8 asaNa Magazine | March 2017
bottomless. Yoga is practiced for one
reason, uniting body spirit mind.
The wages of yoga are breath light
energy.
Going to war may be the easiest thing
to explain and the hardest thing to do.
“Battle is an orgy of disorder. There
is only attack and attack and attack
some more,” said George ‘Old Blood
and Guts’ Patton, who commanded
the U. S. Third Army during WW2.
Yoga may be the hardest thing to
explain and the easiest thing to do.
“Just do,” said K. Pattabhi Jois,
the man who originated Ashtanga
Vinyasa Yoga.
General Patton often said battle
was the “most magnificent”
undertaking known to man. He
died in an automobile accident.
The Army private chauffeuring his
Cadillac limousine was uninjured. K.
Pattabhi Jois died of natural causes.
“He was fearless about combining
the path of yoga with the path of the
participant” said David Life, the co-
founder of Jivamukti Yoga.
Since yoga doesn’t self-identify with
any nation-state, doesn’t live by
the eye for an eye of the tiger, and
isn’t interested in looting all your
stuff, it doesn’t issue ultimatums
and declarations. It doesn’t blow
its stack, launching smart bombs,
armed drones, and coming to your
world soon, fully autonomous
weapons systems.
Practicing yoga is practicing getting
your hands on freedom, no matter
how elusive it may be. It’s not about
getting your hands on the other
guy’s cargo, no matter how bright
and shiny and phenomenal it is. More
cargo more loot more territory means
keeping your nose to the grindstone
in order to keep it all in your corner
of the world. Yoga means sloughing
off the wet dream of more glory more
prizes more pride in victory.Freedom isn’t about riding the merry-
go-round and grabbing gra-sping
snatching at the brass ring. Hell,
what would you do with it anyway?
The Totenkopf military hat features
a human skull, mandible, and two
crossed long bones. The black-clad
Hussar cavalry of Frederick the Great
were the first to wear them. The
death-head hats scared the hell out
of the other guys, making it clear
what was at stake.
Even though the Dalai Lama has
said, “Awareness of death is the
very bedrock of the path,” death-
head hats are never worn by anyone
anywhere in any yoga class.
If Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II had
taken off his skull and crossbones hat
in 1902, put his hair up into a bun,
and gotten on a yoga mat instead of
scowling all the time, he might not
have walked off the plank right into
WW1. But, he didn’t, and 12 years
later it was Time for Trench Warfare.
Since WW2 was a direct consequence
of the War to End All Wars, maybe
that wouldn’t have happened, either.
In 1938, just before the start of
WW2, French biologist Jean Rostond
said, “Kill one man, and you are a
murderer. Kill millions of men, and
you are a conqueror. Kill them all,
and you are a god.”
What a difference a hat can make,
not just in fashion, but in what
determines the fate of nations, too.
The last German Emperor abdicated
in 1918, grew a beard, and spent
the rest of his life chopping wood
and hunting birds. He bagged tens
of thousands of them in the next
twenty years. The neighborhood
birds thought he was an avenging
angel.
Only one man has ever returned the
Medal of Honor. Charlie Liteky, a
combat chaplain, without a weapon,“Battle is
an orgy of
disorder.
There is
only attack
and attack
and attack
some more,”
said George
‘Old Blood
and Guts’
Patton, who
commanded
the U. S. Third
Army during
WW2. Yoga
may be the
hardest thing
to explain and
the easiest
thing to do.