Wise Word of the Week #3

Watch your thoughts; they become words.

Watch your words; they become actions.

Watch your actions; they become habits.

Watch your habits; they become character.

Watch your character; for it becomes your destiny.

- Upanishads

Better to keep your mouth shut?

So what's with the title of my blog?

Well, sometime around the second century CE, a man called Patanjali wrote a text of 196 concise lines called the Yoga Sutras. To give you an idea of its briefness, the first line is: "Yoga citta vritti nirodha". Many different translations exist, one being: "Now, the teachings of yoga" (translated by Chip Hartranft). I like to think of this text as a summary of the yogic wisdom that had already been practiced for centuries and many of the various translations and books on them are a wonderful read (try "The Wisdom of Yoga" by Stephen Cope if you're keen).

In short, these sutras outline an eight-limbed or eight-fold path to yogic living. The interesting thing is that there's no mention of any of the now famous yoga postures in the text. Apparently there's more to yoga than that... This text is basically a guide to the art of "right living" a la yoga -- a guide to physical, emotional and ethical health. Yoga is basically a way of life. 

So far, I have spent the most time pondering and trying to apply the first two limbs to my life - the yamas (restraints) and niyamas (observances). They are sometimes called "the 10 commandments of yoga", but these guidelines are less about being good vs bad and more about being wise vs foolish.

The yamas are guidelines for how to interact with the world and other people; 1/ Ahimsa (made famous by Gandhi, non-violence), Satya (truthfulness), Asteya (non-stealing), Brahmacarya (sexual responsibility) and 5/ Aparigraha (abstention from greed, making life simple).

The niyamas are guidelines for how to interact with ourselves, or our internal world; 1/ Shaucha (cleanliness, internal and external), 2/ Santosha (contentment), 3/ Tapa (austerity), 4/ Svadhyaya (self-education) and 5/ Ishvara-Pranidhan (living with an awareness of the Divine).

We spent a lot of time debating these guidelines during my Yoga Teacher Training course and I think they are well worth trying to apply to our lives. It's not always easy since it's often about changing deeply engrained behaviors (like jam-packing your diary, gossiping, telling white lies, greed for more wine, ice cream, money, nice holidays). I will return with more on a few of these guidelines later, because I think they are so important and so multi-faceted. In the mean time I will leave you with something my yoga teacher, Yogi Vishvketu, used to say: "Before you open your mouth to say something, think: Is it kind? (ahimsa, non-violence), Is it true? (satya, truthfulness), Is it necessary? (aparigraha, simplicity)". If not? Perhaps keep your mouth shut?