(^88) YOGA AND TOTAL HEALTH • February 2018YOGA AND TOTAL HEALTH • February 2018
We are continuously taking away
thoughts and ideas of others,
sometimes their words, and very
quietly even their objects. And we
have excuses! “Our need was so great,
we had no chance to ask,” etc. An
animal does not bother about the
idea of stealing. But a human, as he
gets civilized, differentiates between
what really belongs to him and what
does not belong to him. In yoga this
concept of Asteya is one of the Yamas,
one of the binding techniques.
You cannot progress in yoga if you
have not controlled these tendencies.
The discipline is very hard. Sometimes
one wonders that these tendencies
are so hard to control, and that if you
go after them you might spend hours
and hours. You have other important
things to do, so why waste time after
these ideas about not stealing, not
getting angry, etc.? But then we have
to understand that the techniques in
yoga begin with them. The Yamas and
the Niyamas are the starting point.
And clearly the Yo g i wants you to be
determined to bring about changes
in yourself. It is not just a half-hearted
wish that we want to improve, that we
want to change, and that we want to
become better.
Some people maintain a diary. The
first ten days they write something in
it and then the diary is never attended
to. This kind of an interest to better
ourselves is not really a very strong
one. Areas like our health, our mental
development, our objective and
purpose in life, are all hardly thought
of. Areas related to something we are
terribly interested in such as making
money, running our business, etc. are
attended to carefully.
We pay a lip service to the ideal that
one should be truthful, but that is
the end of it. In yoga we are really
interested in bringing about changes.
Everything else is secondary. It is a
very strong position that yoga takes,
and there are very few who are able
to succeed. I have often repeated the
story of Yudhishthira. When he is told
to speak the truth, he admits that even
after regular training for 2-3 days by
the teacher, he did not speak the truth.
We know that it is necessary to speak
the truth. But we are so clever that we
have got hundreds of reasons why we
could not speak the truth. And that is
the first casualty. If you cannot carry
out what you consider as the right
thing, then where is the progress?
Nominally you might do some Asanas
and Pranayamas and say that you did
estraints
R
Dr. Jayadeva Yogendra in Parisamvada