WE FUNNEL all ethical codes or precepts through three modes of practice: body, speech, and mind. We practice ahiṁsā (nonviolence) with regard to body, speech, and mind. We practice nonviolence in regard to our own body and to the bodies of others. Then we practice nonharming in how we speak to ourselves about ourselves and also how we speak to others. Of course nonviolence of speech also connotes the ability to listen. Speaking and listening go together. Then we practice nonharming in our own mind and also refrain from harmful thoughts about others. It’s always easier to critique the world than it is to see how we have and are contributing to the momentum of violence and inflexibility that we so easily see outside of ourselves. Negative gossip, not kind and thoughtful reflection, sells newspapers.
I was once in an elevator in downtown Toronto with a five-year-old boy. We were both fascinated by the recent developments in elevator technology in which instead of pressing a button to take us to the floor of our destination we were asked to simply say “Floor Thirty-three” out loud and a computer would signal the elevator to take us to the appropriate floor.
Realizing this computer was impersonal, the five-year-old started blurting out all kinds of things. “Stupid elevator” turned into every other form of slang he could muster until, after he’d repeatedly sworn at this computer, we finally arrived at our floor. I turned to him and asked, “How does that feel? How does it feel saying all those things to a computer?”
“Not so good,” he replied. Then we stepped off the elevator. He was quiet for the next few minutes.
Sometimes, thinking negative thoughts, though they may not directly affect others, has a negative effect on our own felt sense of being. Where do my actions end? Do my intentions ripple through the world? Do my actions come back to me, and if so, how? Isn’t my self-realization your self-realization and vice versa?
Establishing a solid basis in nonharming, both internally and externally, roots our yoga practice in an understanding of karma. Karma refers to volitional action and its effects. Every action we take has an effect. Here is an example of how Patañjali uses the notion of karma in his description of ethical conduct with regard to nonharming in body, speech, and mind:
2.33 Unwholesome thoughts can be neutralized by cultivating wholesome ones.
2.34 We ourselves may act upon unwholesome thoughts, such as wanting to harm someone, or we may cause or condone them in others; unwholesome thoughts may arise from greed, anger or delusion; they may be mild, moderate or extreme; but they never cease to ripen into ignorance and suffering. This is why one must cultivate wholesome thoughts.
2.35 Being firmly grounded in nonviolence creates an atmosphere in which others can let go of their hostility.1
These passages not only show the interrelation of our actions and our psychological conditioning, they orient the yoga practitioner to contemplate and take action in the world of relationship. Notice in Patañjali’s description of nonviolence how he is always balancing his teachings between the internal world of the practitioner and the external world as well. Patañjali does not describe the result of a nonharmful attitude in terms of one’s personal practice; instead he suggests that when one is firmly grounded in nonviolence, it affects others so that they may drop their defensive strategies and hostility. Otherwise, it’s like a nuclear superpower telling all other countries that they cannot have nuclear weapons. The premise of nonviolence in this context is that it takes two to maintain a relationship of violence. Nonviolent relationship needs to be initiated by a firm commitment to being honest about the effect of one’s choices and actions. Therefore, we begin by acting with less harmful intentions, cultivating an atmosphere in which others can do the same.
Nonviolence of speech means that our speech should be honest and loving even when direct and strong. Oftentimes, compassion is illustrated in Indian art as a sharp sword that cuts through delusion. The vajra (thunderbolt) symbolizes the way in which clear, compassionate action cuts through indecisiveness or dishonesty. Since words cause both joy and discontent, we meditate on our actions of speech continually so that we do not speak untruthfully, gossip, exaggerate, or try to impress others. This also means using our words clearly to speak up for those who cannot do so themselves, and using our voice to bring awareness to forms of injustice, even if speaking out means threatening our own safety or security. An action based on self-image is never an honest or unrehearsed gesture. There is no self-image, we begin to see, without suffering. “Human beings,” the philosopher Hilary Putnam writes, “are self-surprising creatures.”2 We may surprise ourselves with our inherent honesty and kindness when we make a commitment to the yamas as wise possibilities for ethical engagement in everyday life.
Treated as dogmatic codes, the yamas become limiting and rigid. Being free of self-image through the honest practice of letting go and a deep commitment to others through following through on the yamas opens up room for spontaneity and responsiveness. Who knows what letting go will bring? The yamas are not codes or commandments but simply suggestions that honor the way a wise person lives. One does not get into trouble for breaking a code but rather studies their experience and the effects of their actions. Yoga is about bringing awareness to our actions of body, speech, and mind.
When people come to our center to study yoga, especially when we have time to meet one-on-one, we always begin by teaching the first yama. Teaching about nonharming immediately sets students thinking about their practice as both internal and external, which early on cuts off the tendency to create distinction between formal and informal practice. Also, beginning with teaching about nonharming helps students relate to their experience without judgment or the negative superimposition of poor self-esteem. Instead of negatively judging our habitual patterns, we can get to know ourselves with an awareness free of limiting self-judgment.
After a student is grounded in the principle of ahiṁsā, we move slowly through each limb, practicing every stage of every limb. Without the underpinning of ethics, practice is separate from the relational world. When the various egoic and inflexible conditions are seen for what they are and eventually transformed, one is capable of much greater intimacy and a fuller involvement with every aspect of experience. Otherwise one can practice great yoga postures while their inner psychological world goes untouched. We can do wonderful arm balances, but our relationships are a mess; or we can teach yoga postures but have no insight, compassion, or wisdom. Seeing clearly means that we tune the mind-body process in order to see how we are not separate from all beings and all things, and thus the practice and sharing of yoga is a means of liberating the personality from self-reference, numbness, and existential paralysis.
Satya and Asteya
After ahiṁsā, one contemplates satya (honesty of body, speech, and mind). This includes being honest with ourselves about our bodies (i.e., self-image), being honest in how we speak with others, and also being honest in our thoughts. From there we practice asteya (not stealing). We can translate “not stealing” very specifically, as in not stealing from stores or others, where we can cause harm directly or indirectly. All of the yamas are intertwined in sequential order and loop back into one another, in the same way that the layers of the body warp and weave in an interdependent matrix. The common link in the chain of the yamas is meditating on karma and taking actions rooted in nonharming. Nonviolence makes the repercussions of not being honest plainly obvious, because being dishonest causes harm. The same is true for nonstealing. When we steal, not only are we being dishonest, we are causing violence. The actions of violence, dishonesty, and stealing all arise from three sources, according to Patañjali: “greed, ill will or delusion.” But, as stated earlier in Patañjali’s description of nonharming, “. . . they never cease to ripen into ignorance and suffering.” In other words, beginning from the first limb, we see how yoga begins with a fundamental shift in one’s behavior, attitude, and relations through a shift in one’s psychology. The psychology of stealing, as an example, is a product of an unsatisfied mind. Nonstealing is inextricably linked with one’s desires, writes Gandhi:
We are not always aware of our real needs, and most of us improperly multiply our wants, and thus unconsciously make thieves out of ourselves. If we devote some thought to the subject, we shall find that we can get rid of a number of our wants. One who follows the observance of non-stealing will bring a progressive reduction of his own wants. Much of the distressing poverty of this world has arisen out of the breaches of the principle of non-stealing.3
We can also practice asteya in subtle ways. Asteya literally means “not taking what is not freely given.” As a practice, nonstealing, like all of the other yamas, orients us toward the transparency of all things and their interrelationship. Oftentimes we steal space by taking up more space than we need, physically and psychically. When we are impatient, we are wrestling with time, caught in a relationship of friction, which is why impatience is considered stealing time. J. Krishnamurti says that “patience is not of time.”4 When we are patient, we are not aware of the time, so when there is impatience, there is an acute awareness of time. Sometimes an hour feels like a minute and sometimes a minute feels like a day.
Brahmacharya
Brahmacharya for the monk means celibacy while for the householder it refers to the wise use of energy, especially sexual. Insatiable desire not only intoxicates us but turns others into objects. Nonharming as it applies in the sexual domain of body, speech, and mind becomes brahmacharya. This includes much more than not having sex that harms others, because it includes balancing sexual energy within one’s own body, in speech, and also in mind. Sexual fantasies constantly turn others into objects of our desire and in so doing prevent a true meeting of another. Aside from the energetic distraction of sexual fantasy, it is important to notice how fantasy often serves the egoic function of the mind rather than the heart.
This is not so to say sex or the topic of sexuality is off-limits, because both must be embraced as sacred and keys to our psychological maturing. To turn a blind eye to matters of sexuality will always lead to repression. If we try to push away our sexual energy, we end up with a fragmented consciousness that cannot sustain impermanent and natural patterns of energy. As has been well reported, the avoidance or repression of sexual energy in monastic communities, where no one dares to talk about the reality of sexual energy in contemporary life, leads to the underground acting out of those very same energies. Without attachment or aversion, we investigate our circumstances, whatever they are. So instead of pushing sexual energy underground, we work with sexual energy as it arises and passes away, and experience the energy simply as energy: impermanent and not “me” or “mine.”
When we depersonalize sexual energy, it has less of an intoxicating or magnetic effect and then we can work with it in a way that is wise. Brahmacharya is not an ethical code based on fear or prudery but rather one that encourages an honest appraisal of the energies that move within us, their effects, and how to work with the movements of energy, sexual or otherwise. When we bring awareness to the way that any form of sexual relation motivated by craving cannot dissipate the feelings of loneliness or longing that we are trying to satisfy but actually creates more suffering, frustration, and isolation, we become determined not to engage in sexual relations without mutual understanding, love, and commitment. In sexual relations, writes Thich Nhat Hanh, “it is important to be aware of future suffering that may be caused by our actions of body, speech, or mind. We come to know that to preserve the happiness of ourselves and others, we must respect the rights and commitments of ourselves and others.”5
Sexual energy tempered by the yamas means treating our bodies with respect and preserving our energy for the realization of our practice ideals, which are compassion and no-separation. This means being as aware as possible of the effect of bringing new life into the world and also, as Thich Nhat Hanh encourages, “meditating deeply on the world into which we are bringing life.”6 Even in sexual relations where there is not a literal new life-form being created (i.e., an infant), we can meditate on the way in which every sexual encounter creates a new life of relations between two people. New cultures begin with two. Our yoga community has several practitioners who are same-sex partners without children yet who return often to the teachings of brahmacharya to remind themselves how every encounter between people, especially sexual encounters, creates a new kind of relationship, a new form of life. Brahmacharya as a guideline is wide enough to include all people and types of relationships without regard for one’s sexual orientation.
Aparigraha
Aparigraha (nonacquisitiveness), comes from the root grah, which means “to grasp.” Georg Feuerstein translates aparigraha as “greedlessness.”7 While this is an excellent translation, it is important to capture the fact that this is not the practice of greedlessness as a final end point, because that might be more idealistic than realistic, but the practice of not acquiring based on greed. Like the other yamas, karma comes down to intention. Again, this is not something one is punished for, but simply a guideline for a wise way to live that promotes psychological stillness and the transformation of self-centered desire. Owning things or accumulating knowledge adds nothing to a life authentically lived. Again, these restraints are designed to restrain the momentum of our self-centered position in the scale of perception and instead turn us toward making the daring leap of changing our habitually exploitative ways.