Most people practice yoga within the parameters of the first and
second niyama, which are cleanliness and contentment. They get the
immediate payoff of yoga practice (going to a class, doing a bit at
home) from the fact that there is increasing health, which is cleanliness,
and a deep health, an organic health, a mental clarity, well-being and
repose, an ability to relax and rest, to nourish themselves from better
breathing. So this brings an improvement in cleanliness, in deep health
and concomitantly there is a greater contentment, integration with the
environment, in our ability to handle its ups and downs. These are the
two circles in which most people are living yoga. It is a quick and won
derful reward. Why then is it not enough just to stay with that since it
is the definition of a good life decently and happily lived? Often if you
don't carry on, if you settle for transient well-being, then new problems
will arise. That is to say that when you are decently happy and clean
and content then self-satisfaction will creep in. "I'm alright." This may
lead to vanity and pride, a sort of smug superiority that is the dawning
again of the intellectual defects that disfigure us. Or it may lead to
lethargy and sluggishness, as we become complacent in our practice.
We are creatures that are designed for continual challenge. We
must grow, or we begin to die. The status quo leads to stagnation and
discontent. So just standing still isn't really an option. We have to move
on. If not, disturbances will come. We've learned how to handle the
disturbances of getting fired from our job, the outward ones, but when
vanity and pride and smugness dawn, these disturbances, what I would
call the diseases of the mind, take root within us. So nature offers us a
new challenge. We 're handling the day-to-day problems, but are we
handling the inner disease of the growth of vanity, pride, and smugness
in ourselves? This is a new challenge. We have to deal with it, but we
won't if we get caught up in yoga for pleasure, the self-regarding yoga
of saying, "I'm alright, aren't you in a mess." So the need to persevere
derives from the fact that if we don't go further, new problems arise in
II K S I Y 1'. N I ; A ll