This talk is from a serie of talks about “how to renew your life and how to recharge yourself”.
we have talked about
1/ prana, how to have more prana,
2/ positive thinking: understand what is thought, what is the relationship between thoughts and prana.
3/ how to be flexible, adaptable, how to work your ego out to pay attention to the subconscious.
4/ detachment: how not to be pulled down through our attachment. How to be able to adapt and change by being detached.
5/ meditation: the different ways how you can introduce meditation in your daily life.
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What is meditation? How to free us from past tendencies?
There are different definitions of meditation. One of the definitions, the classical way, is the definition according to Patanjali. According to Patanjali, meditation is at the seventh rung. That means seventh step of the eight steps ladder of yoga, a Raja Yoga system. That means you have to prepare yourself, in order for you to be able to be still. Yamas and niyamas are the two first rungs in Taja Yoga, guiding you to have proper behavior that will not bring about any kind of reaction, that will bring about peace.
Anything that happens is due to our karma from the past. And if we are going to react to our karma, then it strengthens the wrong thought tendency. And it would put us deeper into the state of unhappiness, restlessness, worry. That’s why the yoga scheme is how to free us from our past tendencies. And Patanjali gives us a few points, a few guidelines on how to do this, we call yamas and niyamas.
The abstentions:
Yamas is what not to do, the restrictions. If you want your mind to be peaceful, it’s better that you adopt this way of behavior. If you want to be free from karma and from disturbances and from creating new vrittis in the mind, new thoughts in the mind, it’s better that you follow these guidelines.
The first guideline is ahimsa. Ahimsa means nonviolence or in other words, no frustration, anger. You can be proactive and manage your mind, working around your desire and your expectation so that you don’t get angry because anger comes from expectation and unfulfillment. If you are flexible enough to work around your expectation, then you will be able to be a peaceful person and you will be avoiding anger and violence. Really, it’s all about you and the mind. It’s not about whatever happens and whatever people’s behavior, it’s about you. What do you expect, how you interpret that situation? You can change, you can switch to ahimsa, but you have to learn how to manage your desire, your ego, your expectation and you have to enhance your eyes a lot. You can also learn how to be compassionate, to understand somebody from where they are, to understand the situation that can be quite complex sometimes. And you have to come up with the most sattvic kind ofresponse. And you have to work against your ego because your ego has its tendencies and you want to reproduce its tendencies which make you feel strong.
But according to yoga, we are not strong when we reproduce your tendency, the moment you say I am like this, because I have always been like this, you reinforce your tendency and your desire, and your expectation and you create more instances of frustration, of reaction. Ahimsa implies that you have to be non-egoistic, with no expectation, no attachment to the result, no attachment to your own thoughts, to your own habits. Remain quite open and be quite flexible, accepting, empty. Empty doesn’t mean empty, but open, to be quite open. Every moment is unique. To be humble, that’s part also of the practice of ahimsa. Don’t think that you know and try to remove the ego. In daily life, you have to see the situation where your ego will come up. I know, I know better than you. I like you to do this way, that way. You have to be training yourself to be very careful.
I learn a few ways in daily life to not hurt somebody’s ego. I say: “Do you mind doing this?” Instead of saying ‘do this’. Of course you can say ‘do this’ and maybe you are in a position of authority. You can add the word ‘please’. And then you explain.
Learn to communicate better: I think people are sometimes very short. It means they don’t communicate very well. Why don’t you communicate very well? Because you think that people should know? Or you thought:” they should think of things the way I see it.” But people don’t. They have a completely different mindset. What do you expect from them can be like talking Chinese, they have no understanding of that. And then you assume that they have to understand that, and you just say a few words because that’s your assumption and you expect them to understand and you get upset if they don’t understand or you make a face.
In daily life it is good to practice being humble, to be communicative, to know that you don’t know the truth about anybody or anything and to talk to the person as you talk to God. That is a difficult practice. Teachings say behave with people, your husband, your wife, your friend, your boss, like you behave towards God. How do you practice this thing? That means you have to know that you don’t know, you cannot assume that you know, you cannot carry yourself around and think that is the truth and the reality is in me. God knows, but you do not know.
So please, don’t take yourself too seriously and be humble and be learning how to communicate.
I myself, I don’t type very quickly, I type very slowly. I just have two fingers, I don’t know how to type. I cannot see very well also. I’m almost blind because, I do not wear my glasses and I use my little cell phone as my computer, so it took me a long time to type anything to communicate with people and I received tons of email and I am being attacked by emails of people, so it took me a long time to answer emails, you know. Sometimes I have to type in Vietnamese and different keyboard and accent and all these things. But I make a point. I’m not talking about me here, I’m talking about the concrete thing how you can do Meditation in daily life. It is a form of Raja Yoga meditation because you have to be very focused, to be very careful when you answer an email and answer a request. You need to be communicating, that means you have to talk about the circumstances before that email and explain to people the after and then you have to use the right kind of feeling that you can add to the communication. And you have to understand the person, where they come from and who are you at this time present. And then you try to make that communication unique at that time.
The art of tuning to someone’s wavelength:
I have spent many, many years of my life writing emails. That time, there was no email, I used to type letters with an electric typewriter and carbon paper. I was the secretary in the ashram and I had to write the correspondence for Swamiji. I had to spend a lot of time and I didn’t write very well in English at that time. I tried to imagine in my mind these people that wrote and then tried to imagine their mindset and I wrote the letters corresponding to what I imagined these persons to be. Then I took a quote from the book called “Elixir Divine”, which is the book of Swami Sivananda quotes. Depending on what I felt about the person I spent time to choose the proper quote to add at the end of the letter for the person.
It’s like serving a full meal, a three course meal, when you answer an email. There is the beginning, the appetizer, then the main course, and then the dessert at the end. It took me a lot of time. Imagine I didn’t speak English, I didn’t type very well. If you ask me, what did I learn in my spiritual path? How did I learn? I would say this – because I was a secretary for many years: “one letter at a time.” That’s how I learned. I imagined the person, I meditated about the person that I wrote letter to. Also, to note that I did not even sign the letters. I wrote for the swami, and someone else was signing the letters, not me. So, I had to imagine that I wrote a letter for Swamiji, or the other senior Swami, then, I tuned my mind to higher vibration, higher wavelengths of thought, and address the person. This was my way of meditation in action, called Karma Yoga of writing letters. It was not just only business correspondence, it was a spiritual communication, it was my meditation. This is the truth. That’s how I grow in awareness. I must have written so many letters.
Everyone is unique, no one functions the same way:
I am telling you now the story of how I learnt when answering correspondence for Swami Vishnudevanandaji. There was a karma yogi about 40 years old who one day came back from that correspondence session at Swamiji ‘s house and he was quite upset. He said, ‘I’m not going to work for this man’. And then he left the ashram. I was a new karma yogi and I said, Okay, I will take the job. Well, what has happened there? I went, and I realized what happened. Swamiji was extremely fast and he functioned at a different level than you are. Our mistake is we always think that people have to function on the same level that we are, but they are not the same. I learned that he didn’t function the way I think, and how I function, he mostly functions in a super conscious level, not the conscious level, not the subconscious level that we normally do. Normally, we have no clue of what the super conscious level is. When I gave him the letters and told him “Swamiji, this person said this and so on… He took the letter, brought it to his forehead and touched his forehead with it then discard it. That was it, that was his way to send the blessings and the reply through the psychic atmosphere to the person. That was about 37 years ago or something, people wrote using aerogram. I thought:” Oh my God, how do I write a reply?” he didn’t say anything, and I tried to tune to higher, higher wavelengths to pick his thoughts. I realized that he communicated with a person by touching the letter, he already got the vibration of the person putting it to his forehead, which is his mind. That’s what happened. And that was it. But, understand that the person would not receive a letter like this, they will not be able to, they will not be able to receive that Swamiji already prayed for them and have sent them letter in thoughts. So, I had to be the instrument to do this.
That was how I replied to the person: “Swamiji said to continue your practice “. That was what Swamiji would say, he would say: “continue your practice!”, because only during the practice you can solve all your problems, not by chatting. “Swamiji encouraged you to practice and pray for your health and welfare, and so on and so on. “
The Karma Yogi who was upset, expected Swamiji to sit there, tune into him – which is tuned down to him- and dictate and wait for him to write and finish. And then when he finished one sentence, dictate another sentence. It means Swamiji had to serve him, instead of him serving Swamiji and the whole world’s needs.
In reality, there was no time to wait. Swamiji’s mind was fast because he had to serve the whole world with prayers and thoughts.
So, I became the instrument of this service, I was a very new karma yogi, and had to learn how to tune and change wavelengths. Imagine, tune, change quickly and get it. And then you have to tune down to a level of somebody, express the way how he/she would understand and feel, including the reply to their emotions which are often times in crisis. I had to learn to match my answer to them.
And that’s how I receive my training in daily life. And sometimes I’m wrong. I’ll tell you another story.
Accountancy lesson:
You expect that you have a guru, a teacher, that he will sit there and babysit you, but it was not like that at all. Swamiji lived his life and his mission and you want to serve Him because you want to learn something, fine and good. So, you came to serve Him and then you will have to learn on the battlefield. He’s not the babysitter, he is the one that is living his life and you are the one that serve in order to learn.
One day, he was trying to teach me accountancy. All my life, I’ve never really liked accountancy, mathematics and money. I was quite a political person before. I understand that money is a thing that creates a lot of problems in this world. So, I never really liked money. And I’m kind of artistic kind of minds, I don’t like mathematics and never like accounting and counting money. Accountancy was not my thing. When I came to the ashram, I got the karma yoga accountancy job. At that time, there was no software and you had to do everything by hand. You had to add everything in the big register book. Swamiji said “it’s not our money so you have to be very careful, this is public money”. So, he will not allow like 50 cents difference.
I had to spend time adding the number you know, and when you do it two times, you had to check it and it never came right for me. The number just kept dancing and changing. I spent a large number of hours trying to make the book fit. I copied from this column to that column and then tried again and it did not match. Thus, I spent hours and nights trying to balance the books and match the numbers.
Swamiji must have known that I had some difficulties. He called me and another staff to his house to give us an accountancy lesson. The accountancy lesson went like this. I thought: “wow, Swamiji is going to give me an accountancy lesson! The master is going to teach me! “I was a little bit impressed already. Now, imagine the scene:
Swamiji said: “If I’m going to give $10 to this person, who will give it to his daughter to go and buy $5 of apples, then how much is left?”
That was it, the accountancy lesson. $10 to buy $5 of apples, that’s how much is left?
I was maybe 29, maybe 30 years old or something. I became frozen. In my mind at that time, $10 minus $5, could not be a normal answer. How much is left? Something strange is here. It must be a kaon. It means you have to invent something, you have to read through the lines, you have to try to understand what the great yoga master is trying to communicate. And then as I didn’t find the answer, Swamiji said: “10 minus five equals 5! Go!” That’s it. That was my accountancy lesson. I was thinking about my lesson for a long time. What was it? Why did he have to call me to his place and say ten minus five equal five. Doesn’t make any sense. Because you know, I was 30 years old, I know how to count!
Eventually I figured out the answer. The answer is, he tried to teach me to be simple, not to be complicated, in my mind. Ten minus five equals five. That’s the way how it works.
In spiritual life, in meditation life, you have to tune and try to understand the higher wavelengths. But at the same time, you have to be quite practical. You have to be very down to earth. My mind was too complicated. I need to be more logical and simpler.
So that is also another teaching lesson of meditation in daily life, “don’t make things complicated. Be in the present and simplify things. “
Ahimsa. You have to bear your anger, frustrations because they come from your own unfulfilled expectations. It’s your own expectation that is unfulfilled because it doesn’t match with reality. So, you have to bear it and learn to let go of your expectations and desires. That’s how you meditate on your mind and desires.
The truth is in between both:
Satya means truth. That is part of meditation in daily life. Because that’s a condition for you to be able to meditate and have peace of mind and not create more vibration and more distortion, more vrittis in your mind. So you have to tell the truth. But what is the truth? Because your mind changes all the time. If two people quarrel, Swamiji would say the truth is in between both! The truth is in between both. It means person A does know the truth, person B doesn’t know the truth. None of them are correct. The truth is beyond both. And we always think that we are the one that knows, the other person doesn’t know. So that is the problem. When two people quarrel in the ashram, the director also gets punished. I mean, the way how Swamiji punishes people, is to make them write a mantra. Because when you write a mantra, the mind vibration will change. And if you do something wrong, you have to write more mantras. And the director also had to write a mantra. The director also had the right mantra because two people quarrel. So how does it work? why does the director have to be involved if two people quarrel and why the director also will have to be punished? how does it work?
Because the director is the one who makes sure that the vibration of the ashram or the center is high. So if two people quarrel that means the vibration is low. So, he also has to lift his vibration up, so he can lift other people’s vibration up. It seems interesting isn’t?
So, the truth is in between both. That means we have to know that we don’t know. People always think that they hold the truth, but they don’t know. So much possibility of interpretation of any word or any situation.
Don’t forget that this is a world of Maya. Maya means things are changing. This is the world of energy and things are changing. Compared to the truth, the Truth doesn’t change, but everything else changes. You don’t know the truth because you’re not a realized person yet, you’re not an enlightened person yet, you still function out of your emotions, you still function out of your desires, you don’t have the discipline yet. You don’t have purity yet. How can you know the truth? You don’t know the truth.
So how do we work with that? We have to be sincere. In daily life, you are expected to be sincere, honest and sincere. That’s all. You’re honest and sincere and that’s good enough. You don’t have to be perfect, but you are sincere. And then tomorrow, you know better than you can change because you know better now, the way you see things can be different tomorrow and is not the same as you do today. So, it’s not like you are changing except you are adjusting and you’re sincere. Your tomorrow and today will be different. Because you don’t hold the truth. You’re trying. And then you are learning on the way. That’s the guidelines of truthfulness. Just try to be sincere and honest. And don’t think that you hold the truth. Nobody holds the truth. The Truth is within us, but we have impurity therefore, the truth cannot be revealed yet.
Asteya: Asteya means non-stealing. It means, don’t take something that doesn’t belong to you. As much as you can, try to be honest, and don’t take something that doesn’t belong to you.
Brahmacharya, the road to Brahman:
Brahmacharya is trying to be aware of your instinct, your sensual propensity, sexual propensity, so that you can learn how to transform these energies into high energy. So that you not only function out of your low mind, your instinctive mind, but you function as a self-control human being, a person that is capable to transcend these tendencies, instinctive tendencies.
In daily life you have to start with the awareness of your energies. And you have to be able to observe your energy. What we say to our yoga teachers that they need to keep pure thoughts when they teach yoga class. It’s very easy to fall, because of the tendency of the mind. Brahmacharya is chastity or pure purity in thinking and to transform this impurity to purity it takes a long, long time.
Because the main thing is to transform your vibratory wavelength. What is vibratory wavelength? It is the level of energy. When your level of energy is low, then you have more sexual thoughts. When your level of energy is high, then you don’t have this kind of desire, because the energy has been transformed into higher wavelengths of energy.
If you practice Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, pure devotion, concentration, meditation, and detachment, then most likely your vibration will be pure, pure and higher, then most likely you have transformed this energy into something that is higher and lifting you up and lifting other people up.
So that is the guidelines in daily life to keep yourself, as much as possible, chaste in mind. Try not to watch TV, movies …Sometimes it’s very difficult now, you’re watching some news, and It has some ads in between, then flashing images of people not really dressed properly. I’s all rampant around us the lustful energy, desire energy, sexual energy, intoxication. That is very, very much around us. It’s very difficult to keep the thought pure, but in daily life, you need to protect your mind and be more conservative in the way how you think or who you communicate with.
It’s called brahmacharya. Brahmacharya means the road to Brahman. It’s not simple. If you are able to control your sexual energy, you are on the road to Brahman, on the road to the Truth. That’s what “Brahmacharya” means. It’s not just about celibacy, but it’s controlling and sublimating or transformation of that energy that creates a lot of desire and distractions in the mind and creates a lot of problems. You have to transform this energy and lift them up into spiritual thoughts.
Pay attention to subtle impressions in the mind:
I’m in LA, I just went for a 15-minute drive yesterday and I saw this big billboard. It was about this new movie called something ‘the new war’ or something. And then you look at people’s faces on that board and it stuck to your mind. Why do I care about this ‘New war’ and all these people with huge weapons? But these impressions get stuck to your mind even though you are not interested.
So, you need to be aware of the influence on your thoughts when you are in the street, how sexual thoughts and violent thoughts influence your mind. And you need to protect your mind. This billboard and image of these people got stuck in my mind and it will take me some time to clean the thoughts. It creates some damage or some junk in my mind that will take the space and the energy of something higher.
When you fly, because that’s the only time that people like me is exposed to different kinds of magazines, you end up reading the magazines in the airplane. And what is it about? It is all about lipsticks, perfumes and sports cars. So your mind will be polluted by this. Your mind will be wondering about which color of lipstick because it’s full page color. Imagine, the ashram wants to publicize a meditation course and we cannot pay even one eighth of a page like this. It’s too expensive. One page about lipstick will be five to $10,000 a page, or more. And the big magazine like this, full of lipstick and full of perfume, how much it cost. See, then you can see that so much energy, what I’m saying is so much money, so much life, so much prana, so much energy into attracting people out of sexuality or out of violence. In this context, your mind will be affected.
Meditation in daily life means you have to pay attention as much as possible. Keep your mind protected.
Non-accumulation, non-envy, no desire.
It’s very easy to be envious, isn’t it? And that’s a problem. To drive here we have to rent a car. Because our car did not work. The car we rented was a very nice car, then your mind can change the mindset to thinking, “Oh, I wish I had a car like this, why do I have to use all these cars that are not nice and don’t work? “
Somebody I met yesterday bought a new car for $65,000 cash! your mind hearing that can switch, your mind can be envious and say: “I desire to have a car like this!”
So in daily life, you have to meditate. And then you have to prevent your mind from going into this place of envy, jealousy, desire. If not, it will be detrimental for your mind because it will create different distractions in your mind. And at the same time, you try to learn meditation, and you try to have peace of mind and you don’t get it. Why? Because there is too much stuff in the mind.
Niyamas: Purification, contentment, austerity:
That’s why the Yogis proposed to you that you need to practice purification, you need to practice contentment, you need to practice austerity, you need to practice self- study, and you need to practice self-surrendering or acceptance of God’s will. That will help you to be calm. Purification means that the light is there within you, but the thought in your mind is impure. So, you need to apply positive thinking techniques and all Yoga practices in order to purify your thoughts, purify your body, purify your prana, everything is about purification.
And then you practice contentment. It means you wake up in the morning, and you already say: “I’m so grateful to be alive!” You are thankful, your life is about being thankful, it’s not about being envious, or it’s not about pointing fingers and destroying somebody or making sure that they will not get what you desire. Because you desire something, and they get what you desire. So therefore, you need to destroy them for them not to get what you desire!
You need to make sure that you are content with what you have. So, your mind doesn’t have this desire vibe. And then you have to study every day. You have to study because you need to put in your mind positive thoughts. That doesn’t come from magazines, or other people gossip on the internet. It comes from scriptures and teachers.
And then you have to self-surrender. That is the basic guideline of yoga. Self-surrender doesn’t mean that you become stupid or become a servant or not thinking. Self- surrender just means that you have to know that you are not the boss. You are not the boss of this world. The world is not going to follow your beck and call. Your desire is not going to be fulfilled. Things happen the way they happen. And then you have to learn to accept God’s will — surrender. So don’t wait until the big lesson for you to surrender. Like a big virus coming and attacking everybody for us to learn to accept and to surrender. In daily life we need to learn to be self-surrendering, adapt, adjust, accommodate.
These are the yamas and niyamas according to Patanjali yoga.
Asana and pranayama:
Then you have to practice Asana in daily life. Asana is known to be yoga, but it’s not Yoga, it is only one step, the 3rd step. You have to do this, when you practice Asana, know that the effect is that you are moving your prana. Because most of the time your prana gets stuck. If you are not moving it, it gets stuck and it becomes negative thoughts. So every day, you have to move your prana in a correct manner. Then the flow of energy will be flowing, and you’ll be fine. And then you’ll be able to also stay still. Asana means “steady pose” staying still. You stay still so that you can contemplate. Movement, stillness, movement, stillness, relaxation, action. You would have to balance all this.
And then comes pranayama. It means learning how to balance your prana. There are two hemispheres of the brain, right and left brain. You learn how to be an integrated person, where you think logically, but you also feel at the same time. And don’t allow yourself to be in that situation of conflict, where you feel something, and your logical mind goes on the other side, and then you are pulled in between, but you need to bring the extreme closer and closer, closer and integrated, so that you come out with a balanced kind of response. So that is called pranayama. Pranayama is the strongest way to work on your emotions. So, practice pranayama every day, make it a daily habit to practice pranayama so that you can be balanced, because you don’t know your situation. You don’t know because you live with your mind all your life, so you don’t know you’re super emotional, and you are not logical, or you don’t know that you are super logical, and you are not feeling at all. You think this is the way the world is, but it’s not the way the world is. Your life can be different if you know how to balance your energies. Then you can function the most efficiently if you are not too much this way or not too much that way. It takes a long time for you to learn that what you think, and feel is not the way how the world thinks and feel. You superimpose the way how you think and feel onto the world and attract to yourself people that think like you or feel like you. Then you feel yourself stronger because more people feel like you, but that’s not necessarily the truth.
Withdrawing of the senses:
So you need to practice pranayama in daily life, you need to practice withdrawing the senses (pratyahara). Pratyahara is when you turn inward. We are all the time turning outwards, outwards, that’s a problem, that creates a problem to meditation. Turning outward means all the time involved in action in the world of the senses, thinking that the world of the senses is the true world. In fact, no, what you see with your senses is not the real world. It’s very limited; this is not the world that will give you peace of mind.
Pratyahara means withdrawing, withdrawing the senses. Have less sensual input, so that you can live an inner life. What is living inner life? That just means that you are more in connection with your deeper level of feeling, your deeper level of truth that is revealed in your heart. And if you are too busy externally, you get involved in too much action or you are too much involved in the senses, you will not be able to connect. So that is called pratyahara, withdrawing of the senses.
Concentration and meditation:
Concentration is when you are able to be strong, you will be able to hold one thought that is good and be able to say no to other kinds of promise because your mind is very weak, so your mind will run with different promises. You are doing something, and somebody says, “oh this” and then you get distracted. You are not able to be focused and to be able to say no to the distractions. Then you are too much in distraction and you cannot really connect with your true Self. You cannot be really peaceful with your mind, and the reality surrounding you.
Swami Sivananda says meditation is when you are flowing with the flow of consciousness of God, like a stream of oil, that is being pulled from one vessel to another, that is continuous flowing. That’s what it is. That’s what you want. We want to be able to flow in a stream of consciousness. That is very enlightening, that is very peaceful, that is very happy. You will not then suffer out of this start and stop of a choppy world. Instead of “peace of mind” we get “pieces of mind”. We gathered our pieces of mind and get established in the peace of mind that brought about a flowing feeling. That’s called meditation.
Get established in that flowing feeling of consciousness, and awareness, that is all the time there, not when things happen the way you want only. Normally, when things happen the way that you don’t expect, then everything stops. So the more that you are able to train yourself, the more you’ll be able to be flowing in all kinds of situations. You have to use your left brain, your thinking faculty, and you have to use your right brain, your feeling faculty, then you have to use your superconscious mind, your intuitive brain. You have to know that this superconscious mind is accessible to you, that you can induce it, that you can use it and then you have to train yourself to do this.
Achieving oneness:
Eventually, you are in the state we call “Samadhi” which means complete flow, complete oneness. This is the goal.
The goal is to achieve complete oneness where nobody is at fault. You are not separated. You are not in duality. You don’t have inner conflict. All your past conflict accumulated in your mind has been resolved. Your mind is pure and calm, and you’ll be able to reflect who you are.
There are a lot of practices. I can elaborate every step at length, but you have to learn that you can apply this thing in daily life.
Achieving mental balance:
Steadiness in asana, we take it literally. But Asana is when you are able to keep your mind still, calm, not reactive in a difficult situation. Like in a posture. You’re about to fall in a balancing posture. You’re about to fall because the energy pulls you this way. And then you want this way and you are shaking. But if you are able to be balanced in two difficult poses, and you’ll be there steady, that’s called Asana. As example, this means that when you have difficult feelings about that person or that situation or that speech of somebody, then you’ll will still be able to hold your poise or your peace in between these pulls and pushes of different conflicting kinds of thoughts. And that is called holding an asana. You have to be able to hold this mental Asana, be strong, be firm and be flexible. If you want to hold a posture, and you are so rigid, what it means is that you really hold too tight and as a result, you fight. Let’s say you hold a shoulder stand, a headstand, and you hold it so strong, then you would tense and then you would fall down. So that’s why asana practice trains you not to be too rigid. But, in the contrary, if you can’t hold at all, you just collapse, it also doesn’t work. So you would have to be both: be strong and be flexible. In daily life in the same manner, you need to be strong and flexible.
Other examples of lessons in daily life.
Yesterday, I learned two lessons. Every day is learning. I’m sharing with you. Yesterday, there was a family here at the LA Center with some kids, 5 years old, 9 years old and 15 years old. The five years old and nine years old never sat still for a moment. We were building the deck and the kid picked up this drill, this electrical drill, and push, push the button. It was very dangerous. I would be upset because it’s a very dangerous tool to play with. I looked at the parents. They were trained, because these kids have trained them. They were so calm and said:” Okay, kid, don’t play with that. You are going to lose some points! Please put it down! Something like this.” Then I realized that compared to them, the parents were much calmer and more controlled than me, because I reacted very strongly.
And then they put the drill down and they go and pick up another one. Another dangerous tool! And then they jumped here, jumped there. Oh my God! I observed my mind. I said:” I cannot live like this!”, “I don’t know how they live like this, the parents. “ . Then I realize how much love they have for the kids to raise the kids daily like this all day long. And I don’t know how many years it took them not to lose control, not to lose the mind. And always try to teach to the level that what I talked about earlier, the communication level, the tuning into the person level and the love that is there. It’s a lot of training. They were experts and I bowed to them, the teachers of their kids. Then I realized that I was not that good. That’s humbling. Daily life, you are learning.
Trust and stay detached:
There was a dog at the Yoga Center, whose owner is a temporary staff. That dog is very old, tumbling, deaf but seeing a little bit and almost dying. It walked around, going in and out of the house while we were in a construction field building the deck. I was constantly afraid that the dog would fall into the tools and hurt himself. I realized that my mind was reacting to the dog, and I realized that I had a long way to go. I say, “he’s going to be hurt. Oh my God, look at him!” I was not at peace. Because you can feel for the dog and you can feel for the dangerous situation that can happen. In the middle of the night, I woke up and thought “I need to go down and check if the dog is ok. Walking around the courtyard, anything can happen. He is blind, he can fall here, fall there. “
Then I realized:” okay, okay, detach, detach, sleep. And then we will see.” The dog was at the Center for a few nights and every morning I woke up and say, “okay, the dog is okay. There’s nothing that happened last night. “
The parents and the owner of the dog eventually have to live with their situation. No one can live life worrying all the time. So, meditation is that also. You have to have faith, you have to understand the karma, you have to do your duty, and you have to let go. And you have to accept it. You have to surrender to God’s will. You cannot worry all the time.
So, I learned a lesson about children and a lesson about dog at close proximity. I know children, animals, I can give lectures. We have children’s yoga, but to live close to them and be able to have self-control, and calmness and meditation and trust and faith — this is a lesson to learn.
Conclusion:
Meditation in daily life is a combination of karma yoga attitude, bhakti yoga attitude, Raja Yoga principles and practices. Plus, the understanding that the whole thing is a game, it’s not true, it’s not real. And it tests you how attached you are and how serious you take yourself. In fact, the whole life set up is there for you to learn meditation in daily life.
Swami Sitaramananda is a senior acharya of the International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centers and is director of the Sivananda Ashram Vedanta Yoga Farm, California and the Sivananda Yoga Resort and Training Center, Vietnam. She is acharya of China, Taiwan, and Japan as well. Swamiji is the organizer and teacher of the Sivananda Yoga Health Educator Training (SYHET) program, an 800-hour program on yoga therapy, accredited by the International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT).
Swami Sitaramananda is the author of “Essentials of Yoga Practice and Philosophy” (translated in Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Russian), “Positive Thinking Manual”, “Karma Yoga Manual”, “Meditation Manual”, “Swamiji Said, a collection of teachings by Swami Vishnu” in His Own Words. She is responsible for the Vietnamese translation of “Completed Illustrated Book of Yoga” (CIBY) and “Meditation & Mantras” by Swami Vishnu. Many of her video & audio lectures on Yoga life, philosophy, and psychology as well as articles and webinars can be found on this website.
Swami Sita is an ardent supporter of the integration of the Vedic sciences such as Vastu, Jyotish, Ayurveda, Yoga and Vedanta. She is an international teacher of the Sivananda Yoga Teachers’ Training Courses and Advanced Yoga teachers’ Training courses, as well as Meditation and Vedanta & Silence Courses both in Sivananda Ashrams in Vietnam and in Grass Valley, CA.
Today I opened the book and the message is about meditation again. I’d like to talk about meditation and why we meditate.
Why meditate? What is Yoga meditation?
You need to understand why we meditate, then you can practice meditation for a long time and more seriously. The reason why we meditate, or we do yoga, is because in classical yoga, and yoga means meditation – meditation means yoga, there’s no separate thing. People think yoga means we’re doing some exercise and going to meditation is Zen meditation, or vipassana meditation or something separate. However, In the ashram, everything we do is included in the word meditation, and everything is preparation for meditation. Everything is meditation, everything is preparing you for meditation.
Why do you meditate, why are you more serious about following the discipline? Because the discipline of yoga and meditation – can you give me some answers? To seek enlightenment? It’s just a word, enlightenment. I want something more real, an answer that is more real. What’s the real reason? To calm the mind, thank you. Somebody else, please. To calm the mind – why? Because too many thoughts. Past, future, so much restlessness in the mind. Somebody else? To become conscious. You have taken the workshop this afternoon. Why do you want to become more aware, more conscious? It will create happiness? More correctly, you want to be happy in a stable manner.
Happiness is your true nature
If anyone is seeking for happiness and happiness is our true nature, we seek for our true nature. And the mind is always projecting different things. That’s why we run after that. We waste a lot of energy, and we don’t find what we want and then we think something’s wrong, and we change. Changing, changing, changing, changing of the mind – all the time changing. Always finding fault with something. But we find ourselves, very often times – tell me if I’m correct – often we find ourselves feeling like we are repeating the same kind of thought or dissatisfaction. The same. Then at that time, after some time – because in the beginning, we think that it is the fault of somebody, or something or the circumstances – we change, we change, and we find the same thing. And then we change again, and we find the same thing.
After some time like this, what do we do? We start to realize that it is not in the external condition. And with that, we ask ourselves the question – maybe it’s my mind? That’s how you start meditation – to seek to know your mind and seek to know the truth behind the mind. Because you’re starting to realize that the mind doesn’t give you the answer. Whenever you come up with a change, or with a different idea, it’s always coming from your mind. I repeat again, whatever you come to as a solution to your life, or whatever you complain about, this solution comes from your mind, that’s the problem The solution when it comes from your mind, will again be repeated. Because your mind is never ending, telling a different story. Different things that you want to try. You start to seek meditation when you understand that the mind is going through this pattern and you want to undo the pattern, you want to figure it out.
Seeking beyond the Pattern of the Mind
What is behind this pattern of the mind? the pattern of the mind can be very deep. You want to find out the truth behind this pattern of the mind. That’s why you meditate. Because if you have this thing repeated all the time, some kind of unanswered question that is not possible to answer, then you would find suffering, you’ll be suffering. And you always find some kind of solution to your suffering, but it’s always there. It’s a problem. That’s why eventually you turn within – you try to find, you know, maybe that’s the way my mind thinks, that it will always bring me to the same place. By this time, you will be seriously seeking within instead of always looking for something outside of yourself.
This question of why meditate is very, very important. Because if you have the right reason why you meditate, you will continue for a long time. If you don’t have the right reason why you meditate, for example, you want to meditate out of curiosity, or because some people or books influence you, it will not last long.
Only when you realize that your life always goes around and round and round and comes back to the same place, that you want to break through, you want to understand what is behind it and this is when you become more serious with meditation.
Do you agree? Yes.
There are a few techniques of meditation that you need to explore, and you need to practice, and you need to become very good at it.
Synthesis of Yoga
Swami Sivananda taught what we call the synthesis of yoga, and it is a combination of different yoga practices. That’s what you are learning here at the ashram. When you are immersed here, you learn these different methods and they are all intricately working together for that same goal. The goal is to bring you closer, to make your mind calmer and bring you closer to the realization of the happiness that is already there within you.
There are different methods of meditation. And it’s all in the book of Swami Vishnudevanandaji called ‘Meditation and Mantras’. For those who do not have the book, you can buy the book, you can read it and study. But the main thing is you need to have a teacher. To meditate by yourself alone is very difficult.
Karma Yoga
What are the different methods for meditation? Number one is called karma yoga meditation. That means how to meditate on your life itself , on your karma, so that your life is not a burden and your life is meaningful. That is called karma yoga meditation, but you have to turn your karma around, so that it becomes meaningful for you. And then it gives some kind of meaning to all your daily activity. That is meditation. Normally in normal life, you have work and home and work and traffic, and entertainment, all different things are separate, not integrated, not understood. But yoga is the method to transform you so that you can come closer to who you are, closer to the happiness that you are seeking. Karma yoga meditation is the method of selflessness, the method of turning your activity from fulfilling your personal gain to something selfless. The other way to say it, you have to give yourself out in order to find yourself. If you don’t give yourself out, you cannot find yourself. That’s something you need to meditate about. That means that you need to turn your karma into your dharma. It’s a lecture in itself. So, karma yoga meditation.
Bhakti Yoga
Then you have bhakti yoga meditation, that means how to turn your emotions into pure love. We talked about that a little bit yesterday, how to become devotional, how to channel your emotions so that your emotions are not going to repeat the pattern and make you feel stuck. Meditation is for you. It’s not for me or anybody. Meditation is for you in order for you to find yourself. You feel that your emotions are the problem, and you have a lot of attachments, and it creates a lot of pain. You get attached to people and things. Then you need to learn how to channel these emotions, so that they can give you more satisfaction or more happiness, more peace, more satisfaction for a long time. One hundred percent sure that this is what you want, but you don’t know how. Everyone at the bottom line, wants to have one hundred percent love and all the time. True?
Yoga gives you the answer, but you have to practice. You have to learn to observe your mind and see the problem. Because if not, then, like I said, it could repeat the same pattern. The same pattern of attachment and then forced detachment and attachment to something else and forced detachment and romantic ideas about this, romantic ideas about that, and pain. You don’t want that. Bhakti yoga meditation is teaching you how to love and to be fulfilled for a long time. One hundred percent love, this is what you’re looking for. You think that is possible? Who believes it is possible? You have to believe it is possible otherwise you will not even try. I believe it is possible, that’s how I tried. I practice it because I believe it’s possible. I believe that I deserve it. And I believe one hundred percent love exists. That is called turning this emotion into meditation. Bhakti yoga meditation. Study the saints lives, they tell their own stories and it is are very inspiring. They have beautiful devotion, so beautiful.
Raja Yoga meditation:
Raja Yoga meditation is what you practice at the ashram. You practice controlling the prana, you practice turning the senses inward, withdrawing of the senses, being more with yourself and less external. You practice concentration and calmness of mind. You practice one pointedness of mind so that the mind will be still and will not hide your treasure within.
The mind is like a snake guarding your treasure.
There was a snake that stationed in front of a cave. Inside the cave there is a treasure, and this person wanted to get to the treasure but there’s a snake guarding in front . The snake was guarding the door of the cave so no one cannot get in and get to the treasure. That person had a brilliant idea, he called a snake charmer, an Indian snake charmer with a flute. The snake charmer came and played the flute, beautiful flute music, and the snake started to listen. The snake shook its head, shook its body, charmed by the music. Then this person sneaked in the cave and got to the treasure.
Meditation is sneaking pass the limitations of the mind to get to enjoy your immortal spirit. Our mind is guarding us from enjoying the treasure of our soul. There are many different techniques that you have to do to charm the mind.
Concentration; Keeping the Mind Busy:
Here is the list of different methods of meditation that keep your mind busy in the right way.
Focussing on a mantra (Japa) is one way to keep the mind still.
Chanting outloud kirtan with the spirit of bhakti yoga is a way of charming the mind and keeping it somehow not obstructing you, your experience of connection.
Keep yourself involved in Karma Yoga activities all the time. Our problem is not that we have too much work. The problem is we have too much time on our hands. – 50 years ago, things are different Before you had to chop wood, carry water, you know, light the lamp and then pull the water from the well and now everything is just push a button. You push the button, you have electricity, you push the button, the car drives by itself, you push it, and you have the laundry washed – everything is done automatically, so you have a lot of time.
Keep the mind grounded: Do physical work like gardening at the same time leading a meditation life. Keep your life simple. This will keep your mind grounded. When you have a lot of time and stuff, the mind will have different needs, and different preoccupations. Don’t complain when your life is difficult. When your life is difficult, actually, you will have to chop wood, carry water. It will keep your mind very busy and actually, very healthy. The mind needs to concentrate so it doesn’t dream different things. Different ideas all the time and these ideas are non-essential.
Travel and move less. During COVID pandemic time, people starts to distinguish between what is essential and what is non-essential. Even before all these lock downs and social distancing campaigns nowadays, we taught it in yoga.
Reduce needs and distractions: The governments in pandemic time distinguish what is essential and what is non- essential. They close first non-essential things – they close the bars, entertainment places, the coffee shops, the movie theatres, the clothing stores, the gyms. [Unfortunately, yoga is under the same thing as the gym ]. But Yoga has said for a long time the same thing: Yoga says stay by yourself, don’t run around, be indoors, turn within, be content, be happy. Now the government says the same – I think the government should hire me to help people to stay indoors and be happy!.
That is Raja yoga meditation. That one-pointed state of mind, concentrating so that your mind will increase the vibratory wavelength and then you start to find peace and happiness. That’s very simple. Don’t have too many distractions. Don’t have too much desire. If you have too much time, your mind doesn’t know what to do.
Keep the emotions happy at the same time disciplining the mind.
Swami Vishnudevanandaji created this concept of a yoga vacation when he saw people left the city and go to the Laurentian mountains on the weekends. He understood that people needs to relax from their busy life and learn to integrate the yoga and meditation practice with their busy life at the same time.
Recharge the prana with regulated Yoga life:
People comes back from their weekend get-away exhausted and they need to have a vacation from their vacation. That’s how he created this concept of having places like this where people can come, and they are on vacation but in a disciplined manner. They get up early, they exercise and they eat the right food and go to bed at the right time – That’s meditation the yoga way. When you try every day to control your mind, be more positive, be more focused, less distracted, less complaining, you are preparing yourself for meditation. Meditation is not just sitting with your eyes closed.
Self-Inquiry practice:
The last aspect of meditation is called self-inquiry. Do Self-inquiry practice so you don’t go on believing yourself to be something that you are not. Thought is very fast and you are what you think. But you have to develop the capacity to turn your mind inward, to watch your heart and watch your mind and question yourself and try to find a different way to think about yourself that will be more correct or more truthful.
That practice of turning the mind to watch itself, to observe itself and to switch the thoughts from non-essential to essential is called self-inquiry practice. You can do it anytime, anywhere, but you have to be aware of yourself and you have to be able to learn, to learn to think about the way you think. You cannot just think and believe everything that you think is true. Yoga says to you no, no, no. Learn to discriminate between the real and the not real, the Self and the not Self, the Permanent and the temporary. You need to be more aware, and you need to watch and contemplate your thoughts. Keep only the good positive thoughts in the mind, and the thoughts that are illusory, temporary, not true about yourself and others– let them go.
Summary
To summarize,
1/ think about why you meditate so that you break through the pattern of your mind, so that you will not be blocked by this pattern that will hide your true self and your true happiness. And so you can bring more light into your life – number one. Don’t blame anything outside. It is your own mind that brings you disease or health, happiness, or not. So, it’s like climbing a ladder. If you climb the ladder and you fall down and break your neck, it’s not the fault of the ladder it’s your fault. That means, how you use your mind is your skill. You don’t know how to use your mind and your mind creates problems for you – that’s the problem. Everyone needs to learn how to use their mind better. And that’s yoga teaching – how to use your mind better. How to slowly, slowly control the mind. You know why you meditate, so that you go to the root of the problems, and you can control the mind. Or, if you don’t like the word control, you can say that you are tuning the mind. What it means, tuning the mind? It is adjusting the mind to a higher wavelength, to a more correct way of thinking, the correct way of feeling that will last you a long time. You do this for yourself not for me, I do it for myself and I share. So why meditate? You need to ask yourself this question.
2/ The second thing is you need to learn the technique to meditate in daily life. You learn to meditate in your daily life activity – called karma yoga attitude, learn to be selfless. And to do your duty and let go of the results and don’t worry about what people think.
3/ Then, you learn to love correctly, selflessly, without too much attachment. Because attachment will make you suffer but love will make you feel happy. It’s up to you to figure it out – the difference between the two.
4/ Then you’ll need to learn to control the mind, turn inward, and to watch it. To control the mind means to calm it down.
5/ And then you need to do self-inquiry, you need to observe yourself and ask yourself where does this thought come from? Is it important? Does it really help me or not? And then things that are non-essential, let go of them. Keep only something important that lasts a long time, keep this thought. And anything that is not important and changes – let it go. Something that changes has no value, there’s no truth to it, but something that has value will last.
Additional story: Swami sita sharing story about how she chose community life :
Well, that’s it, any questions or anything? Enough? Time to go to bed. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you very much for setting up this beautiful place. Thank you very much for keeping this ashram so nice. It’s so valuable to see you sitting here. I’m able to sit here and share with you, with the Masters behind us, it’s all wonderful and the mosquitoes are not that bad. I used to live in the forest up here. I walked for half an hour to get there. When you cross the forest, there were so many mosquitos I had to wear a mosquito net over my head, so there is this round thing over my head when I walk through the forest. And mosquitos, not mosquitos but black flies. So, I know this forest very well.
I used to have a house in the forest, I lived there happily. We built a house and one day, I still remember, on top of this hill, I crossed the forest and came to the top of the hill, and I looked down and I looked at the ashram, which at that time was very small, half size – one-third of the size. And then I said to myself, because I have a house, the house is a big house – twenty-four feet by twenty-four feet, two stories. Big, beautiful, in the forest. And I said, why do you want to live in your own house, far away at the top of the hill? I still remember, the words come – “no, I want to live here in the ashram.” I followed that voice and moved in the ashram. And here, in the ashram, there’s no room sometimes. I had to live many times in the office, many times in the laundry room. And then one time I went shopping for something and I came back, and my room was gone, they gave my room to the guest! I didn’t mind, but the problem was somebody moved my alter! I was so mad. Then I realized my attachment again, when you’re upset at something it’s always because of your attachment, it’s nothing else. I realized, well, whatever I want does not sit on this table, it’s not the altar, the alter is only a symbol of something that you hold dear.
That was the story of my choice of wanting to live in the ashram when there is no room for me instead in my own house and own space. Community life has something very good. Even though you feel that you don’t have time and space when you have to share but it’s actually very beautiful.
Swami Sitaramananda is a senior acharya of the International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centers and is director of the Sivananda Ashram Vedanta Yoga Farm, California and the Sivananda Yoga Resort and Training Center, Vietnam. She is acharya of China, Taiwan, and Japan as well. Swamiji is the organizer and teacher of the Sivananda Yoga Health Educator Training (SYHET) program, an 800-hour program on yoga therapy, accredited by the International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT).
Swami Sitaramananda is the author of “Essentials of Yoga Practice and Philosophy” (translated in Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Russian), “Positive Thinking Manual”, “Karma Yoga Manual”, “Meditation Manual”, “Swamiji Said, a collection of teachings by Swami Vishnu” in His Own Words. She is responsible for the Vietnamese translation of “Completed Illustrated Book of Yoga” (CIBY) and “Meditation & Mantras” by Swami Vishnu. Many of her video & audio lectures on Yoga life, philosophy, and psychology as well as articles and webinars can be found on this website.
Swami Sita is an ardent supporter of the integration of the Vedic sciences such as Vastu, Jyotish, Ayurveda, Yoga and Vedanta. She is an international teacher of the Sivananda Yoga Teachers’ Training Courses and Advanced Yoga teachers’ Training courses, as well as Meditation and Vedanta & Silence Courses both in Sivananda Ashrams in Vietnam and in Grass Valley, CA.
The topic is fear, anxiety and stress. It’s a topic of our time. Some countries are experiencing the COVID situation, they are in lockdown. In some other countries, like in the US, it’s not currently locked down, but still the increase of COVID cases is very big and there is a different situation that creates anxiety and fear. So it’s very important for us to understand what is fear and anxiety, their symptoms, and also a few methods on how we can deal with this. It’s a short talk, but we also have some other videos and articles that we can share on the topic.
What is fear?
Fear is a primitive emotion. It is a very basic emotion for survival. We are afraid when there is a sense of threat, imaginary or real, and we feel that we are being threatened. We develop fear as a way to protect ourselves. We have different ways of stress response. For some people, it will be to fight, for some people it will be to run (flight), and for some people it will be to freeze. Fight means you go against, flight means you run away, and freeze is when you cannot do anything.
I remember one time one of my students was visiting India with me, and she opened the closet and a big rat climbed into her hand and walked up her arm. And she looked at it, and she didn’t scream, she didn’t move. She didn’t do anything. And she just looked at the rat moving on her arm. So, that is the freeze response, she could not do anything, she was paralyzed.
Different people have different reactions depending on their temperament, their type of nature. You need to recognize how you function and recognize how the people around you function so you understand them.
Fear and anxiety can happen any time. You develop fear when you encounter an unfamiliar situation. Normally, you have a routine, you go to work, everything is orderly. Now everything changes, your routine changes. So already that creates a certain kind of anxiety and then your imagination aggravates the emotional condition. You have a lot of imagination. Your mind starts to create different scenarios and different imagined outcomes, then you believe in it, because you believe in the mind. You do not have the practice to be detached from the mind and to be the observer of the mind and to know that what is in the mind is not necessarily true.
If you have not developed this technique of yoga to observe the mind, then you believe what the mind says. And at that time, you know it will be cascading, that means the thought which is in your mind and your imagination will be cascading into something more and more serious. The entire mind will become distorted.
The drama when the mind becomes distorted is that you lose the connection with your True Self. When you lost this connection, you don’t know what to do.
Manifestations of fear and anxiety:
The main thing that you know about fear, please remember this point, is that fear paralyzes you.
It means normally you have a lot of inner resources or creativity and you know what to do, but when you have fear, all of a sudden you don’t know what to do. You are paralyzed.
Let’s say you are watching TV or something and it happened to be a horror movie and you are very afraid. So the TV is just about three feet away, or one or two meter away, but you cannot switch it off. You cannot move, you cannot switch it off. You are there completely frozen, not able to breathe, because you are so afraid.
Then you react and you do things that are not reasonable when you are afraid. I heard somebody says that in Vietnam, some people are so afraid of catching COVID virus that some people go and tape their doors and windows, as if they can prevent the virus from entering. Obviously, they did not have the right information to know how to deal with COVID . When they tape the doors and windows or hold their breath so they do not breathe, what happens? They will not have sufficient energy, prana, life force and will get sick. So it’s a completely wrong reaction. In the contrary, you need to breathe deeply and you need to open the windows so that air, new air, can come in and change the air in your room. This is one of the examples when your faculty becomes paralyzed and then you make wrong decisions.
You also can have other kinds of impulses that also come from fear. For example, you will be hoarding, buying, buying, buying, to prepare yourself in case something happens. Another possibility is you will be in isolation, you don’t want to talk to anybody. You think people are a bother and you don’t want to talk and you’re afraid of people.
You also become blameful. You blame yourself, your father, your mother, the government, etc. If you are blameful, you have become negative.
You develop shame and guilt as well. This is quite common that you think that you’re not doing enough, you blame yourself for not taking enough precautions. You are afraid for your children and you want to protect everyone, so you develop a guilty feeling.
Then the other negative reaction is that you become depressed. You lose your motivation to live, because things are different, and then you don’t know what life is about, and then you become depressed. You’re not coping very well.
You can also develop what we call “ hyper-vigilance”. Hyper-vigilance is when you have extreme intensity in your mind, checking and double checking all of the information surrounding you. In an intense manner, you try to control everything around you.
This extra vigilance and control takes a lot of your energy. It makes you very tense, and then you imagine all kinds of things. Eventually, hyper-vigilance will take a toll on your system because you spend a lot of energy in tension.
The other problem of reaction coming from stress and anxiety is addiction. Addiction is a self-destructive habit. When you have addiction, you lost your sense of self control and you indulge in things that you did not do before. You can eat tons of sugar for example, which is an addiction, you can drink more alcohol, or you drink more coffee, something that you already have a certain weakness about. Addiction and over indulgence in self destructive habit is another side effect of fear.
Sometimes we don’t know that we are afraid, but we say that we are stressed. It’s the same phenomenon. So with stress you can see that you cannot solve the problems, you cannot be very clear in your mind because you have low prana, low energy and your negative emotions are plenty, you have a lot of negative emotion, for example anger.
Stress takes your prana away and consequently, you cannot adapt to a situation. Your mind fixates on a certain scenario, what you like to do. When things are not the way you like or expect and you cannot adapt, it creates a blockage in the flow of prana, and makes things worse.
The fear that you already have at the bottom of your mind which we call existential anxiety comes up. Normally when you function in daily life, you can control more or less this existential anxiety by having a life, a kind of a normal life, where you do things or you produce things, and then you enjoy yourself, more or less.
But when something happens that makes this fear , this anxiety of living comes up to the surface. Existential anxiety comes not just because something happened, but just because you are born in this body, and you don’t know, “Who am I? Where am I going and what is this life about? What is life? What is death? Why are so many people dying? And why are so many people suffering?” So all of these existential questions all of a sudden come up in the mind. If you can follow them and relate to them and you understand them, this is good. But sometimes you cannot formulate them, and this unknown anxiety attacks you. Then you can be depressed and do wrong things. At that time, it’s good for you to have some counseling, some kind of spiritual counseling. To deal with existential anxiety, you have to use spiritual counseling and philosophy of living.
Karma and stress:
There are certain life situations that you are experiencing which we call “karmic situations”. These difficult situations that normally you are already trying to manage, might come up to the surface and become aggravated in stressful situation.
Let’s say that your karma in this life is already having difficult relationships with people. But when you’re stressed out, yeah, this relationship issue becomes more serious as it takes more energy from you. You then go back to your old pattern, your negative pattern of reaction and you get things more entangled.
Stress resilience skills:
You need to build stress resilience, i.e. learning how to become stronger to face difficulty. You need to:
1. learn the basic skill ofhow to increase prana, how to have more prana, more energy, more vitality. For example: 1. going in nature and eating natural good food will give you more prana. 2. doing nice exercise like yoga exercise will help you to move your energy even though you think that you’re just moving your physical body. It’s not true, when the body moves, the energy will move the mind and the mind will become more flexible and will become more flowing when the body is moving.
You don’t have to go and run excessively, you just have to take some walks, move the body, do some asanas and breathing.
It is very important to have prana. So very important that you learn, that when you breathe with your diaphragm, you double the capacity of your lungs, you double your oxygen intake, and you also increase your prana, your vitality. And when your vitality is there, your mind will be uplifted, immediately, it changes wavelength. Instead of having the fear and the anxiety and the frozen rigid state of mind at its very low wavelength, now your mind will change wavelength and go higher.
So understand that prana intake is part of the breathing, not just intake of oxygen, but also the vitality, the life force that come into your system. And when life comes into your system, then your intelligence starts to work, your mind starts to think and then you know how to do and what to do, how to take proper decision.
So you need to learn to increase the prana, the life force, you need to build up your resilience, your strength and how to resist the stress so that you are not stressed and fearful, yeah, so that you can have some positive thoughts in your mind.
2. Skill of Adaptability:
Adaptation is an important skill to learn to reduce stress. As example, the situation of Covid virus is constantly requiring us to adapt to new situation.
For example these days, one day you close the business, then next day you open the business, and then you have to close the business again, and you have to open it again. You thought that you could be free to travel and then you cannot be free to travel, you have to cancel your journeys and your traveling plans, your meeting with friends plans or your meeting with family plans, you have to constantly change. This situation can become very unsettling. But that is how we exercise adaptability.
3. increase faith:
Faith allows you to have a vision because when things change, you don’t have a vision, you cannot see. When you are in the normal situation you can see. I can make the plan that in three months I will do this, in six months I will do this, in one year, I will do this. You have some long term plans. But with a situation of stress, negativity and fear, you don’t have long term plans, you have to do a few days at a time, one day at a time. That’s part of adaptability. Some people are more flexible, they change, they change, they change, and they are fine. And some people cannot change, they are slow in changing by nature. So when you deal with family members or friends, you have to know, you cannot expect people to be on the same level as you. Some people will change and some people will not be able to change, because of their nature. So don’t blame them. Don’t be upset.
Anxiety taxes your system:
Anxiety is a form of fear. Anxiety is a fear that has no name. It is the same as fear for survival and perceived threat, perceived danger. Perceived means it’s a subjective thing, it’s not certain that it is there. And then you become very anxious that you are hyper-aroused, that means that all your systems are on alert. The nervous system is built in order for you to save yourself. For example, when the system is on the alert, then all of a sudden you cannot digest your food because all of the energy goes to the extremities to get ready for running, and then you cannot digest food that normally you can digest, because there is no energy going to the digestive system. That’s called hyper-arousal, hyper-vigilance when you monitor the internal and external environment intensely. There is not necessarily any cause. Fear will can create a paralyzed state for the body (which means that you are not moving), but also a paralyzed mind which means you do not have resources, you cannot think. Normally, when you are relaxed, you know this and that, and you will always have some solution because the solution comes from inside, but when you are in that fear and anxiety, you have no solution, you panic!
Attachment is the root cause of fears and anxieties:
If you feel that you are desperate, that you have no solution for your life, and you have all kinds of negative thoughts, yeah, you need to know that you are
afraid. It is helpful to just being able to be aware of that state of mind and be able to name it, be aware that “for some reason I am very stressed and I’m very fearful”. The second thing very important for you to please understand is the yoga teachings say that fear comes from attachment.
Do enquiry: Why you are afraid? Of course it’s because of your survival instinct. It’s for the preservation of your life, but also it is because of your attachment to some aspect of this life. “Attachment is the root cause of fear and anxiety.”
What is attachment? Attachment is the identification, with something that you think that you will not be able to live without. That means that you are losing yourself in the thing you are attached to. Attachment doesn’t have to be equated with love. You still have love without attachment. Sometimes we make a mistake, we think that love and attachment are the same. They are not.
You can be loving but not necessarily attached. When you become very attached, that’s when you become very fearful. If you want to lower your fear and anxiety, you need to lower your attachment. But when you are strongly attached, and you identify yourself with it, it’s very difficult to detach, because you feel that you are losing your life.
When you feel that you have to detach, it’s like you are losing that which is your life itself, so then you cling on to it even more. That’s the reason why you have hyper vigilance, you want to control everything and you cling on to the thing that you are attached to. You go in the opposite direction of what will lead you to your well- being, you develop an opposite reaction.
Affirmation of courage:
So, there are a few things that you need to do. You need to know that the mind is imagining different things and projecting different ideas and reacting. You need to feel courage, do self-affirmation of courage, write it down or repeat it out loud, “everything will be fine.” You know, “I am fine.” and affirmation of courage, “I can do it.”
Let’s say you lost your job. If you have the courage and the inner resources, then you know that you can create a new way of living. But if you are feeling completely desperate and hopeless, then you will not be able to, and then you will fall down even more with the situation.
The power of now:
Fear and anxiety, often time, come because you’re thinking of the past, your mind is in the past, and then you project your future. When your mind is in fear, it’s either in the past or in the future.
So what do you need to do then? You need to be in the present. You need to know the power of now. Yoga techniques are helping you to have less fear and anxiety, by bringing you to the now.
How to be in the now? You have to be able to control the mind and put the mind in a concentrated state. Concentration of mind needs to be on something that is positive in order to bring you to the present. For example, repeating a mantra, which is a sacred sound, is very positive.
So instead of worrying and worrying, thinking of 10,000 scenarios, running here, running there, or running here, running there in your mind and lose energy, you can repeat your mantra with faith, devotion and concentration. You’ll be in the now, because your mind is not moving in the past, nor projecting into the future, because when the mind is calm, it can be in the present.
When the mind is calm, it can be in the present because it can look at something without zooming on something, then it just relaxes. When the mind is calm and relaxed, the prana is flowing, you are connecting to yourself and everything is working. Then you can be in the now and then when you are in the now, you can have resources.
Relax in the power of being:
Trust in what is called the power of being. The power of being comes when you are not all in your mind, your mind is not you. The power of being comes when you are relaxed. Yoga helps you to relax and to be yourself.
Improved breath and body awareness:
When you practice yoga, you need to be more aware of the relationship between breath and movement. So also, the yoga teacher will help the student to be more connected to their breath coordinated with their movement. The more that you’ll be able to do that, then the more that you will be able to regulate yourself in the breath and the movement.
It’s very important, this will bring in relaxation, because when you are stressed and when you are fearful, you have much tension in the body, and you cannot really relax. That’s why doing asanas is a very important practice. Then eventually you can do savasana relaxation which is successive series of tensions and releases.
So number one in being aware of body and mind is to slow down, slow down. Improved awareness happens only when body and mind slow down. When your mind is racing, you cannot slow down.
Elongate exhalation to switch the mind to relaxation state:
When you are breathing, the exhalation has to be longer than the inhalation in order to bring about relaxation. If your inhalation is for three seconds, then your exhalation will be for six seconds, if your inhalation is for four seconds, then your exhalation will be for eight seconds.
You can put a pillow or something heavy on your belly, so you can connect with the most important and basic aspect of life, which is your breath. You feel when you inhale and you feel when you exhale. Something heavy on your belly will help you to really exhale as it pushes on your tummy and helps you to exhale. You can do restorative yoga, which is basically the same. You put yourself in a very comfortable posture, breathe, relax and allow all the tension in the body to release.
Balance the prana with pranayama:
You also need to balance your prana. The best way is to do “anuloma viloma”, the alternate nostril breath.
What ratio, with retention, or no retention, and how long retention? For that you can ask your yoga teacher, but you need to balance the flow prana (that will directly influence your emotions) and balance your right and left brain activity.
Increase awareness and be gentle:
Increasing awareness means to be very gentle with yourself and others. When you are in a stressful situation, when your family member is in a stressful situation, or fearful, or paralyzing, you need to be very gentle with them. Be aware that they actually are very anxious and don’t force them. The one thing is don’t force them in anything,
When people are strong and healthy, yoga teacher can push them a little bit to break through their limitations, but not when they are anxious and weak. At that time, yoga teacher needs to give a lot of encouragement: “You are doing well. It’s very good.” And then, “Relax, you are fine.”
Increase Ojas, the power of sustenance and endurance:
How to increase Ojas Shakti, i.e. the power of sustenance and immunity? Increase immunity through breathing, relaxation, through deep good sleep. When people are anxious they cannot sleep.
Also, Ojas Shakti or the power of sustenance of life, comes from your deep heart when you have faith. When people are anxious, they are cut off from their faith, they don’t have faith, they only worry. You need to give them good quality food, that’s very important, good quality food, in order for them to nourish themselves and nurture Ojas, avoiding nervous eating which aggravates anxiety even more.
Gratitude and faith:
The general attitude to encourage is the attitude of trust and devotion, of love for God. When people are anxious, they do not think that God exists so they will be hyper vigilant and super controlling thinking that they are going to solve their problems that way.
Yoga teachers can help people to relax and encourage them to increase their faith. Because the moment faith returned, the fear and anxiety disappear. The feeling of gratitude is a good stepping stone to the feeling of devotion. Replace doubt with gratitude. As homework, ask to make a list of gratitude and repeat it daily. The heart will change.
Let go of desires, adopt attitude of contentment:
A very good attitude to adopt in the time of restlessness is the attitude of being content. Normally the mind is always restless motivated by desire. Now, the mind is content and turning inward. Tune into the heart and feel contentment, gratitude and relaxation.
Create security and emotional relaxation:
In Yoga practice, use props, blankets, pillows, to create the security, the warmth, the quiet and the support of you and your family members. Do comfortable posture and experience emotional relaxation. Listen to some nice music. For those who have a connection with a mantra, you can play the mantra such as, “Om Trayambhakam Yajamahe Sugandim Pushtivardanam Urvarukamiva Bhadanan Mritror Mukshia Mam Mritat”, the mantra that says that everything is happening by the will of the universe, everything is evolving, and it’s a prayer to help you health, healing and liberation. It’s a good mantra for disease, for healing, for everything! So you can play at very low volume the recording of this mantra, all day long, even when you’re sleeping. all day long, in a low voice, not loud. It will become the background of your mind and you will become reassured that everything is okay, everything is as it should be, you do not have to worry about this.
Detachment and remembrance of Self:
You can learn detachment when you can remember your true Self. In the beginning, if you cannot remember your true self, then you can do self-affirmation so you can eventually remember, because the Atman or your Soul is untouched by any kind of diseases, any kind of separation, any kind of threat. Affirm “I am satchitananda (existence, knowledge and bliss absolute), I am eternal. I am present all the time. I am knowledge and light, there is nothing that is in the dark for me. And I am bliss and happiness. You use the language with which you can connect and you assert your healthy Self, instead of thinking of disease.
The power of autosuggestion:
“What you think is what you become”. Instead of thinking: “I might get the disease, I will die and I will lose everything”, keep repeating, “I am healthy in body and mind.” The healthy thought that you repeat to yourself will help you to be healthy because the body listens to you.
The body is the subconscious mind. It listens to the order of the boss, and you are the boss. So you have to say, “I am healthy.” And the subconscious mind will say, “Oh, really?” And then it will start to produce, to work, to connect and do all these things that make you healthy. The moment that you give the auto suggestion to your mind, “I’m not healthy and I’m going to die,” this kind of thought is not going to help you. Do use the power of auto suggestion, of positive thinking, and know that at the bottom line, you are healthy all the time.
Cultivate the faith.
Faith is not blind faith, but it’s the knowledge that everything is fine. There are 3 aspects of faith.
First is faith in yourself, faith that you are not hopeless. Second is having faith in the Yoga practice. If you do pranayama and you don’t believe that it will do anything, it doesn’t help you. If you do breathing exercises, relaxation exercises, and you don’t believe that it will work, then it will not help you. So you need to develop the faith towards the practice. Now is the time for you to practice more. It is not the time for you to be worrying and to be criticizing or blaming. It is a time where you need to just really focus on the practice. Third, you trust inside that you know the answer. You have faith in the Divine Mother or in the universe, in Mother Nature.
Trust Mother Nature:
Of course the epidemic and the virus are here for whatever reason, but it doesn’t matter. You do what you can, use faith but also use the logical mind, the scientific mind, wear a mask and use social distance. Many people have studied all this. Now open the doors and windows to have air.
Be in nature. Be in the sun. It is very important to be in the sun, for 10 to 15 minutes a day, be in the sun. If you are not able to go out, stay on your balcony. If you cannot go to the forest, look at the tree in front of your house. Be friend with your tree. Love nature and try to see the big picture. Meditate, see the big picture, that everything is in the hands of the Creator and it is not in your hands.
The whole universe is in the hands of the Creator. So you do what you can and then you relax, you trust, okay? Life will never disappear. Life will always be there, it just changes from this way, that way and you trust and you will find. Don’t be too attached and let go of your attachment.
Avoid negative company.
Another thing I want to add to the list is try to avoid negative company.
When you are weak, don’t watch TV all the time. You do not need to see on news channel everyday that there are how many new cases, how many casualties how many people died.
From time to time, you need to be aware of the news. But if you indulge in news every day, the news become your sacred mantra. “How many people died? How many people got sick?” It doesn’t help you. Stay away from negative company. Negative company will kill your faith.
Summary:
Try to control your fears and anxieties yourself. Be very gentle with yourself and others. Don’t be angry. Don’t be violent because when you are stressed, oftentimes you cannot control yourself, you become angry, and you are expecting more from other people.
Be aware that when people are anxious, it takes all their energy. They may be at home, but then they cannot do anything. Avoid blaming them: “Now you’re useless, you’re at home, you have so much time, why don’t you do this? Why don’t you do that.” But we have no idea that they are consumed by their anxiety. They’re at home, but they cannot do anything, because they’re consumed by their anxiety, because their life has changed.
Okay, so, live a simple life, because the more your life is complicated, the more you have fear of losing things.
You’ll notice that your children might be clinging more to you, they become more demanding, because the anxiety of separation might be there in the atmosphere sometimes now, children can pick up the anxiety, and you can pick it up also, because it is in the environment.
You need to be more positive. Any kind of faith that you have will make you stronger, so develop faith, any kind of faith, as it will make you stronger. Any religion, any faith that you have, it doesn’t matter which kind, just have faith that everything is taken care of, and then you will become stronger. The opposite of faith is doubt. So don’t allow doubt to enter your mind.
And ask the experts. Don’t be alone, don’t be isolated, don’t think that you are unique, okay? Use your logical mind because fear is an emotion. So therefore when you have fear you are not able to use your logical mind. At that time you can use the logical mind of somebody else who is logical, who is scientific, to balance out your emotions. So ask for help. We are here to support you.
OM shanti
Swami Sitaramananda is a senior acharya of the International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centers and is director of the Sivananda Ashram Vedanta Yoga Farm, California and the Sivananda Yoga Resort and Training Center, Vietnam. She is acharya of China, Taiwan, and Japan as well. Swamiji is the organizer and teacher of the Sivananda Yoga Health Educator Training (SYHET) program, an 800-hour program on yoga therapy, accredited by the International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT).
Swami Sitaramananda is the author of “Essentials of Yoga Practice and Philosophy” (translated in Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Russian), “Positive Thinking Manual”, “Karma Yoga Manual”, “Meditation Manual”, “Swamiji Said, a collection of teachings by Swami Vishnu” in His Own Words. She is responsible for the Vietnamese translation of “Completed Illustrated Book of Yoga” (CIBY) and “Meditation & Mantras” by Swami Vishnu. Many of her video & audio lectures on Yoga life, philosophy, and psychology as well as articles and webinars can be found on this website.
Swami Sita is an ardent supporter of the integration of the Vedic sciences such as Vastu, Jyotish, Ayurveda, Yoga and Vedanta. She is an international teacher of the Sivananda Yoga Teachers’ Training Courses and Advanced Yoga teachers’ Training courses, as well as Meditation and Vedanta & Silence Courses both in Sivananda Ashrams in Vietnam and in Grass Valley, CA.
The topic of today is how to prevent future suffering. It is a very important topic because nobody wants to suffer. This teaching comes from the teaching in the Raja Yoga Sutras of Patanjali from 2,000 years ago, where Patanjali Maharishi explains the nature of the mind and how the mind works. He said: “Future suffering needs to be avoided”.
The point is, how do you know about future suffering? The answer is, if you know how the mind works, you know about future sufferings. In fact, the mind is almost like a tape recorder. It registers all the experiences, all the impressions. These impressions registered in the mind are called the samskaras. The mind will reproduce what it has experienced. This means that what you reproduce in the mind is predictable, It is predictable, because it is is based on what you have experienced. Let’s say you have the experience of pain, due to somebody attacking you.
Then that experience of pain in your mind will be reproduced again because you already know the experience of pain. This known painful experience will lead you to the tendency to feel that pain again. Why? Simply, because your mind knows it and will reproduce it.
From darkness comes enlightenment
Today we are having this talk after Buddha Poornima which is the day of celebration of Lord Buddha’s birth, and also this day coincides with the full moon of the lunar eclipse. So it’s a very, very interesting time because the full moon signifies a lot of emotions and possibly much clarity. Yet, when it is eclipsed, it is like you cannot see, you cannot understand, you cannot feel and at the same time, it is exactly the opposite, you are using it as an enlightened mind.
Buddha Poornima on the full moon means the birth of the enlightened one on the full moon. It’s a contradiction, darkness and at the same time enlightenment. At the same time, you have a glimpse of darkness in the mind – the mind cannot think, you experience pain and suffering, your mind collapses, you don’t have light, you don’t have any idea of what to think or what to do, but in fact, it is two sides of the same coin. At the same moment, you start to turn inward and start to let go. You start to receive light.
Interesting. All knowledge comes after you suffer, because when you suffer, you think about it. When you think about it, then you find the reason why you suffer. It comes from a certain habit, an emotional habit, or the habit of the mind. Or it comes from some past that you keep reproducing in your mind.
You have to experience suffering and pain over and over and over and over again, before you ask yourself the question, “Is there anything else?”. That means, you ask yourself the question, “How am I going to get out of this mental pattern?” So, the Buddha talks about the truth of suffering. The truth of suffering means it is true that everyone suffers, and we need to find ways to be free from suffering.
The truth of suffering
We suffer because of birth, we suffer because of old age, we suffer because of disease. We suffer because of death. So now the whole world is suffering, because a lot of people are afraid of death; because there is a pandemic going on. A lot of people suffer from tension, from anxiety, from being afraid.
They are afraid of disease, afraid of the virus, afraid to lose their loved one, afraid to lose their job, afraid to lose money, afraid to lose their habit. Yes, your habit. Let’s say you have a habit to go out and eat in a restaurant. Now in pandemic time, you cannot go out to restaurants and you have to stay at home. So some kind of suffering and tension and stress is there because of some change.
At birth, we are crying. And then when we have disease, crying… when we lose our faculties, when we have old age, we will be crying. And ultimately, when we are not ready to meet the next step, death, we also suffer.
Yoga is essential knowledge to free you from suffering
That’s why Yoga is essential knowledge. Yoga philosophy, yoga psychology, yoga teaching is essential for you to practice. Do not wait until you are diseased to turn to Yoga. Some people turn to yoga because of disease, because they are suffering. When there is a lot of suffering, the ashram is full, because people remember yoga, remember the discipline.
At that time, they want to turn inside. But otherwise, if everything is okay, they want to enjoy life. They have no time for yoga. Yet, they have time to go to restaurants to enjoy life. They have time to spend chit-chatting with friends. They are going here and going there all the time, they always have a new idea, new places to go. They think distractions and entertainment are the way to solve the problem of suffering. But they do not realize, they carry with them their same mind.
But yoga sees things differently. Yoga says the more that you distract yourself, the more you satisfy your desire, the more you will suffer because no desire can be satisfied. Desire is insatiable, it cannot be satisfied. And when the mind is restless, not contented, that’s when you suffer.
This is why yoga always talks about “purification”. Purification means that we realize that the light, the knowledge, peace and happiness are already within us, but there are some impurities and wrong thoughts, wrong habits in the mind that prevent us from realizing this peace and happiness. That’s why you need to purify these impure thoughts. All yoga practices are for the purpose of purification.
Ayurveda, which is a science of health linked to yoga, says you need to balance the doshas (or your innate constitution and innate conditions of the mind). Yoga talks about purification and Ayurveda talks about balance.
Going from tamas, rajas to sattwa is the way
We need to purify the mind and balance the mind if we want to prevent future suffering. Yoga and Vedanta teaching give you a very nice concept of the gunas. Guna means a quality of nature or you can say the qualities of your mind. One is Tamas, it means the force that is in your mind and in the cosmos that is pulling down, making things stagnant, not moving, not changing and pulling down.
This force of inertia is called Tamas. If you are subject to Tamas, are you going to be happy? No, you can say for sure, no. If your mind is tamasic and if you live in a tamasic environment, you will be unhappy. So also, you will not be happy if rajas is the dominant force. Rajas means action, activity, passion, movement and that would make the mind move restlessly, desirous, and egoistic, fighting, comparing, competitive. This rajasic mind will lead you to conflict, to dissatisfaction, to disappointment.
It will lead you to extremes, to conflicts. You will like something and you will dislike something. You might feel happy for a little bit, but then you will suffer from the opposite swing. You will not be happy. So, the tamasic mind will not make you happy and the rajasic mind will not make you happy.
The mind also receives influences easily from the environment. If you live in a tamasic environment, even if you are not tamasic, then you will not be happy. In the same manner, if you live too close to rajas – example, all the time in noise, in passion, watching news, terrible sensational news and dramas, this will not make you happy. It will make you suffer. It’s good to have news, from time to time, but good to avoid if it’s completely full of negative news that you cannot do anything about. Therefore, you need to guard your mind against the mass media, the rajas.
Now, the good news is, there’s another kind of mind called a sattvic mind, dominated by the quality of sattva. This third quality (sattva) happens when the mind is balanced, peaceful, contented, compassionate, loving, knowledgeable, wise, moderate. This mind doesn’t go to extremes. If you are endowed with this kind of mind, your universe will be calm, your attitude will be calm, balanced, wise, peaceful, content. This mind will not create suffering.
We just have to make sure that our mind and our life and surrounding become sattvic. How do you do this? Yoga teaches the Five Points of yogic lifestyle. What you need to do is to have a routine to regulate your energy and to move your energy, not letting your energy become stuck. If the energy becomes stuck, you are stressed and tense and you will have tamasic thoughts of depression, fear, anxiety, and so on. So do asana to activate your tamasic energy and to slow down your rajas.
In proper breathing, you do the pranayama in order to balance your energy. Again, to make your energy flow, to purify your nadis (energy channels), and to cleanse all the previous blockages in your energy system. It is very, very important to do pranayama when you are emotionally upset, when you’re emotionally imbalanced. You have learned the technique of breathing; it is in your hands. You just have to sit down and do pranayama: Anuloma Viloma (alternate nostril breathing) and Kapalabhati to bring yourself more energy as well as to cleanse and to balance your mind. This practice is very essential.
The third important practice is proper relaxation. This practice implies that you are able to recognize when your mind tenses up when you are stressed out. When you lose energy, and everything is added on, added on, and added on, the same negative thoughts are repeated, repeated, and repeated. Then you become stressed and you suffer. It is very important for you to learn to balance, to practice proper relaxation.
Proper diet is very important. Because the food you eat will influence the mind. So do not eat too much sugar. Do not eat too much spicy food, and not too much salt. Try to eat calm food, alive food, cooked with love, with kindness. Actually, not being able to go to a restaurant because of Covid is very good. So you can cook at home for yourself and your family. Try to see the positive aspect of things.
And the last point is the practice of meditation or positive thinking, which you need to do every day. Every day for a few minutes, 10 minutes, it’s easy. You can just sit quietly, turn inside. If you can sit longer, if you have a mantra to repeat, It’s excellent because it helps you to keep your mind strong and steady.
Building up Resilience to the Suffering coming from self, others and the environment
Yoga scripture says that suffering comes from the interaction between the gunas and the mind. It means that you are not alone, you live with different people and you have different relationships as well as you live in an environment, and this in itself, creates suffering. If the people you live with suffer, then you also will know.
The Bhagavad Gita talks about three types of affliction. First, Adhyatmika, afflictions caused by one’s own body. The body is thirsty, is hungry, is sick, and your own body is a very complex system, that’s why you need to keep yourself healthy. The second cause of affliction is Adhibhautika, it means the affliction caused by beings around you, by people that you are connected with. And the third one is Adhidaivika, suffering that is caused by the forces of heaven or divine forces. For example, cyclones, hurricanes, floods, drought, or excessive rain. You cannot control the forces of heaven.
One thing you can do is increase your resilience. Please mark that word resilience. Resilience means your capacity to resist stress and to resist negative thoughts. It’s like when you build your muscles, if you carry a heavy weight then your muscles become stronger. At times, when your life is very easy, your muscle becomes weak, because you are not working hard. In a time of difficulty, you have to carry weight, i.e., you have to resist stress and the negativity that comes from the environment. You cannot change the situation outside, but your muscles become stronger, the muscles of the mind.
You become more calm, you go more inward, you find inspiration from inside, you find the positive thoughts from inside and then you bear, you have forbearance. What I mean is you develop the capacity to go through the conflict or challenge or crisis without collapsing, without adding more of your own negative thoughts that make the situation become more difficult. In case you cannot change the situation outside, then at least you have to keep yourself very positive so that you are not collapsing under negativity that is coming from the environment, when the surrounding environment is attacking you in some way. You do not add on to your own negative thinking.
For affliction due to the body, you need to do all the yoga practices to keep yourself healthy, as much as possible. Eat the right food, the right exercise, the right breathing. Practice relaxation to keep yourself healthy.
Regarding the mind of other people, try to forgive, try to forget, try to see your part of the problem. Yes, we need to change our thinking and expectations, because all suffering comes from your mental emotional pattern and comes from your habits of relationships from the past. Your problems in relationships come from you, so cease the blaming, cease the comparison and look within. Know that you have the capacity to change your mindset into something more positive, in order for you not to find the same emotional negativity in different situations that are being repeated.
In general, try to remove yourself from tamasic and rajasic thoughts and try to cultivate positive sattvic thoughts to prevent suffering.
Higher thinking to be free from suffering
If you want to live a life free from suffering, it requires high thinking, you need to cultivate an elevated positive way of thinking, and you cannot go on with the same way of thinking. Except all the thinking that come from the media, the social media, from our hours spent in watching Facebook and so on.
Social media, mindless following, gossiping is not positive. Wasting time is not positive. We need to cultivate high thinking, that means positive thinking. This requires your mind to be very focused. You cannot be distracted and expect yourself to be free from suffering. You need to keep your mind very healthy by focusing the mind and by avoiding distractions. You need to have a concentrated mind, higher thinking, conscious awareness. Cultivate awareness instead of unawareness. Being unaware means you just do things without thinking. You live life without knowing what you are doing.
You don’t spend time to meditate, to watch your mind, to observe your thoughts, to contemplate. You just run out and do things. That unconscious kind of mind will not lead you to happiness, this is a hundred per cent sure. That’s why the teacher is so strong because they have studied the mind and they know how it works. They say categorically, 100%, if your mind is all the time running outwards, running after sensual pleasures and being distracted, you will suffer sooner or later.
You need to develop conscious awareness to overcome the lower mind, the habitual mind. This lower mind forms a big part of your mind. You would have to learn resistance. Like I said earlier, you need to practice in order to resist that mind that is formed by habit, by patterns, by samskaras. Samskara is the impression in the mind from a very long time. In yoga, we said, don’t live in the past, let the past go. You cannot make a better past. At the same time, don’t live in the future. Don’t worry about the future.
The future is not there. If you don’t repeat the past, and you can be aware in the present, your future can be changed. You live in the present when you can keep your mind focused and strong, The more you focus the mind, the more you live in the present. And the present will save you from the past and will save you from the future, the present will bring you peace, happiness. So please keep your mind very busy focusing on positive thoughts, such as a mantra. You need to keep your mind very strong and healthy. Don’t just allow your mind to run wherever it is, whatever it is, to do whatever it is. As a Yogi, you learn to master your mind.
You have capacity of choice
The last thing you need to know is that you have the capacity of choice. You want to be wise. So you have the capacity of choice in making decision. As human beings we are born with our intellect, that is part of our make up, we need to use it. The truth is we don’t use our intellect enough. We use too much of our subconscious mind, our emotions, our habits. Why? Because we are lazy. Yes, it’s easier to just keep doing the same thing, than to think about ways how you can choose better. When you want to make a conscious choice, your life is more difficult.
How do you become wise and choose wisely? You need to use your intellect. The Sanskrit term for intellect is “Buddhi” . Buddhi means your intellect. The Buddha is the one that has an enlightened intellect. If one’s intellect becomes fully enlightened, one is called a Buddha. To use your buddhi means to use your faculty of thinking. You would have to develop your thinking capacity, not worrying capacity, but thinking capacity. If you are parents, try to develop that in children, not just only indulging the emotions of the children, but also teach them how to reason and how to think. Later on, they will be successful, if they can control the emotions, if they are not spoiled by the parent and become weak.
Cultivating emotional intelligence
Try to cultivate their emotional intelligence. There was an experiment about emotional intelligence.
They told a group of children in a closed room if they do not eat the cake, they can have some kind of reward. The researcher watches through an invisible glass window to observe the behavior of the children. There are those kids who cannot resist even for a moment to jump on the cake. There are those who try to resist, they bite their hands and turn their heads, and close their eyes. There are those who run away hiding in the corner so that they don’t have to look at the cake.
There are those who can calmly resist the temptation and not jump on the cake. Later in life, researchers found out that the kids who cannot resist temptation are those who fare worse in life. They experienced failure as they did not have resistance and endurance. The kids that have more emotional intelligence become more successful in life because they are stronger, they have the capacity of resilience.
What we need to do is to cultivate our emotional intelligence and not allow our mind to collapse. When you do something difficult and your mind gets tired and you want to walk away, resist, relax, readjust yourself and carry on. Resist that, okay? When there is something that you don’t like, and you know it is unpleasant to you, don’t just walk away and escape or become angry and upset. Try to resist that temptation of reaction, of negative reaction. When you encounter difficulties, stress and conflict, try to balance between pressure and adaptation.
You don’t have to follow everything. When the pressure mounts, you don’t have to yield. You have to be able to adapt to the situation, not losing everything and also not accepting everything. So, try to be balanced between effort and relaxation. You can make the effort but not too much. You can relax but not too much. Try to be balanced and learn to permanently live with whatever that is difficult with acceptance and peace. So then accept it and try to be positive about it.
Let the buddhi intelligence guide your mind and ego
Now, look at the way how your mind works. Your mind is called your inner instrument, your antakarana.
Your inner instrument has four components: 1.The buddhi, the intellect 2. The manas is the mind/emotions that work with the senses, bringing in the information and attempt to figure out what it is that you see and sense or hear or taste? 3. The chitta is the subconscious mind, the storehouse of information containing all your past experiences, all your samskaras, patterns, habits, personalities. And 4. You have the ego; it means your sense of identification. You have the sense of separateness when you identify with certain characteristics in order to learn your karmic lesson.
If you have no sense of “I”, it is difficult for you to learn your lesson. You will have difficulty if you’re clinging to an idea of the sense of “I” that is limited, that belongs to the past, with things are constantly changing. To deal with the ego, try to be new every day, to be fresh every day, practice yoga and meditation every day, in order for you to be centered, to live in the present and to be detached and to be free.
In summary, in your inner instrument, if you become completely controlled by manas, the emotional mind and the senses, you will suffer for sure. If you are hankering all the time after ice cream, after chocolate that you don’t have, or the cigarette, or the alcohol or the sex, or whatever– if you are all the time thinking like this, then you will suffer. You do not want the manas to dominate your life.
You don’t like the chitta, the information and experiences of the past to dominate your life either. So also, don’t let the ego that is the false sense of self run your life. The only thing left is the buddhi. The buddhi is the power of intelligence that can go get the information from the manas in order for it to think, then get the information from the chitta in order for it to compare and to think proper, and then to consult the ego in order for the ego to be flexible and to be open to a new possibility. And then the buddhi makes its decision.
Conclusion
In summary, you need to be able to use your buddhi to make wise choices, to make decisions about your life that bring you to happiness, to safety, to true self-confidence and not allow your mind, the manas, the chitta, the ego, to dominate your life. Because this will lead you to suffering. You need to develop your buddhi, you need to develop your thinking, you need to find new ways of learning, of spending your time to increase your intelligence, your emotional intelligence, your choice, your awareness, and your wisdom.
You need to develop self-discipline to control the senses which will make your manas, that sensual and emotional portion of your mind unhappy. Yeah, that portion of your mind will pull on your leg and say I want to eat whatever I want to eat. I want to eat a lot of ice cream. I like this, I like that. I don’t like this kitcharee, I don’t like this vegetable that you give me.
The manas will protest but you need to increase little by little the self-discipline to guide your mind to wisdom. You need to increase the awareness of your chitta, that very big heavy portion of the mind that is full of past experiences. You don’t allow the past impressions to come and take over your mind and your intelligence because it’s part of the past. You can learn your lessons of the past but don’t let your past, your past personality, your past negative experience overwhelms you and takes over your life.
You have to discriminate and to be aware that this is a past tendency and just the fact that you are aware, things will become better slowly, slowly. Thus, you free yourself from that heavy weight of the chitta subconscious mind of the past. You know that the thoughts from the past will come up in your mind for you to be aware and to learn from them. That’s the whole job.
Let’s say you have a traumatic experience and you’re not dealing with it. Your subconscious mind makes it so you will not be able to sleep well, and you will behave strangely towards people, and so on. So you need to be aware of these thoughts and experiences and let them go. You need to let them go, just watch them and let them go. That’s cleansing. It’s like you clean a dish and there is some dirt on the dish.
You clean it normally, and it doesn’t go, then you have to focus and you have to take a brush and you have to have friction there, and then you let it go. Yes, you would have to let go consciously. Consciously say, “Thank you, you are not serving me anymore. Bye, bye. I love you very much but I let you go. Thank you, bye, bye”. And you let the thought go. That is what you need to do to be free from future suffering.
Regarding your ego, you need to know for sure, at least consciously now, when you are thinking about it with me, that the ego is a non-entity. That means it is not real, it doesn’t have a reality to itself. The reality is, it is temporary, it is only for you to understand lessons, but it keeps changing. So it has no real reality. But if you identify with the personality, with a certain trait or character, that you think is you, that’s when your ego becomes an obstacle for you.
Yoga practices help you to detach from your ego. The ego is not fixed. Some people are more fixed than others, that depends on your personality, on your makeup. Some people are more flexible, they are changing more. That is not necessarily good, because they are not always facing the issue, they just keep changing, running, changing, running.
What you need to do is just to be more aware. All the Vedic teachings help you to be aware of your instrument. Do not to make the mistake that you are your instrument. In the same manner, you drive a Toyota and you say, “I am Toyota. I am red and I am worth $10,000. And I’m Japanese”. You have mistaken yourself with your vehicle. You need to detach yourself from the instrument, the body and the mind.
What is a good way to develop self awareness? Through Satsanga. During Satsanga, company of wise minds, you learn to listen to higher thoughts, to higher teaching to bring new ideas and to educate your mind. Satsanga is helpful. In a spiritual Yoga community, you live in Satsanga. All the time, you are being reminded, of your tamasic mindset and your rajasic mindset and you keep yourself inspired to stay on the right path and not go back to the past.
You also need self-study and self-observance. That means take time to slow down and study and observe your mind. Read helpful books (not novels and Facebook), but really study Swami Sivananda’s 200 books, for example. Don’t be afraid to study over and over. Repeat again and again because your mind forgets. So, you need to create that positive impression in your mind to help you to think properly.
Let us pray for world peace and health.
OM TAT SAT,
Swami Sitaramananda is a senior acharya of the International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centers and is director of the Sivananda Ashram Vedanta Yoga Farm, California and the Sivananda Yoga Resort and Training Center, Vietnam. She is acharya of China, Taiwan, and Japan as well. Swamiji is the organizer and teacher of the Sivananda Yoga Health Educator Training (SYHET) program, an 800-hour program on yoga therapy, accredited by the International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT).
Swami Sitaramananda is the author of “Essentials of Yoga Practice and Philosophy” (translated in Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Russian), “Positive Thinking Manual”, “Karma Yoga Manual”, “Meditation Manual”, “Swamiji Said, a collection of teachings by Swami Vishnu” in His Own Words. She is responsible for the Vietnamese translation of “Completed Illustrated Book of Yoga” (CIBY) and “Meditation & Mantras” by Swami Vishnu. Many of her video & audio lectures on Yoga life, philosophy, and psychology as well as articles and webinars can be found on this website.
Swami Sita is an ardent supporter of the integration of the Vedic sciences such as Vastu, Jyotish, Ayurveda, Yoga and Vedanta. She is an international teacher of the Sivananda Yoga Teachers’ Training Courses and Advanced Yoga teachers’ Training courses, as well as Meditation and Vedanta & Silence Courses both in Sivananda Ashrams in Vietnam and in Grass Valley, CA.
The talk today is about Self Healing and Healing of the environment using Yogic principles. The word Yoga here implies classical Yoga taught holistically in a philosophical traditional background and not just modern urban commercial exercise Yoga taught in a hectic stressful environment. This is an appropriate topic in the context of our public and personal health and immunity crisis due to the outbreak of Corona virus. We just celebrated the 50th Earth day in the middle of the pandemic. We also face more and more Mother Nature protests in forms of global warming, tidal waves, droughts, forest fires and floods.
Our urban and artificial societies are more and more sick and dependent on drugs and medication, feeding on processed food with little prana and creating health problems such as obesity, cancer, cardio vascular and digestive problems, and most recently respiratory problems. Our minds are full of disturbed media scenes of sex and violence, instead of experiencing mountains, sky, water and plants around us. Our world leaders are themselves alienated from nature and our corporations motivated by short term profits, lead us away more and more from our peace and health.
Overall we are externally driven, feeling unstable and empty. Again, we revisit the the old idea of the correspondence between individual health, public health and health of the planet we live in and what can we do about it? How do we balance ourselves in a world out of balance? How to keep our faith and hope and do the right thing in this world in crisis? Together let’s explore the philosophical and practical foundation for a life in Total Harmony with Nature and let’s face our spiritual ignorance(avidya) at the root of our mistaken identity and mistaken perception of the environment we live in.
There will be a few sections to our talk today:
What is Health according to classical Yoga? What is Healing? what is Self Healing?
What are the principles to follow and certain behaviors to abstain from in order to address the root causes of our physical-mental spiritual ill health?
What are the behaviors to adopt in order to improve our energy and our body-mind-spirit health?
How do we apply these principles to the environment? How do we harmonize with the world of nature and with the Cosmic Spirit behind it? Let’s get familiar with some examples of restrictions and observances we can follow when come to the environment.
Vedanta philosophy applied to the environment. Is there any difference between the inner and outer reality? The individual and the collective energy? How to reconcile material universe and spirit? How do we solve the problems of division, separation and lack of unity? How do we practice unity in diversity?
What is Health?
Swami Sivananda said that “the laws of health are the laws of nature and they should not be violated. He said that there is an intimate connection between the mind and the body. And all diseases take their origin in the mind. The pains that affect the physical body are called secondary diseases, while the vasanas that affect the mind are termed mental and primary diseases. If bad thoughts are destroyed, all bodily diseases will vanish. Treat the mind first. Mental health is more important then physical health. “
Ayurveda says that the prime cause of disease is forgetfulness of our true Nature as Spirit. This means that when we are forgetful, we identify with body and mind vehicle as ourselves and make wrong decisions about lifestyle or about our path to happiness, thus we bring upon ourselves stress and tension leading to diseases. Yoga talks about holistic healing, i.e. healing of body mind spirit.
What is Healing? What is Self Healing?
Yoga talks about the free flow of prana and changing our vibratory level. Ayurveda talks about restoring balance and health getting back to Nature. Vedanta talks about rememberance of our True Self (the Atman) as the ultimate Truth and to have an attitude of detachment towards what the body and mind can come up with as reality. Healing means ceasing to forget ourselves in our constant identification with the body and mind.
Healing means to realize that we are Pure consciousness behind all things including our body.
Healing means ceasing to identify with our separated-ness but to see the Oneness. Healing means to cease to identify with our vehicles, and to see
through the veils of consciousness (our body, our prana, our mind, emotions and senses, our intellect and ego). At the same time, healing means connection with Nature and not just indulgence in technology. The Healing journey is a long way. In that journey, we need self aware teachers and leaders who have found the way to peace themselves.
Self Healing means Self Realization, realization of our divine connection with nature and spirit in nature. It implies changing of one’s own consciousness and lifestyle to come closer to the Truth.
The opposite of it is, getting lost in the habits and mental grooves of the past, getting lost in the restlessness and the desires in an unceasing pursuit of external happiness, and getting lost in the promise of more power in a more advanced technological society. The yogic guidelines for conscious self-healing help us to correct our thinking and isolated feeling, alleviate our sufferings, become clearer in our perceptions of our own self and love of others, and bring us closer to true Health, Peace and Self realization.
Self Healing success is when we are able to break through the chain of karma. In other words, success is being able to retrain ourselves not to repeat the same pattern of conditioned behavior which binds us. The reason why we are not happy comes from the fluctuations of the mind and the constant replaying of its unhealthy patterns. The mind keeps projecting thoughts and emotions that were gained through past experience and reacts to them, thus keeping us bound in the mirage of its own creation. We experience the roller coaster of our mind and emotions and miss out on the rewarding and fulfilling experience of being our own peaceful, loving, happy, present, blissful Self.
2. The foundations of Yoga: the yamas (restrictions) and niyamas (observances).
The yoga masters have given us guidelines for conscious self-development that go to the root cause of our suffering by consciously correcting the course of our actions. We train ourselves in two ways: on one side guarding ourselves not to misbehave, thus repeating our patterns leading to suffering (these are the yamas); and on the other side, actively cultivating positive attitudes and helpful conducts (these are the niyamas). Thus we straighten out our mind, squeezing the impurities out of our mind from both sides, the “not to do’s” and the “to do’s”.
The mind in its pure state is capable of reflecting our beautiful Self or Atman in all situations, in ourselves and others. By purifying the mind, we alleviate our ups and downs, our inner turmoil and conflicts, and we feel free. Otherwise we struggle to remember ourselves and spend our energies in distractions and forgetfulness. The ideal is reached when there is no more forgetfulness of Self and one relaxes in the Peaceful Being.
The Yamas and Niyamas are universal guidelines that if followed will improve our lives in the long term and help remove obstacles stemming from our karmic tendencies, character defects, and bad habits. These guidelines address the fundamental egoistic and desiring nature of ourselves. One might find a character defect more dominant than another but working with one will bring light to the others as well. No one can be exempt from working on oneself.
In the same manner, we expect everyone to follow the rules of traffic, driving on the proper side of the road and observing traffic signals. The Yamas (restrictions) and Niyamas (observances) are to be consciously practiced in thought, word and deed. However, it is important to realize that these self healing guidelines do not turn into judgment to be interpreted as rigid moral rules. In Truth, the Selfis One. The bottom line is that we are one Universal Spirit in myriad expressions.
3. What are the principles to follow and certain behaviors to abstain from in order to address the root causes of our physical-mental spiritual ill health?
Yamas: Restraints (The Things Not to Do)
1/ – Ahimsa: Ahimsa is the practice of controlling the emotion of anger. Anger comes from selfish desires or expectations unfulfilled. Selfish desire comes from our failure to recognize our fulfillment in the True Self, and our looking for happiness in external objects or situations. Ahimsa means restraining oneself from the reactive tendency to be angry when one’s desires are not met, or the tendency to abuse others and enter into conflicts or wars.
Raja yoga methods to deal with anger: The antidote of anger is contentment or letting go of expectation, accepting that, “It is not my will, but God’s will”. The practice of Non violence requires calmness, courage, self control, self restraint and the practice of serenity. Practice of ahimsa leads one to develop good quality of the heart and leads one to develop mercy, kindness, unselfishness, patience, forgiveness, pure Cosmic Love, compassion, perseverance and peace. If we practice ahimsa, we will be able to maintain durable, positive and loving relationships. To note that one can act out of dharma-righteousness in the spirit of selflessness without being violent or selfish.
Karma Yoga methods: Do service to others to develop love and equal vision instead of basing one’s life on one’s needs, desires and egoism.
Bhakti Yoga methods: Connect with the secure and fulfilled Divine Love. Trust that the Divine has a plan for each person and surrender to the Divine Plan. Contemplate and glorify the Divine Mother, God, Nature, the Universe. Find acceptance. Practice of listening, giving, serving, humility, remove pride, cultivate devotion and practice friendship with all.
Jnana Yoga methods: Do self enquiry. Remind of the SatchitAnanda Atman beyond desires. Discriminate and detach from situation that causes irritations. Seeing the big picture.
2/. – Satya: Satya means truthfulness– It deals with our fear of not meeting our goals, in the eyes of ourselves or others. Fear comes from attachment. We will not be afraid if we do not have any attachment. In truth, we can not gain nor lose anything externally – either name, fame, prestige, position or love because we are already perfect in ourselves and we can not be greater or smaller then what we already are.
Applying Satya, we refrain from the tendency to exaggerate, to manipulate others, or to tell lies in order to achieve an egoistic goal. Sincerity, honesty and straightforwardness will help to simplify and clear the mind, thus achieving inner peace. Purity, Peace and Truth are synonymous terms. Truth comes in the form of righteousness, justice, harmony, ahimsa, harmlessness, forgiveness, impartiality, transparency, desirelessness, modesty, goodness, renunciation magnanimity, nobility, devotion, compassion.
The opposite of truth is deception, falsehood, dishonesty, exaggeration, twisting, egoism, lies, crookedness, manipulation, meanness, dissimulation, cowardice, fear, lack of courage.
Benefits of truthfulness: Health, fearlessness, freedom, clarity, wisdom, strong faith and absence of anxiety. Lies and fearful living create blockages t the flow of prana.
Raja Yoga methods: Calm and clarify the mind through the 8 limbs to discern the truth within that is beyond all concepts of the mind.
Bhakti Yoga methods: Be transparent and humble. Surrender to God’s will. Keep love and faith while cultivating Satsanga with truthful and virtuous people. We count on God to give us what we deserve or need and not what we desire. Making amends, atonements, confessions asking for forgiveness and humble attempts to come closer to the source of Being that is Truth.
Karma Yoga methods: Surrendering of doership and offering of the results of one’s actions, staying even in success or failures will remove fears and anxieties which can lead to lies. The motivation is being kept pure.
Jnana yoga methods: enquire into the nature of ephemeral gains. Examine the attachments and the tendencies of the mind of likes and dislikes. Contemplate and discriminate between the truth and untruth, the real and the illusory, the Self and the Not self. It is the beginning of Healing.
3/ – Brahmacharya:
Brahmacharya is control or sublimation of the sensual and sexual drive and deals with the emotion of Desire and Lust. Through practicing brahmacharya, we can restrain the tendency to seek sensual pleasures as the goal of life, and to misuse our sexual energy–which is be converted into spiritual energy. This guideline advises us to avoid sexual misconduct and to regulate our impulses, question our motives, and help bring clarity to our human interaction. Applying Brahmacharya in our dealings with others, we will be able to transform our emotional and desirous nature into a fulfilling relationship with the Divine, based on devotion and pure love.
The sexual instinct is the strongest instinct in us, stemming from the instinct of reproduction. It involuntarily prompts a person to the sexual act for the preservation of his species. It is in reality, the creative force in man. It comes from Rajas; Sexual energy can be transmuted into spiritual energy by pure thought. The practice of Brahmacharya is the practice of Purity, to be practiced along with ahimsa, and satya. It is a dynamic conversion process, not a matter of suppression or repression. The reproductive energy is transmuted and transformed into Ojas Shakti or spiritual power.
Truth can not dwell where passion lives. The Atman is sexless.
Raja Yoga methods: By right diet, asana, pranayama, turning inwards of the senses, concentration on sublime thoughts, meditation, japa, worship, the sexual energy is converted into Ojas Shakti.
Bhakti Yoga methods: By intense devotion to one’s pure ideal, the energy of desire for union can be sublimated into pure love.
Karma Yoga methods: By dedicating oneself to the service of the ideal divine beloved, one can elevate this instinctive self-serving energy of desire into the selfless impulse to do good for a larger whole.
Jnana Yoga methods: By seeing the other as one’s own Self, one can disassociate with the idea of a desirable mate. Through the sophisticated development of pure intelligence, we can discriminate between the mental habits of accumulated instinctual lifetimes and the Atman. The practice of Purity allows us to aspire to taste the super sensual Atmic bliss. Healing of the Mind and the emotions that leads to the recovery of the True Self often starts with the calming of passion.
4/. Asteya: non stealing, not taking what doesn’t belong to you.
It is alsonon-covetousness. It deals with our tendency towards jealousy and envy. Observing this guideline will counteract our tendency to give in to our desires, or think that satisfying material desires is the goal of life. It will help us to be content, knowing that what is supposed to come to us by our own karmas and merits will come naturally, without our manipulation or intervention.
Raja Yoga methods: be content with simple life, count your blessings, practice of giving instead of taking or stealing.
Bhakti Yoga methods: See someone’s happiness as your own. Keep good relationships and pure love. Surrender the ego.
Karma Yoga methods: Accept our karmas, and do our duty, let go of results. Understand that it is better to work through one’s own karma rather than someone else’s karma.
Jnana Yoga methods: Know that all is impermanent and desires are illusory and changing.
5.- Aparigraha:
Aparigraha means non-accumulation or non-acceptance of bribes. It deals with our tendency towards greed. Observing this guideline counteracts our tendency to think that the more we attain or possess, the more we will be safe and secure. It further guides us not to forfeit our soul to the material life, and to cultivate an attitude of detachment towards material possessions. Leading a simple life allows the spirit to remain light, detached and self-reliant. It also helps us in our dealings with others to be strong and free as others can manipulate our weakness by bribery.
Raja Yoga methods: The opposite of greed is charity, austerity, sacrifice, simplicity and renunciation. Avoiding distractions, keeping discipline and focus will help avert the tendency towards indulgence in what one’s likes.
Bhakti Yoga methods: connect with the secure and fulfilled divine love. The sublimation method is to give in charity to spiritual or humanitarian institutions.
Karma Yoga methods: Actively helping the downtrodden, the poor, lonely and forgotten.
Jnana Yoga methods: Patanjali said that the conquest of greed leads to one’s true meaning of life and the knowledge of the purpose of birth. The purpose of birth is Self Realization, to see Spirit in Matter. Accumulation of matter and negligence of Spirit lead us away from this truth.
What are the behaviors to adopt in order to improve our energy and our body-mind-spirit health?
5 Niyamas: Observances (The Things to Observe or to Do)
1, – Saucha: Saucha is purity. This observance will help us to counteract impurities in our bodies, minds, and outer environments, and help us come into deeper contact with our true selves. By purifying the emotions and thoughts, which are like coverings over our eyes, we can begin to see more clearly and gain a truer perspective.
Raja Yoga methods: The practice of the 5 points Yoga life(asana, pranayama, relaxation, diet, positive thinking, meditation) nurtures sattva and purify the mind and heart.
Bhakti Yoga Methods: Devotion and humility purify the heart and bring pure love. Devotion and love help one to overcome hatred, guilt and grief.
Karma Yoga methods: Selflessness purifies the ego and its likes and dislikes, its attachments and aversions. By helping people with the same problems as yours, one gains perspective and regains the sense of Self Worth.
Jnana Yoga methods: We can be lost in the feelings of guilt, shame or grief. However, difficult it might be, remember the pure, the brilliant, the limitless, the stainless atman, untouched by any happenings and impurities. Try to forgive the past and feel strong in the present. Remember that the mind is a distorted, imperfect instrument for seeing the true Self and reality. Remember the false self, the ego, that is attached to its own impurities. Remember not to forget ourselves, to turn within and to remember ourselves. This will dispel darkness and brings about light.
2/. Santosha: Santosha is contentment. This practice will help us counteract the tendency to look externally for happiness and become dissatisfied with our lots in life, rather than counting our blessings. Through practicing Santosha, we begin to realize that God’s grace is always with us.
Raja Yoga methods: The 5 points Yoga Life helps to calm the restless mind and turns it inwards. Concentration and meditation thin out the mind activities.
Bhakti Yoga methods: Praise the wisdom of the Supreme and know that all is taken care of. Surrender to God’s will and accept all as Prasad.
Karma Yoga methods: Serve others less fortunate then yourself, think of others who are more sick then you, this will keep the mind contented.
Jnana Yoga methods: See the whole world as your own home, and the wealth of Nature as your own wealth. Remove the I and mine and you will be contented.
3.- Tapas: Tapas means austerity. This practice will help us to counteract the belief that comforts of the body and mind are the goals of life. It will help us avoid imprisonment in the sensual, limited life that is governed by the mind and the senses. Tapas will help us to assert our supremacy over the mind and emotions, freeing us and give the power back to the spirit. All practice of self restraint to turn the mind inwards is tapas. The world under lock down is practicing tapas. There are many forms of tapas. Bear insults, injury persecution, discomfort and fatigue are all forms of tapas.
Raja Yoga methods: all 8 limbs of Raja Yoga can be considered as training tapas. Meditation is the highest form of tapas.
Bhakti Yoga methods: Keeping the emotions controlled for the sake of Pure Love is emotional tapas. Keeping faith and loyalty instead of doubts and changing loyalty are mental tapas. Listening to scriptures, mantra chanting are tapas.
Karma Yoga: Serving all, willingly, at any time, all the time is tapas. Adapting oneself to the needs of service is tapas. Doing any kind of service whether one likes it or not is tapas.
Jnana Yoga methods: Keeping vigilance in Self Enquiry is tapas. Keeping discrimination, detachment, self remembrance are all forms of tapas.
4. – Swadhyaya and Ishwara Pranidhana: Self Study and Self Surrender: Swadhyaya is the study of scriptures. Doing this will help us to counteract the idea that only what we can see and what people tell us about ourselves is true. The scriptures, on the contrary, tell us of a reality beyond the normal perceptions and glorify the true Self; they will inspire us in our search for Truth.
– Ishwara-pranidhana: Ishwara-pranidhana means self-surrender to God or a higher power. Self-surrender counteracts our tendency to think that we are the best and the top, that we have all the powers and that we are controlling our lives. With this egoistic bend of our mind, we do not have to adjust or accept something that is not to our liking, so we blame and resent instead of trying to see the big picture. Practicing self-surrender will help us work through our karmas by practicing acceptance and knowing that everything happens for a reason.
How do we apply these principles to the environment? What is the relationship between self healing and healing of the Earth? Examples of restrictions and observances when come to the environment.
The prana that we bring through Yoga practice has a healing effect upon our environment as well as ourselves. Self healing and healing of the Earth happen simultaneously. Yoga framework, the Yamas and niyamas, can become the spiritual guidelines for the ecological movement.
Yoga can contribute an integrate way of working with the forces of life to aid in the process of purification (Saucha) of the planet, as people become more still and content (santosha) , less indulgent and weak, being able to cooperate with Nature (Tapas), becoming more and more aware of the interdependence of things ( through study of sacred scriptures) and last but not least, by being able to surrender to the Supreme Being, thus not thinking that we as specie is the Master of the Universe (ishwara pranidhana).
As we elevate ourselves, and align ourselves with yogic principles, we as a collective can act responsibly and respectfully, abstaining from creating harm to the environment and others (ahimsa), we come close to the truth of Oneness of all Beings (satya), we control our desires and passions (brahmacharya) , we become content and respectful, not taking what doesn’t come to us naturally (asteya) and most importantly we are refraining from greed (aparigraha) which is at the root of so many environmental harmful activities .
By bringing in these higher sattvic energies, and staying away from rajasic and tamasic energies, Yoga has the potential to help the world. The most remarkable things I have seen being reported during these days of global lockdown are the diminishing of city pollution (Himalayas ranges are being seen from Delhi!), the appearance of wild animals even though apparently the dancing dolphins in the canals of Venice was fake news, they were being spotted nearby in the waters but not in the canals of Venice.
Yoga movement hopefully is moving from just simply self concerned exercises to conscious improvement of our lifestyle, our way of eating, sleeping, entertaining ourselves and consumption. Yoga and Ayurveda lifestyle automatically connect all with Natural methods of self healing by elevating our consciousness how to increase our supply of prana through the elements and how to balance ourselves.
Automatically Yoga and Ayurveda lifestyle will reduce the impact upon the environment when people follow vegetarian diet and stop the cruelty to animals and exploitation of our natural environment. Yogic lifestyle value simplicity and self restraint and automatically affect the way we consume and the excesses that come from a consumer society. Hopefully, the days and months under locked down, help us to curb our desires and needs for more stuff and help us realize that we can survive on the bare minimum and be healthy and happy. We need to contemplate on the meaning of what is “essential” need and what is “non essential”.
Classical Yoga teachers and Ayurveda lifestyle counsellors can promote the distancing from artificial living, the returning back to nature and to Earth as well, the simple living and high thinking in ashrams and retreats out of town, in beautiful nature, the self sufficiency on the land, the gardening and producing of our own food from our organic garden.
Examples of what we can do to observe Yamas and niyamas and positively influence our environment:
Ahimsa: avoid injuring the environment, adopt a vegetarian lifestyle, driving, flying and traveling less; buying local organic food or producing our own, reduce, reuse, repurpose, and recycle, compost, buying bulk, avoiding packaging.
Satya: follow up as much as possible in thoughts, words and deeds the ecological considerations by examining daily our choices.
Brahmacharya – do not indulge in the senses and sexual abstinence.
At the base of our desires for consumption is our instinct of reproduction. The problem is we never have enough reproductive success as we are never satisfied with our reproductive success. People desire limitless wealth, status, and power because those instincts helped our ancestors survive & achieve reproductive success. We can’t depend on how we feel (by doing what comes naturally) to achieve satisfaction. Modern society innovations intensify competition for wealth, status and power causing greed, crime, grief, hatred, disappointment, depression, and environmental destruction.
Asteya- do not steal: Simply taking what we think we need, without thinking about how it arrives to us, what may be destroyed as a result, how we may be taking from others, including future generations, is stealing. Try to find healthy, green products, ethical products according to scientific ratings. Example www.goodguide.com Each product is given health, environment and society scores 1-10
Aparigraha – do not be greedy: Live simply, avoid accumulating things, de-clutter, recycle what you do not use, live beneath your means.
NIYAMAS (OBSERVANCES) APPLIED TO THE ENVIRONMENT:
Saucha – cleanliness and purity, both inner and outer. We are what we eat, so we are encouraged to only eating fresh, organic food, preferably grown ourselves or nearby. Working to clean up the oceans, the lands, and our environment, reduce production of trash, abstain from non recyclable trash.
Santosha- be contented: Avoid over consumption.Avoid falling for illusory differences between products. Accept and appreciate that which is provided by nature, eat local seasonal food; Know your local herbs; Wait for the sun to shine to clean clothes so it will be possible to line dry them; Appreciate abundance of power on sunny days and avoid activities that require power on overcast days, use a solar oven to cook food on sunny days.
Tapas – perform austerities: Austerity means curtailing the insatiable demands of the senses. Fasting. Only eating local seasonal food. Adjusting to seasonal temperature changes instead of using air conditioning. Avoid bottled water which is convenient but bad for the environment.
Swadhyaya: self study and study of scriptures: Become more and more aware of our collective wrong doings and our karmic imprints: learn how things are produced, merchandized and consumed, trashed or recycled, and try to find alternatives.
Ishwara Pranidhana: keep being humble and realize the interconnectivity of things in nature. Surrender to God’s will for us in everything and live respectfully and in harmony with the powers of the divine mother in Nature, instead of willfully create for ourselves a discarded, isolated, egoistic, unaware, sensual, lack of devotion, artificial life. Realize higher powers of consciousness present in all things. Keep connection with it and find peace and contentment is the key to yogic ecological living.
Vedanta for Ecological living:
Remember unity of life. -Unity in diversity. – Remember our mental habits to repeat our tendencies (in this regard, yamas and niyamas help to rebuild our course of actions). Remember the illusory nature of our perceptions which keep us in the same cycle of reactions (story of seeing the snake instead of seeing the rope). Remember that we are Satchitananda Atman, not a victim, not a consumer, not separated and alien, but the peaceful, powerful, supported at all times by Divine consciousness, self reliant and self delight Self.
Vedanta philosophy applied to the environment is sustainable bridging our well being with the well being of Nature and others. There is no difference between the inner and outer reality. If we elevate one, we elevate the other. If we become self conscious, we will elevate the environment and heal the Earth. If the Earth is taken care of, we will also be taken care of. Individual efforts influence the collective energy and collective awareness influences our personal effort.
Vedanta philosophy by addressing the root cause of our individual and collective suffering and recognizing our spiritual ignorance the source of it, solve the problems of division, separation and lack of unity between groups and nations. The root cause of our suffering is our false identification with our culture, national boundaries, political leaderships, gender and race and forget our common oneness.
Bringing out the ecological and planetary importance of Yoga and Ayurveda is the real mission we need to undertake. This will benefit all of us now – our societies in stand still under lock down, but also will benefit our future generations. At this poignant time, let’s practice the yamas and niyamas as guidelines of high thinking and high living and not as dogma and moral rules which bring divisiveness, arrogance, judgment and holier than thou attitude.
Let’s become compassionate and forgiving. Let’s teach more Yoga, Ayurveda and Vedanta to the masses. And let’s bow in gratitude for favors and support received from the Divine Mother seeing each other and all beings as brothers and sisters sharing the same earth, same sky, same water. Let’s celebrate our unity in diversity!
Let’s pray to the forces of Nature… This is the classical vedic mantra:
Shanti Mantras:
Om sham no mitrah sham Varunah ̣(may the sun be good to us)
Sham no bhavaturyamà (may the God of the Waters be good to us)
… you are indeed the visible Brahman. I shall call Thee just. I shall call thee Truth. May that protect me. May That protect the teacher. Om Peace, peace, peace.
Happiness, Health and knowledge requires energy. Lack of prana brings depression, stress and darkness. In this time of pandemic , it is critical to know how to increase prana, how to not loose prana and to prevent infection and diseases and how to heal.
What is Prana?
Prana is life force,
vital energy that allows you to be alive and function in this world.
When prana departs
from the physical body, death comes.
Prana is necessary
to live and to progress in life. It is prana that you are attracted to in a
person. Everything is alive at different degrees. There is more prana in a real
flower compared to a plastic flower. There is more prana in live food fresh
food than in canned food or old food.
It is prana that
makes you feel enjoyment and feel fulfilled. Your quality of life improves
through improving the quality of prana.
What is important to
know is Prana is all-pervading in Nature.
So if prana is
everywhere and abundant, then why at times, do you feel dead or deprived? why some people got disease and some did not
? People says that it is age, that some age group people are more subject to
disease but may be it is the condition of their immunity and the level of their
prana?
May be because they
do not know how to plug-in to the universal source of prana and recharge. And
may be because there are blockages in the flow of prana through thoughts and
lifestyles.
5 things everyone needs to learn to do with prana:
Increase
Conserve
Balance
Channel
purify
1 & 2 How to increase and conserve your prana.
You
need to know that it is not sufficient to increase prana but also you need to
conserve and limit the expenditure or wastage of prana to be healthy happy. It
is the same as with money, you can make money but you spend it all and is
always with no money or with debts.
Time to look at our lifestyle now more than ever, how do we use our
senses and what do we do.
Learn that You can get prana from the senses or deplete prana from the senses
.
You can get prana
from your actions and deplete prana from your actions.
From the knowledge
of Yoga and Ayurveda , please see the table showing the correlations between
the elements of nature,
the sense organs and their functions
and the organs of action
and their functions
Smell NoseEARTH AnusElimination
TasteTongueWATERGenitalsReproduction
Sight EyesFIREFeet
Moving
Touch SkinAIRGrasping
Hands
HearingEarETHERTongueSpeaking
Increase prana through the earth element.
Do: Live in Nature, live in natural houses, respect nature,
do gardening.
Walk on earth, touch earth, hug trees, look at mountains,
forests.
Make sure that you eat prana food, fresh products from
earth.
Limit: Spending too much time in cities, concrete buildings,
sidewalks, cars, high rises, plastic materials,
environmentally harmful products, trash.
Action to avoid: too much eating . Make sure that you
eliminate well.
Increase prana through the water element.
Do: Drink clean pure water. Our body is made of 70% water. Our
body is sensitive See research of Dr. Emoto. Eat sweet fruits, honey, pure
milk. Avoid dry food.
Wash with clean water; Bathe in oceans, rivers, springs.
Limit: Beverages such as sodas, coffee, alcohol
Know that you spend prana in sexual activities.
Increase prana through the fire element.
Spend time daily outdoors in the sunshine. Open doors and
windows to let sunlight in.
Drink warm water.
Eat warm food.
Good digestion requires the fire of digestion being strong.
Avoid cold food, being exposed to cold.
Avoid too much looking at computer screen and get artificial
energy from eyes.
Avoid too much moving (quarantine and not travel is actually
very good for health)
Increase prana through the air element.
Live in clean fresh air as much as you can.
Ventilate rooms, houses.
Stay away from pollutants like traffic smoke, cigarette
smoke.
Breathe deep. Do pranayama breathing exercises daily.
Avoid artificial air like in airplanes, air conditioned rooms.
Touching baby to give prana to baby. Therapeutic touching is
giving prana. Careful of sensual touching to conserve prana.
Avoid grasping, hoarding, shopping, as these depletes you
from prana. In the contrary, giving gives you prana.
Increase prana through the ether element.
This is the subtlest element and the most powerful .
Yoga taught that Prana
is in our subtle body and is connected to thought.
Positive thinking
gives prana, negative thinking or emotions drain your prana
Chant kirtan, repeat mantras, exercise positive thinking, indulge
in prayers, search company of the wise, visit of temples, places of pilgrimage
(of course now in quarantine you might
not be able to visit your church, temple, places of worship)
Avoid loud music, bars, clubs, crowds, undesirable company. (Amazing,
many countries start first with closing unessential places like bars and
clubs.)
Avoid negative thinking, selfish thoughts, base thoughts
(try not to blame and have racists thougths in this time)
Pay attention to what you say. Try to say helpful words in
writing or verbally.
Repeat mantras is the best action.
IMPORTANT to
remember:
Prana deficiency seeks stimulation.
Beware of the spiral downward movement when you are lacking
prana. Many diseases, addictions and bad habits start with prana deficiency
Prana debt brings stress.
Stress makes you reach out for instant gratification through
self-medication or compensation which lead to Pains.
Stress is the cause of many diseases.
3. Prana needs to be balanced, not just increased
The main focus in
Yoga practice either in asanas practice or breathing practice is balance. We can also exercise balance through
changing our attitude and our way of functioning. The goal is to attain a state
of integration, called equanimity.
To be healthy and
happy, we need to learn to balance our energies individually and also
collectively. The world is imbalanced and stressed.
When we are imbalanced, it is like we see reality lopsided
because we have a lopsided vision. The imbalance is often times between the
emotions and the intellect, that means a person would be left brain dominant or
right brain dominant. Our modern western dominant societies are left brain
dominant.
What to do?
First we need to recognize that our unhappiness comes from
our imbalanced state or split state and not coming from anyone else. Grief and
blame come from our lack of recognition that this difficulty comes from our own
outlook . Classical holistic Yoga practice gives you a little bit of reprieve
because it balances the two hemispheres of the brain and awakens the Self
Knowledge . Yoga practice by helping you to recognize your strength and
weakness, by regulating your energy , acts as a pain preventative measure and a self renewal tonic.
Start to practice balance trying to reinforce your weakness .
Hatha
is balance between Sun energy and Moon energy.
Right brain functioning /Left brain
functionning
Yin energy/Yang energy
Female energy/ Male energy
passive,
receptive/active controlling side of our personality
Para
sympathetic nervous system and Sympathetic nervous system
Relaxation
response and defensive Fight and flight response to stress
Decrease
heart rate/ increase heart rate
Imbalance of prana creates personality
problems and stress.
4. Prana needs to be channeled.
In the same manner with your choice to waste money or
investing money in order to give you
more money , You can gain more prana by using it wisely and you can also
deplete yourself from prana by being fearful to use it or by wrong
investment. Right use : Use prana for
meditation and Selfless service. The more you apply your energy correctly, the
more prana you will get.
Wrong use: You waste energy through selfish endeavors,
sensual pursuits and laziness. Gossips, blaming, back biting are waste of
energy.
Prana needs to be purified.
Prana moves through the subtle channels (nadis) in the subtle
energetic body.
Yoga science knows the art of purification of nadis to allow
higher energy to flow and induces higher wavelengths of thought and feeling.
Proper diet and
lifestyle purify nadis
To get prana and be able to retain it in the system, it is
important, not only to keep pure thought and a pure environment, but also make
sure to take proper food. Avoid substances like drugs, intoxicants which clog
the nadis and create damage to the pranic system.
Conclusion: Now is the time to Re-charge your battery.
When you spend time in retreat, limit your outgoing senses
and your worldly activities, do regular Yoga practices, you recharge your
battery. You can re-charge your prana
like re-charging a battery. Excess Prana is stored in the solar plexus of the
body.
What to do:
Join a Yoga class daily, if you can not go out,
join a class online. Practice of Yoga Asanas
unblocks harmful blocked energy and moves prana.
To do so, the sequence of the asanas needs to be respected and proper concentration, and relaxation in between postures be observed. www.yogafarm.org
2. Do daily Pranayama:
Pranayama is controlling prana through breathing exercises. There
are many types of pranayama or control of prana through breathing exercises. You
need to join a class with a teacher. It is better not to smoke and take drugs
if you intend to do pranayama.
The regular pranayamas to be done daily recommended by the Sivananda organization are: Kapalabhati and Anuloma Viloma.
3. Concentration gathers prana and changes wavelength
A distracted mind is weak and has low prana. Practice of concentration of mind helps gather the dispersed prana and brings health, vitality and peace of mind. A concentrated mind feels stronger and is more effective and gives satisfaction and contentment. Keep yourself busy on doing positive things.
4. Meditation is merging your personal prana and universal prana
Meditation is like a pranic tonic, it recharges powerfully the whole system. A meditator is shining with new prana. Join a satsang or a meditation course on line to know what to do.
5. Pranic Healing. Become a healer !
Yoga heals through holistic practice integrating Mind-Body-Spirit and
includes the 5 points of health (asanas,
breathing, relaxation, vegetarianism, positive thinking and meditation). It is
the most important system of preventative medicine.
Many modalities such as therapeutic massage,
acupressure, acupuncture, energy medicine are working on restoring the helpful
flow of energy. However, Yogis go to the cause of disease and impart prana with
their consciousness, thoughts and prayers. They connect to the Supreme Healer .
You can do it too, by recognizing
that the primary cause of disease, according to ancient yogic and
ayurvedic scriptures, is the forgetting
of our true nature as Spirit, thus bringing blockages of energy, mistakes in
lifestyle choices, indulgences in the senses and feelings of being lost .
When a person regains their sense
of purpose they feel stronger and the life force flows. When a person is
forgetting one’s Self and when the ego propensities become uncontrollable, the
disease process happens.
By remembering the Inner Healer, you will radiate helpful prana around and bringing comfort, joy, solace and peace to all. May you become great healers in this time and send your healing energy to the whole world.
“The laws of health are the laws of Nature” Sivananda “ Health is Wealth, Peace of Mind is Happiness, Yoga shows the way “ Swami Vishnudevananda.
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