Yama (restraint)

The Yama's are the first limb 'anga' of the Eight limbs 'asht-anga' of Yoga, the eight fold path. These are 'moral observances' according to *Georg Feuerstein's book, the 'Shambhala Encyclopaedia of Yoga'.

There are 5 of these Yama's; Ahimsa (non- harming), Satya (truthfulness), Asteya (non-stealing), brahmacarya (chastity), and Aparigraha (greedless-ness). *These five vows constitute to great vow of the yogin, (maha-vrata), and are to be practised on all levels irrespective of time place and circumstances.

The book mentioned above goes into this subject in more detail. Indeed there is much more information on these 'observances' should you choose to seek them out.

I am an ordinary person, more or less, and have no great desire to achieve enlightenment anymore, having said that I find that attempting to follow these observances serves me more as an aid to waking up the dormant element of the 'self' that exists below the surface of the chattering robot mind. If you note above these are 'moral' observances and 'moral' as defined by the Concise Oxford Dictionary is to do the with, '1a.the goodness or badness of human character or behaviour; or with the distinction between right or wrong. 1b, Concerned with standards of human behaviour. 2 Conforming to accepted standards of general conduct, etc.

Bearing in mind earlier topics of 'conditioning' it would be easy to be tempted to twist these words into becoming whatever we wanted them to be. But if we look at ourselves with some Satya we may have some 'feelings' on the subject, and let these 'feelings' guide us, we may then be inclined to change or not.

It doesn't need to get too complicated does it? We are who we are and we may be perfect or we may be not-perfect. How do we get a handle on that? Right or wrong in terms of human life is never a black and white affair that is why we have devised a complicated legal system. Mankind has tried to find ways to control what it considers to be 'bad behaviour' and we seem to have got in to a right old mess with that!

However if we make this a personal issue and look at the way we behave in the world. For example our tendencies to be more or less truthful under different circumstances etc, can become an interesting way to look not so much 'that we do lie' but more to the point why we find the need to lie in the first place.

I thought I would touch on the Yama's so as to bring to light (AGAIN) that we are asleep most of the time and all of these practises serve to WAKE US UP!!

Your body and your mind belong to you and it is your right to do what you want with them. But I would say to you that you have been given an incredible opportunity to go beyond what you consider to be 'reality', read 'conditioned reality', and to experience something else.

Ahimsa is non- violence. Satya is Truthfulness. Asteya is non-stealing. Brahmacharya is chastity. Aparigraha is non-greed. Write these on a piece of paper and cut them up and put them in a bowl and take one out each morning and try to work with it throughout the day, and enjoy the show. Have fun with it, life is hard enough without having to give yourself a 'hard time' too.

I read this recently and thought it was funny: 'A disciple is an asshole looking for a human being to attach itself to'. Don't be an ass-hole!!