SADHVI BHAGAWATI SARASWATI says the practice of “yoga” leads automatically to a life in which our choices are ones made in an awareness of unity and oneness
The Indian sage Patanjali gave us the eight limbs of yoga, or what are called “ashtanga” yoga. They include all of that which we currently identify as yoga: the physical postures or asanas, the breath exercises or pranayama, meditation or dhyana. However, the foundation of the eight limbs of yoga, the first two limbs on the eight-limbed tree are called the yamas and the niyamas. They are the do’s and don’ts of a yogic life. With five of each, they are considered the universal Ten Commandments of a righteous life, of any race or religion. The yamas, limb number one, the very roots of the tree of yoga, include the following: ahimsa (nonviolence), satya (truthfulness), asteya (non-stealing), apigraha (non-hoarding) and brahmacharya (sexual restraint/integrity in our sensual relations). The yamas are inextricable, crucial aspects of any true yoga practice. Without them, our asanas become acrobatics or aerobics, not “yoga” in its fullest meaning.
I have been part of several campaigns undertaken by the United Nations. I have been on steering committees of the United Nations and the World Bank for the Moral Imperative to End Extreme Poverty. I have taken an active and enthusiastic part in the Plan of Action to End Atrocity Crimes by the Office of Genocide Prevention and Responsibility to Protect, and I have been honoured to speak at programmes organised by UNFPA on the rights of women. Additionally, I am privileged to serve as Secretary-General of our Global Interfaith WASH Alliance, which working with UNICEF and other organizations, is dedicated to harnessing the power and influence of faith and faith leaders to bring about a revolution toward water, sanitation and hygiene in India.
In all of these cases, the yamas of Patanjali provide us with universal tenets that directly address and right the wrongs.
Non-violence does not simply imply that we must refrain from injuring or killing others with guns, missiles or poison. Violence is present in the words we speak – both to others and ourselves. Violence is especially present in the words we speak that incite others. In the United States and other “free” countries, we are granted a nearly inviolable right to freedom of speech, a right which we safeguard, hold dearly and wish that people in every country had access to such a right.
Yet, just as my right to flail my own arms around in space (certainly a right to which I am entitled) ends where my flailing arms bop you on the nose, for surely your right not to be bopped on the nose supersedes my right to flail my arms, similarly my right to speak whatever I want ends where your right not to be injured or killed by my speech begins.
Obviously rape is violent. However, we cannot claim to be adherents of ahimsa simply by distancing ourselves from rapists. If we do not do everything in our power to prevent rape, we are also culpable. If we do not, fully, to the very extent of our influence and impact, do everything we can to ensure that every woman has autonomy over her own body, our practice of ahimsa is incomplete.
Similarly, our commitment to non-violence must also include ensuring that none of our actions (either of commission or omission) contributes to the suffering and death of our brothers and sisters due to lack of clean water, toxic soil and polluted air, not to mention dearth of food due to the way that water and grain are cycled through animal agriculture.
I may not break into someone’s home and steal their possessions or hoard all the apples from our collective apple orchard. However, if through my action and inaction, through my choices in stores and restaurants, our sisters and brothers across the planet are having their land, their water, their food, their safety, their health, their freedom and their dignity stolen then I am stealing from them, in defiance of the tenet of asteya. If my choices of what to eat, what to wear and how to live are not those which embrace vegetarianism, fair-trade and organic agriculture, then I am also hoarding – hoarding the water, grain, land and resources of the planet, against the yama of apigraha.
The practice of brahmacharya impels us to exercise restraint and integrity in our sexual relations. This includes, I believe, an implicit injunction to protect the sexual integrity of others. So, no, I must not rape. But I also must not be someone whose silence permits rape and sexual misconduct to continue.
When we celebrate International Day of Yoga on June 21st we are not celebrating aerobics, calisthenics or stretching exercises. We are celebrating Yoga, ultimate union, a union that — beginning with uniting the body and the breath and leading to a union of body, mind and spirit — takes us into a union between ourselves and the Divine. It is a union of our small, isolated, individual, limited, physical existence, with all of Creation.
In separation, the opposite of yoga, the world is made up of objects. We are each the “subject” of our own subjective reality. Everyone and everything else is an object — the animals whose flesh becomes our meal, whose skin becomes our car seat or belt, the impoverished sweatshop workers who produce our “rock bottom” priced clothes, the precious trees of the Amazon felled by the acre to make room for the grazing of hamburgers-to-be, the coffee and cotton pickers whose children have birth defects due to the toxicity of their pesticide-ridden working environment.
In a yogic life though, in a life committed to the awareness and experience of unity we realise that these are all us. Hence, we don’t need to put sticky notes on our computers to remind us to practice non-violence, to remind us not to steal or hoard, to remind us to live a pure life. The practice of “yoga” leads automatically to a life in which our choices are ones made in an awareness of unity and oneness.
This is what our world needs. As individuals, to overcome our depression, loneliness and numbness, we need to feel connected. As a society, in order to function well, we need to be connected and in harmony. As an international, global world family, we need to realize that we are inextricably connected to the web of life.
Yoga, a true realisation of union, could save not only our health, but also our planet.
Courtesy: https://www.sadhviji.org/
Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati, a Ph.D in Psychology, raised in an American family in Hollywood, California, was the Managing Editor for the monumental project of the 11-volume Encyclopedia of Hinduism. Her TEDx talk on her journey from “Hollywood to the HolyWoods” was watched by over 287,000 people and the documentary on her life was viewed online by nearly a quarter of a million people. Officially initiated into the order of Sanyas in the year 2000, she has been living at Parmarth Niketan in Rishikesh for 24 years, engaged in spiritual practice and service.