Yoga & World Peace

6-03

 

What can yoga possibly have to do with world peace? To enter into any spiritual path that includes a belief in physical and mental discipline, a seeker goes within to begin that journey. Awareness of breath—the transition of breath to prana (vital energy) and its use in opening oneself to the fullness of life—is a chela’s (student’s) life work and thus has become mine. Before one can bring peace to the world, one must experience peace in oneself. We are all works in progress.

               In my earlier years as a student of yoga, I read many of the books that are now considered mainstays for beginning students. In all of them meditation was stressed as something that would give me inner peace. I read of the ecstasies of the saints and great yogis. I was young, naïve and very optimistic. I began and ended various practices taught by many different teachers. All the meditation that I practiced was, for the most part, painful, boring and tedious. Ah, I can hear my guru say now “The best meditations are sometimes the most boring.”

               My guru was the first to tell me the truth about meditation. “Meditation is all about learning how to die—and your ego does not want to die”. I was freed in that moment from any mystical finish line, from any gold-at-the-end-of-the-rainbow kind of expectations. Meditation (yoga) was learning how to die; however, it would also show me how to live and to live fully.

               “In the learning comes the sharing, and only in the sharing does it become a deeper part of you.” My guru, Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati, began teaching a handful of students in her backyard in Brooklyn in 1974. The yoga was Kali Natha Yoga. Roughly translated this means “The Yoga of One Who Worships the Divine Mother Kali.” Kali Natha Yoga means the original yoga taught by Lord Siva himself to the first yogis. It is not Hatha Yoga. The individual asana's are the students’ direct paths to the gods and goddesses of that particular asana. They are first and foremost a puja (prayer) to the god or goddess.

 

To do this yoga with “intent” is to want to have the darshan of the gods. To move one’s body like an altar in yogic grace is, in a very real way, to create a space of grace around you so that whoever or whatever you come in contact with feels this peace emanating from you.

               As yogis who teach, we have tools that the whole world needs to sustain itself on a spiritual path. Being the students, teachers or aspirants of the yoga component it is only natural that we shoulder more of the responsibilities that will keep this world from destruction. We are the true warriors, and as a warrior of truth I am reminded of the words from the Ramayana. Lord Hanuman, the monkey god and servant of Rama, said to his Lord when given orders and responsibilities in which to fulfill in his teacher’s name, “Save me, save me from the tentacles of egoism, my Lord.”

               With responsibility comes power. With the knowledge of the unlocking of the chakras and the spiritual renewal that comes forth with such a release of shakti, we are in positions that demand awareness. We are, after all, God’s puppets. It is through our own personal prayers and pujas that we will be able to keep the traditions and the lineage of yoga and to realize what one person can do to enable spirit to thrive in such a world gone mad.

               World peace is only arrived at through the attainment of personal peace first. Yoga is a path, and what it illuminates in each person is his or her highest potential through its gradual, careful movements. Movements as old as life itself in which one’s

possibilities are brought forth. Surely Mother Earth can use more aware individuals.

               In the individual asana’s we are blessing and at the same time taking the shakti of Mother Earth and allowing ourselves to be the conduits of grace to bless the world. The world needs blessings. The world needs to be taken care of. In ancient times the yogis would sit in caves sometimes their entire lives performing austerities to purify themselves more for the shakti, the grace of their gods, to come forth in them. They kept the world in balance through their discipline and devotional practices. Like compasses they held the world while carnage and war raged below them. Now, here we are. Perhaps in one of our lifetimes, we were one of those yogis in one of those caves praying in solitude for mankind. The only difference now is that our caves are now called studios, temples, puja rooms, backyards or a space between the T.V. and the living room sofa. There is usually a Starbucks within walking distance and we no longer have to walk miles through treacherous mountain paths to have the darshan of our teachers. However, our responsibility is the same.

               Yoga means balance. Balance is achieved through a spiritual practice. Yoga is one such practice out of thousands. We help ourselves, and then we can make others aware of how they also can help themselves. Intent is everything in my practice. It is the perfection of one’s inner focus to one’s spiritual heart. It is not the perfect “Downward Facing Dog” though with intent it can be. It is not the ability to place one’s chin in between one’s heels in “Hanuman’s Paws Puja” but with pure intent it can be. Bhakti would be another word for intent, and the path of the bhakti yogi is all about staying and living in one’s heart. A bhakti yoga teacher always wants his students to be better in their practice than he or she. He knows inner peace and wants it desperately for his students. Then he wants them to take it even further.

               So, imagine a world where all realize the importance of practice, where discipline is taught as a way to freedom and not the opposite, where all can do what they can do for world peace by being aware first of where they are operating from—the head or the heart. What is their intent? Who do they want something for? What selfless service have they performed for someone else that day? Whose brow have they caressed? What ease have they brought into their own life that they can share with another? We touch our teacher’s feet or pranam and say “namaste”—the God in me salutes the God in you. How could we not live in a more peaceful world when such awareness is shared by so many?

               Our practice in yoga is everything. It is our lives, and it does affect the lives that we touch. My guru, Ma Jaya says, “To become a true yogi, one needs to respect the entire world. One needs to be the same inside and out.”

Always at Her feet

Laxman Das Jaya, Yoga Acharya