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As I continue my personal journey into the depths of myself through better understanding of the various precepts of the Eastern traditions, I often get hit by truths which leave me short of breath. Most recently this happened while reading more about ahimsa in Deborah Adele’s book “The Yamas & Niyamas.”
This is the first time I’ve actually used the terms yama and niyama so I’ll explain briefly before getting to the quote. All of the Eastern traditions with roots to India have a code of behavior (or precepts) one must follow to attain enlightenment and reduce suffering, often expressed in terms of things we should and/or shouldn’t do. I pointed out a reference to the Zen precepts in Ahimsa: Peace is Not Non-Violence, but I’ve mostly been talking about ahimsa, which is actually part of the Vedic precepts found in the yamas and niyamas of the yogic tradition.
Whether Vedic, Buddhist, or Zen, the precepts always start with non-violence because that precept must be fully understood and applied before any of the other precepts can be appropriately understood and followed. So ahimsa is the first and fundamental precept of the yamas and niyamas, which are themselves the first two limbs of the 8-Fold Path of Astanga Yoga. The yamas are a set of five restraints – non-violence, non-lying, non-stealing, non-excess, and non-possessiveness, some of which we may discuss later – which result in freeing the compassion required to deepen our personal journeys and make possible the path into the niyamas: purity, contentment, self-discipline, self-study, and surrender.
Ahimsa (non-violence) is critical, though, for without it everything else comes undone. Think, for example, of the second yama of satya (non-lying or truthfulness): without a commitment to non-violence in action and thought, we might wield truthfulness as a weapon, causing suffering instead of preventing or relieving it. When we are committed to ahimsa, however, we learn how to use satya appropriately, telling truth where it needs be told in ways which reflect the compassion of the universe. That is why ahimsa is so critical, it pervades all else we do and we must often be very attentive to catch its subtle tones. Adele hit me with just such a subtle aspect of ahimsa with this quote from page 35:
Worry is [a] way violence gets masked as caring. Worry is a lack of faith in the other and cannot exist simultaneously with love. Either we have faith in the other person to do their best, or we don’t. Worry says I don’t trust you to do your life right. Worry comes from a place of arrogance that I know better what should be happening in your life. Worry says I don’t trust your journey, or your answers, or your timing. Worry is fear that hasn’t grown up yet; it is a misuse of our imagination. We both devalue and insult others when we worry about them.
I can hear your protests from here, but just think about it for a second and you will see what she means. First, I would edit her quote to be more appropriate by saying instead that worry cannot exist within a loving relationship. Now, think of a person you know who worries constantly about you. You probably are confident that person loves you, otherwise that worry would be a waste of everyone’s energy. Despite knowing they love you, you probably avoid contacting them in many situations because you don’t want to hear that person go on about how worried they are for you (that is, how you’ve done things wrong and will continue doing them wrong for the foreseeable future). When you are having a crisis you probably don’t go to them immediately because you don’t want to hear “I told you so.” Essentially, you cannot commit completely to a loving, trusting, sharing relationship with that person because you cannot abide their worrying.
So friends, as we embrace ahimsa let’s stop our worrying. That doesn’t mean we stop caring, or that we stop helping (where help is asked for, not forcing it as that is an action of a worried mind): it simply means that we learn to trust the ones we love, and that we recognize that their paths are not our own.
Om Shanti
It’s easy to lose faith in people.
When all our information comes from the news media we begin to think that the world is always burning with hatred and danger. When we focus on our expectations of people, particularly in relation to what we feel as our due, we always come out feeling wronged and short-changed.
But sometimes, when we are attentive and committed to staying present, we find that people are good.
On the 10th I went down to Smithville, TX – an area just southeast of Bastrop, TX where the majority of the Texas wildfires hit and where over 1500 homes were destroyed – and volunteered at the Bastrop Central Distribution Center managed by the Smithville Ministerial Alliance . Hundreds of other people were there helping out, some driving 2-3 hours to come out. Since then the number of people volunteering their time, material and fiscal resources, and energy has only increased.
That is not to say that they have all the support they need. More than 1500 families lost everything, and we all know federal aid will never replace that loss.
I’ve talked a lot about the yogic yama ahimsa, but an equally important precept (this one again from the Zen tradition) is the commitment to take only those things which are offered freely and to give freely of all that we can. The first part of that precept is held in the yogic yama of asteya (non-stealing), while the second half of it pushes us to follow the yogic yama of brahmacharya (non-excess) because when we give of all we can we never hold on to excess. The victims of the Bastrop fires were forcibly taught what the yama aparigraha (non-possessiveness) is all about, but those of us who were not so drastically affected have the ability to learn that wonderful lesson by choice.
Some people lost everything
Last weekend, while tooling around Austin with my friend Courtney, I picked up a children’s book from World Spirit Books called “Have You Filled a Bucket Today?” by Carol McCloud and illustrated by David Messing. This gem of a book talks all about how we each carry our individual buckets of happiness and love everywhere we go, and how we fill or deplete the buckets. The critical lesson of the book is that there is a reciprocal, positively correlated action with regard to our own buckets when we fill those of other people. That is, when we fill other people’s buckets ours is also filled, and when we deplete others’ ours is also depleted. I love this principle! So if I follow the Zen principle above, I do not only fill other people’s buckets: I also fill my own. It’s wonderful!
Notice I never said that we should be completely selfless, or that people in general are selfless. On the contrary, I suggest we become very selfish when it comes to our happiness. If we were to truly focus on becoming happy, we would engage in all sorts of acts of love and kindness which mutually fill the buckets of other people and ourselves. Thus, selfish behaviors, which are completely natural and normal, can be harnessed to create a better world, one where we don’t have to wait for tragic events to show again our “indomitable spirit.”
However, if you want to start practicing selfish, loving, kindness and immediately fill your bucket and those of hundreds of fire victims please feel free to go to my CrowdRise project for the Bastrop fire victims benefitting the American Red Cross Central Texas Chapter, one of the many organizations providing relief to the victims. You can also make donations to the Smithville Ministerial Alliance by following the instructions here .
But don’t stop there. Most of us know the old maxim to “be the change you want to see.” Let us all begin today.
So I decided it is time for me to provide a good update. Not only because it has been well over a year since my last post on here, but also because I have been changing a lot and I would like to share with everyone the nature of those changes and where they are carrying me in my life. Being specific in discussing such direction must include a caveat which actually does well to set the tone for this missive: I no longer view my life as a highway taking me directly from some beginning to some end. Rather, I view it like the path of a stream, wandering about on a gradual and winding, though inevitable, course toward the next place I need to be, wherever that might be. The highway is future/destination minded, the stream is present/journey minded. I see myself now as being on such a journey, and I see my life as being inseparably interconnected with all life around me.
This interconnectedness is the central point guiding the transformations through which I have been going. It has come largely as a result of the things I have learned from the Indian (the people from the country of India, not Native American) traditions through yoga and related reading and speeches. It follows from the assertion that we are all – people, animals, plants, and everything else on Earth and in the universe –one by virtue not only of our makeup but also of our interdependent nature. It is deeper than the “people breath in oxygen and breath out carbon dioxide while plants take in carbon dioxide and exhume oxygen” way of thinking. We don’t just share air, and we don’t just become fertilizer for the plants which become our food: we are literally one with our surroundings. We are completely reliant on our interaction with living others and with the ground upon which we walk, and they on us.
This concept is the base for the Sanskrit “ahimsa” which loosely translates to “non-violence.” I’m sure anyone reading this who knows me would be surprised to find that non-violence could be important enough to warrant first-mention as a symbol of the changes I am making. I certainly have never been physically violent toward other people, but ahimsa charges us with commitment to non-violence in actions (direct and indirect), words, and thoughts. There is plenty out there in the internet tubes talking about ahimsa for you to read, and I will talk more about it in subsequent posts, so we’ll leave it with this elementary introduction for now. The important thing is that I have become committed to being non-violent – or, more appropriately, life supporting – toward other people, animals, the environment, and myself.
This last is key, not because I am more important than the others which make up the universe, but because taking care of myself physically, emotionally, and cognitively leads invariably toward caring for those around me. There are easy examples: by quitting smoking I not only made myself healthier and increased the air quality of those in my immediate vicinity as well as contributing less mass to landfills. More distant effects of my cessation of smoking include the fact that I no longer contribute directly to the economic stability of cigarette producers, who then use their funds to market to new smokers.
This concept gets a little trickier in other areas. I learned, for example, that committing to telling the truth is actually a self-fulfilling behavior. Not only do I show another person respect by allowing them their right to know the truth, I also avoid that pesky little side-effect of telling lies the psychologists call cognitive dissonance. Some people call this “conscience,” others the “still, small voice” or “the Holy Ghost.” It doesn’t matter what you call it: we all know the feeling we get in the pit of our stomach when we do something which is in direct contravention of what is right. Some of us know how high that feeling can pile up, too! It is not just a matter of having dissonance or not, it gets worse and worse with repeated infractions. So committing to truth is the same as committing to self-care because we avoid the stress dissonance creates.
So now the big question I know many of you who know me have: why suddenly vegan? First let me caveat that I am not committed to the vegan moniker because it carries with it some specific definitions and identity I might not adopt. I have committed, as of July 12, to not eating, purchasing, or otherwise condoning the use of any animal product so far as I can avoid it. There are some ways I cannot currently avoid it, such as the leather from which my combat boots are made, but outside of such constraints I am done with personally committing or supporting violence against life. One of the biggest ways you will see me differ from the vegan mainstream (or loud minority, I still haven’t decided which case is true), though, is that I will not pass judgment on and become angry with those who haven’t made my same commitments. To do so would be a violation of my commitment to supporting life: the transfer of violent energies (whether physical, verbal, or mental/emotional) from animals to fellow humans is not a commitment to non-violence. So meat-eaters, do what you do, but if you ever decide that you want to make a commitment like mine remember that you are not alone and I’ll give you some good resources to get started. Let me warn everyone, though: I do intend to delve a little deeper into some of the things I’ve just glazed over here in subsequent posts, so if my commitment in some way offends you beware. First up will be some discussion about being vegan in the military…and why I’m probably not going to stay in.
In the meantime, I hope I have given you all some information since I have been relatively quiet for the last year. As always, your comments, whatever they might be, are welcome. Namaste!
