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Dear Friends,
The yogic concept of Saocha is about cleanliness, or purity, of both the body and the mind. This practice brings a kind of clarity and subtly of being. To practice it is to clean away all the dirt that may clutter the mind so that perception of the Infinite is possible. The mind has many layers. The outer-most layer of the mind is the physical body that resides in this physical world. Therefore there is a need to purify the body as well as the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. The first act you can do to develop in this practice is to keep your environment simple and clean so that you are surrounded with a feeling of aliveness and harmony. It can make a real difference when you create a beautiful room to be in or a home garden you can really feel alive and whole in, that expresses beauty and harmony. Then how you attend to your body also makes a real difference in your experience. If you keep it fresh and alive inside and out you become vibrant. This is your ground, your vehicle in this world. It needs to be clean, fresh and vibrant to stay healthy and function optimally. Do you eat foods that give you radiant health? Do you bath, take steam baths, sauna, hot tub, engage in practices to purify your body? How about fasting? It is an ancient yogic practice to fast four days before the new and full moon (Ekadashi) to cleans and purify the body and then if more is desired also fast on the new and full moon. It helps balance the fluids in the body and maintain health. Modern research has supported this practice showing that fasting one day a week extends life expectancy. These bathing and health practices make your physical body healthy and vibrant, but what of your mind and spirit? That too needs purification. A pure mind is a clean mind, a clear mind devoid of mess and debris, but how does one purify the mind? The mind can be purified in a clean vessel by doing meditation upon the Divine, and by maintaining pure thoughts. Stress is a big problem in the world today. Although people are stressed by many different situations, much stress is self-made. If you want to solve your stress, learn to love yourself. Learn to appreciate what you have. Learn to feel that grace is in every moment of your life and all that you have is given in grace. Be happy with who you are, what you have and the manifestation that is your life. Find the joy. Find the goodness and the brightness. Find your peace with what is and then in that brightness, that contentment, come to the equanimity where mind settles and acceptance, love and peace ensue. When you change your habitual thinking patterns to embrace self-love and a positive outlook it purifies the mind. It clears out the sludge and when you connect to the bright light of Divinity within, that light brings joy, clarity and a pure and open heart. Spirits brighten. This is where it all starts, with your spiritual connection and your mental habits. But if you want to manifest your good intentions, you will also need to practice Saocha to keep your body vibrant and healthy. When mind and body have become clear vehicles for spirit, your relationship to everything around you changes. It becomes an expression of your inner state of well-being, an opportunity to express you pure thoughts and pure heart in the world. For more on all of this and how to practically put it into play in your life, you can go to my book Living Love, the Yoga of Yama and Niyama. Blessings, Maetreyii Ma
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Dear Friends,
I have been very busy this last three months finishing and publishing my new book on Yama and Niyama called Living Love, The Yoga of Yama and Niyama: Timeless Teachings for Transformation and Awakening. It is now available on Amazon, Kindle, Ibooks and through bookstores and it is now time for me to get back to my blog! I am very excited to be able to offer these teachings to everyone. If you have an interest in yogic teachings and how you might incorporate them in your life to help you with the challenges that arise on your spiritual journey, then I strongly suggest you read this book. It gives far more insight and assistance than this simple blog. Niyama So far in this blog we have explored the practices of Yama, the behaviors to avoid in spiritual life, including doing harm, lying, stealing, excess focus on desires, and accumulating beyond our needs. Now we will focus on the next limb of Asthanga Yoga, Niyama; those practices and habits that need to be incorporated in your life to be able to awaken from conditioned mind into the experience of Self-realization. Niyama includes Saocha exploration of cleanliness or purity of both body and mind, a kind of clarity and subtly of being; Santosha: maintaining contentment and wellbeing; Tapas: practices and attitudes that move us beyond our obsession with our own body and ego and make us aware of the love we share with all beings; Svadhyaya: the practice of Self study to gain knowledge of the true nature of our own existence; and Ishvara Pranidhana: learning to let go, surrendering to a higher nature, God, the infinite Brahma. All of these practices of Niyama form an approach to life that creates attitudes and ways of being in the world that foster living in truth and being connected in a deep way to our selves and all of life. They develop a psychology that can sustain higher states of consciousness. Without working on our attitudes and action in the world, meditation often falls short of our expectations. We become like a leaky vessel. You pour the water of life in but the vessel can’t hold it and everything you gain dissipates. However with these practices of Yama and Niyama we have a road map of how to develop attitudes and behaviors that allow us to heal the wounds within that make us leaky vessels. We become whole and at peace with ourselves, more able to see and contain the knowledge and grace that the Divine bestows on us each and every day. Next topic to explore will be Saocha! The final practice of Yama the yogic avoidance's, is Aparigraha, that is, to avoid accumulating beyond your needs. It literally means to not (a) grab, hoard, hold on to things or take more than you need (parigraha). It encourages a life of simplicity and generosity on all levels, having what is truly necessary and no more.
This practice encourages you to not accumulate excessive material objects, as the mind becomes engrossed in and bound by material objects when you do. Having more than you need does not usually lead to satisfaction but instead to an increased desire to acquire more and more. It makes the mind cluttered as well as the house. It clutters the mind with desire. In addition, what you have gotten in excess will no doubt leave another with less than their due. A kind of imbalance occurs in your life, and mental balance cannot be maintained in this circumstance. Aparigraha does not mean that you should sell all that you own and simply have the shirt on your back. It isn’t that you should not meet your needs, and depending upon your situation, your needs will vary. However if you accumulate beyond your needs the practice of Aparigraha is lost. Then the house becomes filled with an accumulation of so many things you don't need. They become a clutter in the environment and where is your cleanliness in your cluttered environment? Have what you need, take what you need for your own self, for your own family, for your basic wants, but when you accumulate beyond your needs it leaves the mind cluttered and it instills fear. Most people accumulate because it makes them feel safe. You place your welfare in material objects and not in the Divine Self. This does not generally work. It will not buy you permanent safety; it will only buy you suffering. This acquisition is the path to hell. True safety, true shelter, can only be gotten in the Infinite Entity. No other shelter will be with you when you are old and feeble. And when your time to depart the physical world has come, there is no other shelter for you. You will not be able to take all of these objects with you. So do not make them your shelter. It will only cause you suffering. Have what you need to utilize for a good life. This is appropriate and is the maxim of Aparigraha. Rather than accumulating more perhaps it is better to use wealth in service to living beings. Excess accumulation of wealth not only harms you by misdirecting your trust and energy, but it harms others as well, for when excess material wealth lies in the hands of a few it creates a lack of needed resources among others. Practicing generosity instead of hording leads to a more balanced and spiritual life. That is why the yogis say live a simple life. Lead a life based in the solid ground of being and the love that weaves all living beings into one interdependent, interwoven community. Put your trust in your Divine source rather than what you can accumulate. The Sanskrit Brahmacharya blends two words, Brahma meaning God and Charya meaning to follow. This practice involves seeing everything in this universe as the manifestation of the Brahma, the Primal Source of Being. Some scholars limit this transmutation of desires in Brahmacharya to controlling sexual desires and the practice of celibacy. Although the idea of celibacy and restraint is often associated with Bramacharya, it is not actually the deepest interpretation.
Though, for certain spiritual purposes celibacy may be beneficial, in the deeper understanding of Brahmacarya one sees all desires of the body and mind as manifestations of the desire for the one true Divine Self. all desires are dedicated to Brahma, the primordial Self of all beings. This practice is based on a the fundamental knowledge that all existence is composed of one eternal unending self aware consciousness and that each and every object of this universe from a blade of grass to your body is in its essence composed of this primordial consciousness. All beings long for and return to this state of wholeness where lasting happiness and true fulfillment abide. But living in this temporal world of forms and colors we become forgetful of this source of being. Our restless yearning for our eternal source gets attached to different forms and experiences in the world that we hope will make us happy. We believe that if only we acquire this or that object or person we desire, then we will be happy. But of course all things change in this world and that which acquiring today brings us happiness, tomorrow becomes the source of our suffering when circumstances change. When we desire something, be it an object, power, a person, wealth or sexual pleasure, the desire for form is an externalization of our deeper yearning for the lasting happiness that comes when we return to our primordial source of being. We forget that it is the eternal Brahma for which we long. And we fail to recognize that all forms are composed of the one eternal being, consciousness, love Divine. We fail to see that what attracts us in that for which yearn is the true nature of all that is, the infinite primordial Being. Brahmacharya is a practice of remembrance of what we really long for in all of our desires. When we are connected to truth and we practice this remembrance all things change. Suddenly the ordinary world becomes Devine. Brahma, the eternal beloved is everywhere is all things, all people we know, in every act, in all life, in everything that surrounds us. Then we truly live in grace. So this practice involves transmuting your worldly desires into longing for God. As a practice it entails remembrance the deep divine nature of all that is and thus transmuting desires for worldly things to desires for the Divine. This curbing of the desire mind brings us in touch with our deeper need that drives all desires. The deed for lasting happiness and wholeness of being that we mistakenly believe can be satisfied with temporary worldly fixes. This deep practice does not involve shrinking from the world or not enjoying life. If you want to share a pizza and a movie with some friends and have a fun evening, do so. But remember the deeper longing that is manifesting the in casual desire. Remember the infinite One Self in the action you are doing, in the pizza, in your friends, in the movie, in everything. As is pointed out by Krishna in a famous passage in the Bhagavad Gita, the one doing the action is Brahma, the one receiving the action is Brahma, the act itself is Brahma and the offering or object is also Brahma. This is Brahmacharya, to truly follow or see Brahma, the primordial essence of being. In this practice the transmuted energy held in our desires propels us towards the infinite truth. Om Madhu, Om Madhu, Om Madhu. Asteya is the yogic practice of avoiding taking what does not belong to you and is not freely offered to you. It includes greedy desires expressed in our thoughts, words, and our deeds. There are many reasons we may covet what we do not have and be jealous, feeling someone else has more than we do. Maybe they have success, money, popularity, health, power, a good job, a partner we wish we had, or even spiritual experiences we want to have. Whatever it is we feel another has and we wish was ours instead of theirs, it comes from a since of lack within ourselves, a feeling that we are not enough as we are.
The desire to take from others is inherently rooted in our own sense of inadequacy and discontent with ourselves and what life has given us. We feel dis-empowered and unable to manifest what we feel we need in life. From this since of personal dis-empowerment comes the need to somehow acquire what ever it is we feel we need from outside of ourselves. We begin to resent people who have things we do not have and to begin to feel justified in taking them. This can lead to actual theft, not only of property but of ideas, relationships and even identity. If not actual theft, it leads to jealousy and avarice. And this leads to more unhappiness and discontent with ourselves and with our lives in general. So goes the downward spiral of low self worth, discontent, dis-empowerment, resentment, anger, jealousy, greed. This leads to more since of lack and finally bitterness, resentment and despair. It is not the yogic way, nor is it how to have a since of well-being. Even the rich may wish for what they do not have and live in miserable discontent as a result. Those who are successful thieves may be glory in their success for a time, but as they continue to take from others they begin to feel very afraid of others taking from them. They build walls of distrust with all and barrier themselves behind their own growing fears and ruthless attitudes. They do not walk a path towards happiness or psychological health. So the yogis of ancient times warned against following this self-destructive path, encouraging us to be honest, do no harm and not covet what others have. This is the way to belief in ourselves, contentment and enjoyment of our lives, however simple they may be. It is the path to self-empowerment, realization that we can make our own lives beautiful on our own. By developing positive attitudes, generosity of heart and mind, and seeing what is good about our own lives rather than living in the shadow of thoughts that lead to feeling we are somehow less than someone else who has something we don’t, we move toward well being and wholeness. This is part of Dharma, the way towards the one eternal Self. Dear Friends,
This week we will explore Satya, the practice of truthfulness and the second tenant of the Yamas. This is the practice of not deceiving oneself or others. Being truthful with others and with ones self is extremely important on the spiritual path, as the goal of yoga is to know the ultimate truth. Satya is not simply literal truth. It is compassionate truthfulness - truth given with a sense of benevolence. This benevolent truthfulness imbues truth with the quality of Ahimsa, or the intent of not doing harm. This is truth used to heal and to bring people towards their own deep love within, not to hurt them or scar them. For example if the father of someone you know has passed away and you need to tell the daughter, you would not want to email the information to her, or just say it casually while in passing. Though that would be truthful, it would probably also be hurtful. So instead to follow Satya would be to share the information with kindness and consideration for her feelings, taking time to sit with her and gently tell her in a supportive atmosphere. Satya requires kindness in your words and in your deeds as well as honesty. Now the razors edge of the practice of Satya is distinguishing between what is compassionate truthfulness and the little white lies we tell ourselves and others that are self serving and deceitful. I once knew some orange robed swamis in India I was spending time with. I thought, now these guys are yogis. They have dedicated their lives to yogic practices and service to humanity. But then I noticed one day they were putting out a newsletter and in it they wrote about an event that occurred in which they completely distorted the description of the event and basically lied. When I commented on this and said it was against Satya, they said it was for peoples own good. They were so dedicated to their mission that they perceived the lie as a practice of Satya, bending the truth for what they felt was people’s own good. I found this experience very disturbing because from my view they were actually lying to people and not giving people accurate information so they could make up their own minds. I felt they were justifying lying for self-serving purposes, but they saw it differently. You see the same in political campaigns and on some news stations where the truth is intentionally distorted in order to influence people towards a particular viewpoint or action. To me this is not what is meant by benevolent truthfulness. To practice truthfulness with compassion does not mean to lie to people to serve a purpose you believe in. It means to practice being truthful with deep love for the person you are speaking to. It also means being deeply honest with yourself about your strengths and your weaknesses without tearing yourself down and diminishing your own being. To know yourself, both what you are good at and your faults and failings is an important part of self-honesty. But it is also important to recognize the beauty and love that is essential to your deeper nature, to acknowledge your divine essential core. This is real self-honesty. Loving yourself and all beings unconditionally is the result of deep and perceptive self-honesty. We are all flawed and in our deepest core we are all divine. This world is a place of pain but it is also a place of great beauty and joy. The edict “Know thy Self” is the true essence of the practice of Satya. Dear Friends,
This week we will explore Satya, the practice of truthfulness and the second tenant of the Yamas. This is the practice of not deceiving oneself or others. Being truthful with others and with ones self is extremely important on the spiritual path, as the goal of yoga is to know the ultimate truth. Satya is not simply literal truth. It is compassionate truthfulness - truth given with a sense of benevolence. This benevolent truthfulness imbues truth with the quality of Ahimsa, or the intent of not doing harm. This is truth used to heal and to bring people towards their own deep love within, not to hurt them or scar them. For example if the father of someone you know has passed away and you need to tell the daughter, you would not want to email the information to her, or just say it casually while in passing. Though that would be truthful, it would probably also be hurtful. So instead to follow Satya would be to share the information with kindness and consideration for her feelings, taking time to sit with her and gently tell her in a supportive atmosphere. Satya requires kindness in your words and in your deeds as well as honesty. Now the razors edge of the practice of Satya is distinguishing between what is compassionate truthfulness and the little white lies we tell ourselves and others that are self serving and deceitful. I once knew some orange robed swamis in India I was spending time with. I thought, now these guys are yogis. They have dedicated their lives to yogic practices and service to humanity. But then I noticed one day they were putting out a newsletter and in it they wrote about an event that occurred in which they completely distorted the description of the event and basically lied. When I commented on this and said it was against Satya, they said it was for peoples own good. They were so dedicated to their mission that they perceived the lie as a practice of Satya, bending the truth for what they felt was people’s own good. I found this experience very disturbing because from my view they were actually lying to people and not giving people accurate information so they could make up their own minds. I felt they were justifying lying for self-serving purposes, but they saw it differently. You see the same in political campaigns and on some news stations where the truth is intentionally distorted in order to influence people towards a particular viewpoint or action. To me this is not what is meant by benevolent truthfulness. To practice truthfulness with compassion does not mean to lie to people to serve a purpose you believe in. It means to practice being truthful with deep love for the person you are speaking to. It also means being deeply honest with yourself about your strengths and your weaknesses without tearing yourself down and diminishing your own being. To know yourself, both what you are good at and your faults and failings is an important part of self-honesty. But it is also important to recognize the beauty and love that is essential to your deeper nature, to acknowledge your divine essential core. This is real self-honesty. Loving yourself and all beings unconditionally is the result of deep and perceptive self-honesty. We are all flawed and in our deepest core we are all divine. This world is a place of pain but it is also a place of great beauty and joy. The edict “Know thy Self” is the true essence of the practice of Satya. Dear Friends,
This week we are discussing Ahimsa, the principle of non-injury or non-violence. It literally means to not harm and is the first and most basic of five actions to avoid outlined in the Yama’s. The Yamas and the Niyamas are considered by some to be moral or ethical codes. Though they may serve as such, in reality they are practical guidelines for behaviors that lead to psychological health and spiritual realization. Without some adherence to these behavioral guidelines it is extremely difficult to awaken the Divinity within. The fertile psychological ground needed for spiritual awakening is cultivated through integrating these ways of being into your life. To follow Ahimsa is to cultivate awareness of the impact of your behavior upon others and to make every effort possible to do the least harm to other people, animals, plants, and the planet. It means to live with a reverence for all life and to be as intentional as you are able in your actions towards others. Naturally we all do harm at times, unintentionally, to one extent or another. But to practice Ahimsa is to do your very best to act with loving kindness and compassion towards all beings and avoid doing harm whenever possible. The practice of Ahimsa has become well known throughout the East and the West. It was used as a cornerstone of Gandhi’s work to free India from British rule and later picked up by Martin Luther King in the civil rights efforts of the 1960’s in the United States. It was used in South Africa and continues to have strong influence in movements for non-violent communication and non-violent conflict resolution. Its potential for interpersonal and even international application is profound. Imagine a world where everyone did their best to be kind and compassionate to each other. Where people resolved their conflicts with loving kindness and compassion, really listening to each other. The realization of this vision starts with each of us, here and now. We each have the power to make the commitment to observe, to witness our own actions and to set the intention in all of our actions to do no harm. We have the ability to take the time to notice others, their needs, and to do service to all living beings in our thoughts, in our words and in our deeds. By setting the intention to live in loving kindness and with care for all, we become the harbingers of a new dawn, a new reality in which all might prosper and be able to realize their full potential. When we practice doing no harm, we automatically move towards compassion. The intention of doing no harm is the first step and the foundation for living love in life. Dear Friends,
For thousands of years in the East, sages of the past have contemplated the human condition and how to work with our basic problems. Through deep meditation, inner reflection and self-realization these great men and women have found a way through suffering to happiness. They called this path to truth and happiness Yoga. Yoga means to unite, to yoke together the small sense of self with the great Self of all beings. It may come as a surprise to some who have only know yoga as a type of exercise, but yoga is actually an ancient philosophical base of esoteric wisdom that has been foundational to the development of a number of world religions including Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism. These are ancient teachings but they hold true even in today’s world. In the 8-fold path of yoga, laid down by Patanjali in a seminal text called The Yoga Sutras,written in about 200AD, a clear life style is outlined that not only emphasizes meditation, breath work (pranayama) and yoga postures (asanas) but also practices for how we live our daily lives and relate to those around us. These practices are called Yama and Niyama. They are practical guidelines that help us live our lives in such a way as to make our thinking clear and our perception subtle, so that we can really understand what love means and how to express our hearts in the world. The practices of Yama and Niyama give us guidance on how to really be a spiritual beingin this world and prepare our minds so that we can experience directly the One Eternal Divine Self of all beings. In yoga no beliefs are taken for granted, just on faith. The whole focus of yoga is about personal experience, your personal realization of fundamental truths. This starts with learning how to live love in your life in the world here and now! The Yamas are things to avoid, and of course their flip side:
The Niyamas are practices to incorporate:
Next week we will start by talking about non-violence, Ahimsa. A big topic; the root of the civil rights movement, the base of Gandhi’s work freeing India form British rule, a base for South African protests, a very important concept not only in world movements but in each of our lives. Stay tuned for next week! Hello Again Dear Friends,
This past Sunday at our meditation evening here at the Ashram, I was really inspired by the discussion after meditation exploring the Baba talk that had happened. The topic we were discussing dealt with the highs and lows of life. Everyone’s life has times when it seems it is all good and you are on top of the world and other times when life is really a struggle and difficult things are happening. There are two basic reasons for this. The first is that we are identified with our body and mind, the small ego self. Our sense of welfare and happiness revolves around this personal idea of who we are in the world. The second reason is that the world around us, not to mention the entire universe, is large and all the other beings have needs as well. They are trying to find their happiness just as we are, but in the play of life the needs of all individuals flow together... sometimes in opposition to each other and are subject to the laws of nature. Sometimes you are the hunter and sometimes the hunted. It’s just how it goes. Observing life, the yogis of the past realized that most people, and really most living beings, are stuck in a no win scenario. We struggle to acquire what we desire our need to be well off and happy and we fear anything that will cause serious loss, illness or death. But life has both of these elements - happiness and pain, health and illness, birth and death. Our struggle to avoid one and cling to the other becomes the real source of our pain and suffering. Yogis contemplating deeply realized to find happiness we need to be able to embrace both our joy and our pain. As long as we keep running and fearing, the inevitable chases us. But when we stop and really look at life deeply we can discover the deeper stream of happiness, the love that runs through all human experiences because it is our fundamental core. When we do this we become able to really embrace life in all its fullness, really love unconditionally and find the deeper meaning and happiness that lies with in our own being. And we discover compassion. Best wishes and blessings, Maetreyii Ma |
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