The Yamas & Niyamas Read online

in order to give

  in the full measure I have received

  and am still receiving.

  Week One: This week notice when and how you steal from others through time, attention, “one-upmanship,” power, confidence, and not being able to celebrate others’ successes. Notice what is happening in you that prompts this stealing. Now practice being a “forklift” so that everyone you come into contact with feels uplifted because they were in your presence.

  Week Two: This week notice where you are stealing from the earth and stealing from the future. Where are you taking without returning something of at least equal value? This week, live in reciprocity with the earth and awareness of the future.

  Week Three: This week live as a visitor to this world, rather than an owner. Notice how much is available to you to use and enjoy without needing to own them (parks, libraries, concerts, sunsets, etc.).

  Week Four: This week think about your dreams and goals and make a list of things to do/study/try that would increase your knowledge and competency and bring you closer to your goal, thus building your adikara.

  For this month ponder the words of Albert Einstein and live in gratitude and reciprocity with what you have been given.

  Brahmacharya

  In the dark and muck,

  A golden lotus blossoms ~

  God’s grace awaits us.

  ~ C. L.

  Nonexcess

  Brahmacharya

  There is a commercial I still remember vividly from my childhood years. In the commercial, a very miserable man has just gorged himself on too much food. Gripped in the pangs of lethargy, gas, and bloating, he miserably proclaims, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.” Perhaps I remember this commercial because of the times I, too, have found myself in the lingering after effects of overindulgence. I know firsthand the misery of a too full stomach, the deadness of overwork, the lethargy of oversleep. As I sit in the heaviness of excess, I find myself once again in disbelief that I have done this to myself, and hear myself utter words similar to the above, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.” And all I can do is suffer and watch how the overindulgence has imposed itself on the joy of the moment.

  Whether we find ourselves overdoing food, work, exercise, or sleep, excess is often a result of forgetting the sacredness of life. The fourth jewel, Brahmacharya, literally means “walking with God” and invites us into an awareness of the sacredness of all of life. This guideline is a call to leave greed and excess behind and walk in this world with wonder and awe, practicing non excess and attending to each moment as holy.

  Brahmacharya has been interpreted by many to mean celibacy or abstinence. Although this could certainly be one form that Brahmacharya takes, its implications are much more broad. It does, however, imply dealing with the passion of our sexuality, as well as our other desires, in a manner that is sacred and life-giving, rather than excessive.

  On a recent trip to India, I met a man named Thakur who was the first man to bring trekking and other outdoor adventures to that part of the Himalayas. He was a successful business man, living the long hours and impositions of success. He told me, however, that wealthy as he was, he still lived in the home his father had built on the outskirts of the village. The door to this home was chest high, so entering the home required him to bow his head. He said this simple action of bowing as he entered, reminded him of the sacredness of all things and he spent his evenings and his sleep in peace and ease, ready to bring that same sacredness to his business negotiations the next day.

  Brahmacharya is like this low entrance for us, it reminds us to enter each day and each action with a sense of holiness rather than indulgence, so that our days may be lived in the wonder of sacredness rather than the misery of excess.

  Nonexcess ~ Taming Our Overindulgence

  The number of sheds and storage units, the attractive plastic storage bins that fill rows in our stores, the statistics on American obesity, and the shortage of waste facilities for our trash are all neon signs that we are a people of excess. We overdo sex, we overdo food, we overdo work, we overdo sleep, we overdo entertainment, we overdo our material possessions, and often we overdo our spirituality. We seem far from grasping the concept of “enough.”

  In yogic thought, there is a moment in time when we reach the perfect limit of what we are engaged in. If we take food for instance, we gain energy and vitality from the food we are eating – up to a point. If we continue to eat past that point, there is a downward turn into lethargy. If we eat slowly enough and pay attention, we can find this point that sits perfectly on the line of “just right.” It is this moment of “just enough” that we need to recognize. Past that point, we begin our descent into excess. This same process is true for any activity that we are engaged in.

  I watched my granddaughter Aryka practice this place of “just enough.” She had asked for some scrambled eggs, so I made her a scrambled egg the way she likes it. She demolished it hungrily with comments of how delicious it was. Then she asked for more. I made her a second egg and the scenario was repeated. When she asked for a third egg, which I obliged, she began to eat it with comments of contentment. Midway through her third bite, she exclaimed, “Grandma, this egg tastes terrible, something is wrong with it.” I marveled that she could pay such close attention to know that what had been so satisfying to her was now distasteful because she had had enough.

  Why do we move past the place of enough into excess? Yogic thought tells us it is because our mind begins to connect certain emotional states with certain foods or activities. There is a difference between say, the body’s need to satisfy thirst and the extravagant things the mind does with this simple desire. A desire that could easily be fulfilled with a glass of water somehow, in our mind’s convoluted way, gets hooked up with memories and conditioning tied to emotional satisfaction or emotional disturbance. When a certain emotional attachment is placed with a simple body need, we can find ourselves in trouble. Without realizing it, we have acquired an addiction-like need for the repetition of the feelings associated with that thing.

  My business partner, Ann, and I went through a phase where we were drinking chai almost daily. We were working hard and having fun together, and the chai became both a reward and a treat for us. Our need was to satisfy our thirst, but the memory that began to take hold of both of us was that we needed the chai to satisfy us. And, with each chai, we expected to feel the same pleasure of companionship and the satisfaction of work well done. There is nothing wrong with drinking chai, in fact it is quite enjoyable, but we soon realized that we weren’t having the chai, the chai was having us. Now we had an addiction, not the simple need to satisfy thirst. Our minds had created the need for the feeling of reward, not to simply enjoy the pleasure of a chai.

  As we begin to peel ourselves out of our web of excess, it is important to check in with the body’s needs and to get skilled at separating these bodily needs from the mind’s stories. Sometimes the need is to feel sadness. When this feeling comes upon us, the mind may trick us into thinking we need to do something or to eat something. I found this experience to be true for me when my mother died. While my mother was alive, one of our favorite things to do together was to stay up late into the night watching a movie and eating ice cream. After her death, I found myself “craving” late night movies and ice cream. When I checked in with my body, it was clear that I was tired and full. In truth, I was missing my mom and I needed to face the grief. To indulge in a movie and ice cream would have left me with excess weariness in my body and excess food in my stomach. And I would still be missing my mom. I needed to separate my mind’s story from my body’s needs and simply let myself cry.

  We are here on this world, in part, to feel enjoyment and pleasure. If we are in the pleasure and not the addiction, we are practicing Brahmacharya. If we are feeding our mental stories and have moved past bodily comfort, we are in addiction and out of harmony with
this guideline. Nonexcess is not about non enjoyment. It actually is about enjoyment and pleasure in its fullest experience. The questions before us are: Are you eating the food, or is the food eating you? Are you doing the activity, or is the activity doing you? Can you enjoy pleasure without excess? In answering these questions, we have to be able to discern between what the body needs in the moment and the story our mind is telling us. (I don’t know about you, but I have personally noticed that sugar, salt, and caffeine create more mind stories than lettuce does!) We also must be fearless in facing our sadness, grief, and disappointments without needing to soothe them with food or sex.

  When I was in Nicaragua, I was able to hear the Minister of the Interior speak about the state of affairs in his country. At that time there was a large contingent of people from the United States bringing their faith to the people of Nicaragua. Part of their evangelizing was the sharing of large tables of exotically prepared food at their gatherings. The Minister of Interior, choosing to not attend these affairs, was quick to comment on the food in this way, “When the organisms in my tummy are over happy, I can’t think straight.” Overindulgence snuffs out the life force like too many logs on a fire overpowers the fire. Practicing non excess preserves and honors this life force within us, so that we can live with clarity and sacredness.

  If we find ourselves living in the extremes of addiction, excess, and overindulgence in any place in our life, then fasting, celibacy, or abstinence can be very useful to bring us back to the fullness of pleasure. Fasting and celibacy are both strong practices to pull in the reins, find our center, and take stock of our lives. Going through times in our lives when abstinence or fasting is imposed on us, either through our own or our partner’s illness, can be times of great cleansing for us and lead to greater discernment of our tendencies towards excess and the stories the mind has made up about these tendencies.

  Walking with God

  Brahmacharya invites us to live with God, not excess. This guideline invites us into the sanctity of all life by seeing every relationship we have as a relationship with the Divine and by seeing every experience we have as an experience of the Divine. Can you honor all as sacred? Can you honor yourself as sacred? If we stop and pause for a moment, we know that it is the simple things that stir our soul and bless us with happiness. The wind in the trees, the colors of the sky, the touch of a loved one, the delight of a child, a shared moment with a friend, can fill us to overflowing. This overflowing is expansive and humbling, much different than the satiation of excess.

  If we stop and reflect on our lives or out at the world, we can see an innate intelligence about things. It is as if a beautiful tapestry is being woven and we are one of the colors of thread being moved by a needle held by something greater than we are. It is this greatness, the Master Weaver, which we seek to be in touch with. When we see with the eyes of mystery, we begin to see the sacred in the ordinary and the ordinary in the sacred. Every task becomes an opportunity to wonder and be amazed. Mending the split between what we see as important or not, and who we see as important or not, puts us on the path to cherishing all people and all tasks. Media, culture, even our own egos separate, divide and then rank. We are asked to bring it all together and cherish it all by seeing the thread of the divine at play.

  Seeing with the eyes of holiness shifts how we act as well as how we see. There is an inbuilt need to pause and give thanks. There is an inbuilt need to open the heart in wonder. When gratitude and wonder sit in the heart, there is no need for excess. Seeing everything as holy brings a continuity to life; it grounds us in centeredness. Whereas excess overdoes us, overextends us, and takes us away from ourselves, seeing everything as sacred firmly roots us and balances us.

  I have found that when the sense of wonder leaves me, when everything becomes dull and ordinary, it is because I have kept too fast a pace for too long. I have pushed past my own boundaries and now I am out of balance. It is time to rest. When I am rested, nothing is dull and ordinary; everything glows with mystery. Whether I take it easy for a day or escape into the woods by myself, it is hard to give this rest to myself. There are a million and one reasons why I can’t. My ego likes to feel important, and it doesn’t feel very important when I am resting. My ego also doesn’t like the idea that life can go on without me, even if it is only for a few hours; I like to be where the action is. Besides, in this culture of constant activity, there is always so much that needs to be done.

  And yet I am hungry to step outside of the habits of technology and the bombardment of stimulation and the routines I have conveniently put in place for myself. I am hungry to learn from the silence and see if I am on track with my soul. I am hungry to tame the stimulation and pull back the indulgences. And I am hungry to do nothing and let that be more than enough. Resting rejuvenates my sense of mystery. In this simple act, I find my eyes are shifted to wonder and my heart spontaneously bursts with songs of gratitude.

  The Divine is so magnificent, weaving a design of intricacy and mastery in an extravagance beyond our understanding. Such magnificence deserves an audience to marvel and appreciate it. I think following this jewel is like being an audience for God and may mean shifting our days so we have more time to just watch and marvel. It may mean adding more ritual to our lives and a certain rhythm. We may shift some of our commitments so that we have the time to see and attend to mystery and holiness by lighting candles, saying prayers, massaging our feet, taking hikes, or rubbing our loved one’s back.

  Being an audience of the divine mystery begins to shift us out of clock time and into a divine rhythm. I had this experience of shifting rhythm when I took a solo one month Sabbatical to a lakeside cabin. Somewhere in that month, I got captured. Without a clock dictating my next step or my usual habits manipulating the moment, I got swept up by a universal rhythm that I came to call “God’s heartbeat.” I hiked and kayaked, ate and slept, read and wrote, and did my practice, but these weren’t separate activities or accomplishments, they were more like rhythm. I was a cell in the heart of God and the beating of God’s heart moved me. The doings and non doings wove together in one harmonious rhythm.

  In that month I learned that the rhythm of mystery looks nothing like the demands of clock time. God’s time isn’t logical to our limited minds; it doesn’t plan and it doesn’t keep track, but somehow the dishes still got done and the meals cooked. It just happened from a different place. When I didn’t know the day, or the time, or the temperature, an innate intelligence began to set the next thing in motion. I moved without moving and all I saw was beauty and wonder. Without a schedule or a plan, being and doing blended until they felt the same. There was no purpose, except for the pure delight of the moment. God’s heartbeat.

  When I returned from my month, I found myself once again with a watch on my wrist, a cell phone in my hand, and my computer on standby. And I found myself face to face with the accusation of Vimalananda who stated, “In this country, you wear your God on your wrist.” This guideline of Brahmacharya asks us if we can use these objects of technology as guides to help us maneuver through society’s demands and expectations without them becoming gods. Can we instead move to the rhythm of the universe as a cell in the heart of mystery?

  I have read many self help books and have benefited greatly from them. That said, I think mystery is what begins to shape-shift us into a deeper understanding of our humanity. As we move deeper into the practice of “walking with God,” we will find that excess doesn’t own us quite as much as it used to. When we get the real nourishment that divine mystery gives us, the pretend nourishment of excess becomes less and less interesting to us.

  Being an audience for God also means we have to get off center stage. We don’t need to be the center of attention and activity all the time. I think it might surprise us to realize how much crazy activity we create in our days just so we can feel important. We wear our busyness like a badge, like our busyness would somehow impress the rest
of the world, or impress ourselves. How many of us go to bed with a sense of accomplishment because we checked a lot of things off our task list or someone told us how “great” we were, or we “helped” others? What if walked off stage altogether and put God there instead. Maybe then we could go to sleep at night, not with a sense of accomplishment, but with a sense of wonder, because all day we had been an attentive audience to the divine play.

  Brahmacharya reminds us that we aren’t embodied in this form to feel dead but to feel alive. We aren’t embodied to snuff out our vitality and passion through excess but to bring it to full expression. Brahmacharya invites us to be willing to walk around “turned on” to the wonders of life itself. Howard Thurman understood the importance of our passion to the world when he said, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

  Questions for Exploration

  Living with these questions, taking time for reflection, and journaling will give you new insights into your life and the practice of nonexcess. For this month, frame your exploration in the following statement by Joseph Campbell:

  Be true to the purpose and limits

  of each thing in existence.

  Behave purely and serve purely

  the reality of what you are given

  by making every human function

  without exception

  a religious act

  of sacrifice and worship.

  Week One: This week examine your beliefs, values, habits, and actions around sexuality and sexual activity. Notice what your culture, the media, your faith community, and your family have to say about this topic. Then notice if you act on outside authority, or your own beliefs.

  Week Two: This week live in non excess. Eat, work, and sleep to the point of increased energy and before the lethargy of excess sets in. Ponder the words of Gensei, a Japanese Buddhist monk, who said, “The point in life is to know what’s enough.” For this week, know what is enough and stop there. Practice pleasure without excess.