environment, right action cannot emerge. Can we contextualize our adherence to the limbs of yoga to todays day and age? Or are we going to be content with paying lip service and be comfortably ensconced in our lives and live as Neros guests?

1700000000000

The number of zeros have stunned and outraged us. Now what? Some say the corrupt should be arrested. True, the law has to take its natural course. But, will it make any change? The next person might only add a few more zeros to the already uncountably large number! We can only sigh that the system is so rotten and that they are all so pathetic. Many desperately hope for some Rang De Basanti style revolution or Mudhalvan style arrival of the deus ex machina! Obviously nothing like that is gonna happen. We also know that. I see elders throwing up their hands in despair and letting out a cry asking for the gods to intervene and transform the politicians! They are desperately concerned about the future their beloved nation and their progeny in this country. Everyone is confused why the ruling class is so rotten!

Is it really so hard to understand and to get to its root? Or is it that we have not really spent the time trying to understand why its all so wrong? How much time did we spend trying to find the perfect job / apartment / spouse? How much time have we spent in justifying our position in the hundreds of ridiculously trivial issues we have had with people around us? Have we spent even a fraction of it in trying to investigate why the politicians are like this? I mean real and true investigation and not cribbing and complaining. Is it so hard to understand the psyche of the people involved in these things? On the surface greed of politicians seem to have no end. But what is greed and what are its roots? I mean what can anyone or any family or even a whole town do with 170K crores of rupees? What is the underlying problem that manifests itself as greed? Isnt this question staring us at our face? Have we ever bothered to investigate along these lines? Or is it that the answers are so difficult to face for it also points a finger back at us? If we are genuinely / sincerely concerned about this would we still refuse to get to its root? There is no parent who will refuse to get into the root cause of the disease that is destroying the life of hir kid. Do we have that sincerity?

Its entirely an accident that Raja or anyone else accused of corruption was born in the families they were born in and exposed to the experiences they had and that we were born in our own families and exposed to our set of experiences. Our positions could have been swapped so easily. We were born in a place that provided us the means to exploit the world 'legally' and gratiate our senses and ego. Politicians have their own ways of doing the same. So what really is the difference? While many feel that it is perfectly understandable and even more ridiculously is an absolute necessity to: a.) pursue careers in order to make a name for themselves, b.) invest the inordinate amounts of money in real estate so as to 'grow' in the society, c.) feel pride at the number of people who work under them d.) feel great about the 'big' names they work with d.) Consume indiscriminately etc etc, but when the politicians do the same things in their own language, we are outraged. The stupidities we engage in or enormous. The exact same forces operate through politicians and the conditions around them make it manifest itself in the ways they do.

When such is the case, wouldnt a sincerely concerned person first clean up his/her act? Wouldnt such a person look at hirself with utter dispassion and with the sole aim of tapas or self cleansing in order to eliminate the virus from oneself that is causing havoc everywhere? The masters have always encouraged people to involve themselves in work as karma yoga and not to titillate ourselves. If one does not have the wherewithals to do so for whatever reasons, the least one was expected to do so was to unreservedly support such people - meaning just take care of their basic needs like food (the job of the house holder). But what are we up to these days? Even with 6 figure salaries per month (or three times that if earning in dollars), still we hesitate to give. Why? What are you doing with all the money that you are earning? We are happy to garland the image of Bharathiyar or Vivekananda now but we will happily let the living Bharathiyars and Vivekanandas starve! Can a society that lets it Bharathiyars and Vivekanadas be occupied with trivialities such as earning food and keeping the kid at home healthy progress? It will only encounter many such scams until its eventual annihilation. What are you going to do about it?

Finally, imo, this is the bottom line - if you are even minutely sincerely concerned about all the violence in this world (including the corruption of the politicians), you would sincerely go into yourselves and eliminate the same virus from you which is operating so destructively through the politicians!

Word Power

The deeper your silence, the more meaningful and powerful are your words!

பாரிஜாதம்

சிதரிக் கிடக்கும் பாரிஜாதம்,

கார்காலத்தின் வரவின் அடையாளம்!

Yoga for the stressed

The only real solution for the stressed is to sincerely enquire into why one is stressed and to go to its roots. All other techniques that the countless contemporary yoga schools prescribe, while temporarily useful, are ultimately futile by themselves. Further one needs to enquire who is stressed? Why is it needed to pursue a career, instead of doing that thing which is useful to society and one that brings one alive? Why is it needed to live a lifestyle that is not minimally simple? Why is it needed to put your kids into the biggest schools, instead of giving education that brings them alive and make them sensitive and compassionate human beings? Because the individuals have never seriously enquired into these, they have signed into a form of life that needs a lot of money and are forced to work their asses off. Even if office work environment is conducive, why do it if you are not interested in doing it? Baboons in a forest don't spend more than 3 hours a day getting their calories!

Simply speaking, all of these life style choices (career, big apartments, vacations abroad, shopping, loud marriages, being a success in society etc) are simply satisfying the mental construct called ego, which is simply an illusion and not the real you. Naturally, if one spends ones life working for mental constructs and not the real me, there will always be boredom, emptiness and suffering of various form leading to stress and depression. Will feeding a photo of us rid us of hunger? Why not understand this and undertake the real solution? It needs a little courage and sincere effort initially but very soon it becomes effortless. If not, one is continuously pushed towards more and more separation from the rest of creation - leading to more and more stress and loss of sensitiveness to the situations of others. This loss of sensitivity is probably the greatest of all suffering and it furthers the vicious cycle!

Lot of schools of yoga conduct special camps for the stressed corporate executives and their ilk. There are many websites that offer countless solutions. But, all of them only want to treat the stressed corporate executive but not question why is he/she stressed. Either they don't understand the real problem or don't want to disturb their source of income seriously.

While practicing long exhalation and asanas are useful temporary solutions, refusing to go deeper than that is simply refusing to treat the root cause! How long are we going to not acknowledge to ourselves the white elephant in us - the ego and its demands on our lives endlessly causing us to be stressed and causing others to be too!

श्वास

दीर्घ: सूक्ष्म: श्वास:

Breath needs to be long and subtle!