Yama is the cultivation of the positive within us, not merely a sup
pression of what we consider to be its diabolical opposite. If we con
sider the nonpractice of yama in this way, we will be doomed, not to
encourage the good, but to ricochet between extremes of vice and
virtue, which will cause us nothing but pain and which have no bene
ficial evolutionary effect on the world. Cultivate the positive, abjure
the negative. Little by little, one will arrive.
To refer back to the Shakespeare quote of chapter 3, I would
merely say that love is an investment, lust a waste. That is what he
means. Lust leads to isolation and loneliness, a spiritual desert. Brah
macarya implies self-containment, the ability to control oneself, either
in respect to others or to experience wholeness in asana. It is not ab
stinence from sexual activity. It is the ethical control of a powerful nat
ural force. The degree of control will depend on the degree of evolution
of the practitioner. Continence and constancy are the key concepts, and
let us not forget that the root of celibacy in Latin means being unmar
ried; it does not imply immorality.
Yama can be learned through the practice of asana. Let me give an
example of this. If you are acting over-aggressively in one side of your
body, you are murdering (himsa) the cells on that side. By restoring en
ergy to the weaker, passive side, you are learning to balance violence
and nonviolence. When the shape of the asana expresses the shape of
the self, without forcing, deception, or distortion, then you have
learned truth (satya) in asana. Be sure that all these ethical lessons can,
if you wish, leave the classroom with you and enrich your life. When
a practitioner feels in asana that his intelligence is flooding his whole
body throughout the sheaths, he experiences a self-contained whole
ness, an integrity of being. He feels himself rise above outer attach
ments. That is the quality of celibacy in action.
Even the deepest rooted of the afflictions (klesa) can be mastered
through observation in asana. It is clinging to life (abhinivesa). Even
the wisest of people are attached to life as it is physical and instinctual.
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