Green Lentil and Winter Vegetable Stew
November 15, 2022
Puy Lentil and Black Olive Ragout
November 29, 2022
DO YOU KNOW THAT THE HIGHEST PRINCIPLE IN YOGA HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BECOMING STRONGER OR MORE FLEXIBLE ON YOUR YOGA MAT?…. THOUGH IT MAY REQUIRE SOME STRENGTH AND FLEXIBILITY OF MIND!
The highest principle in Yoga has nothing to do with being super flexible or strong in the body, though it requires something of both on a mental level to even begi nto adhere to it. Being the highest principle it is also a difficult one to uphold, and can take a life-time’s work. Yet, as you read on I hope you’ll agree it is definitely worth doing our best with!
It is the principle with which Mahatma Gandhi is said to have brought down the British Empire. He and his followers refused to resort to violent means to oppose the forces of colonisation. And yet they triumphed over the armed forces of this country.
The principle in Sanskrit is ahimsa.
It is often translated as non-violence, but I prefer non-harming, as violence implies a physical act. The harm caused by not adhering to the principle of ahimsa is not only caused through physical acts, but also through our words and even our thoughts, according to the teachings.
Ahimsa is a cornerstone of India’s ancient philosophical tradition, and is featured repeatedly in the Vedas, that old, old wonderful body of knowledge bequeathed to humanity by India’s rishis – the sages from India’s Golden Age, centuries back in time.
The sage Maharishi Patanjali, who compiled the Yoga Sutras, a classical text of Raja Yoga (the Yoga of the Mind), includes ahimsa at the top of his list of five ethical practices known as Yamas. These are to be cultivated by any sincere sadhaka (spiritual aspirant) for support on their spiritual path.
As ahimsa is at the top of this list, scholars and teachers declare to us that this indicates that ahimsa is the highest principle. It is said to be the principle upon which the subsequent ethical practices hang: truthfulness, continence, non-stealing, and non-covetousness.
Patanjali tells us, in the Yoga Sutras, that whether done by us, caused by us or allowed to be done by someone else, harming and negative thoughts, words and actions cause “endless misery”.
We can see it in our own lives. Our boss has a go at us, perhaps because he or she has an unreasonable superior creating pressure; we feel bad and unhappy and might go home feeling tense and pressured, with a short fuse. We get angry with our spouse or partner, or unfairly impatient and mean with our child. The spouse or child is very hurt and does not forget the hurt, and may not sleep well, and then also be tired and have a short fuse the next day. The child may never forget the words, the blame and accompanying shame. The psyche of the child can be affected as this memory and hurt settles deeply within, perhaps laying the ground for future patterns of sadness, hurt, fear or anger outbursts. And so the story goes on and the harm is self-perpetuating.
I know that I remember hurtful things said to me as a child by a neighbour. The memory and feelign of it has stuck with me all these years. And yet I bet the neighbour who said them probably can’t even recall it.
We all want to do and be our best in this world I am sure of this. Even though we may not always manage it.
If ahimsa is the highest principle, it is also perhaps the hardest principle to adhere to.
Any one of the ethical principles or Yamas of Raja Yoga will stretch us to our limits. We could work on just one for a lifetime. And ahimsa obviously is like this.
We may be able to restrain from obviously harmful actions,such as acts of physical violence. However, even harmful actions can take subtle forms and we may not always see our actions for what they are. We all can act unconsciously and harm intentionally or unintentionally. We are all at times courageously truthful with ourselves and take responsibility for our impulses to act. And at other times we are unable to take that responsibility: something in the unconscious is activated, usually some point of pain. We can all also be knowingly or unknowingly untruthful with ourselves about the real motives behind our impulses to act and the harmful effect of our impulses.
This is because such acts are usually impulses, triggered by hidden pain points in our own subconscious. Hurt people hurt, as the saying goes. (And here we can reflect upon how the second Yama, satya or truthfulness, holds up ahimsa).
Refraining from harmful speech when we are triggered, and when one or more of these pain points in the subconscious is activated, is even harder that refraining from harmful action.
Yogis recognise that the tongue is hard to control – both in terms of its chatter and its cravings for taste. We have all experienced, if we can be honest with ourselves, how difficult it can be to refrain from gossiping and back-biting, especially if we are in such company and feel peer pressure to join in. The teachings advise us to choose our company carefully to protect ourselves from just this.
And also we all know, how difficult it can be to bite our lip or “hold our tongue” when we feel wronged or slighted.
Even harder to control are the movements of harmful or negative thoughts through our minds. We can want these thoughts to go away with all our might, and yet they might taunt us until eventually in some weaker momen, they win!
Patanjali gives us some good techniques for working with these kind of challenges in the Yoga Sutras.
Yoga teaches us that practicing restraint to the best of our capacity, over a long period of time, will gradually weaken the hold of these harming patterns. Doing long and regular practice of asanas, pranayama, and meditation over a prolonged period of time will weaken the hold that negative thoughts and impulses to act in harmful ways have over us. Through the practices we begine to purify the subtle body within which the mind-stuff resides, and we anchor ourselves more and more in the body of awareness which is beyond the reach of the mind.
The teachings are that we have a personal duty to uphold ahimsa as much as possible, to reduce harm the hearm that negatiivity causes to ourselves and to others.
According to the teachings, we also have a social and even global duty to uphold ahimsa in our choices, so that not only are we not causing harm directly, but we are not supporting harm and thereby causing harm indirectly.
In our modernd day world, his can include things like reducing our consumption of products with single use plastics which are harming the planet. Also, reducing our use hygiene and household products in plastic containers and with chemicals that harm the environment. When we go on holiday, we might use a more eco-friendly sunscreen so we don’t pollute the seas when we swim. Choosing organic foods that have not been grown with harsh chemicals that are destroying the topsoil by killing the microorganisms in it, is also an act of ahimsa. Clothes that are ethically produced in fair trade circumstances, and that are made of natural fibres that will not put micro plastics into the environment, is supporting non-harming of people and nature.
Perhaps the greatest expression of ahimsa for Yogis is adhering to a vegetarian diet. And whilst milk has traditionally been a prized food in Yoga and Ayurveda, these days the dairy industry has a cruelty to it making a vegan diet perhaps the best choice on the path of ahimsa.
There is immense suffering, needless to say, in the rearing of animals in unnatural and often inhumane circumstances these days, isn’t there? It is the one thing I regularly pray for: that we might cease turning a blind eye to this suffering, in which millions of animals are slaughtered daily around the world.
Christie Hinde has called factory farming the greatest crime against Mother Nature and so it is. Millions endure a torturous life only to end their days in the slaughterhouse. The forests are destroyed to support this mass production of animal products, and there is so much more negative impact on Mother Nature and indisputably on our health and well-being.
Animals are sentient beings. We all know this, esepcially if we keep pets, and science now accepts this.They have feelings and a range of emotions just like us. They experience great fear and distress in the farming industry and slaughterhouse. Yoga teaches us that the chemicals of these emotions go into our bodies and affect not only our body, but also our own states of mind with agitating molecules of emotion.
Ahimsa is just one reason that the Yogic diet is a vegetarian diet, but it’s a very important reason on the Yoga path.
Let’s do our best, in little daily acts and in our choices, to remember the principle of ahimsa. We will fall down. We will hurt, and we will be hurt.
And at these times, let’s extend ahimsa to ourselves. When we have hurt others or are hurt by others, we can practice ahimsa in the form of forgiveness and compassion towards self and other.
None of us really want to hurt. I truly believe this. We hurt because we are hurt and the ahimsa teachings clearly show that we pay the price.
I have not come across a word for love or any teachings on love in the Raja Yoga Sutras, and yet this is where this major teaching of ahimsa leads us.
We are not islands. Our choices and actions have a ripple effect, like a pebble thrown into a pond.
In cultivating ahimsa, in making concerted effort to reduce harm in thought, word and deed, in being ready to forgive and not harbour grudges and resentments, we are supporting a more loving and caring world: a world that I know we all want to see.
“Be the change you want to see in the world” (Mahatma Gandhi), remember this huge principle of ahimsa.
A PRACTICE FOR THE MIND:
When you are struggling with negative thoughts, it can be hard to change or stop them. Instead of fighting them, a good way to break the attachment is to recite a mantra, inwardly or outwardly.
Try either one of these –
Om sham will bring calm
Om ram, will bring a sense of containment and centring.
IF YOU’D LIKE TO JOIN US FOR A “TEA WITH PATANJALI” YOGA SUTRAS STUDY GROUP, PLEASE CONTACT ME..
