Yoga of the Heart
Ten Ethical Guidelines for Gaining Limitless Growth, Confidence, and Achievement
by Alice Christensen
Chapter 4: Nonviolence: Don't Harm Yourself (Part 1)
The Sanskrit name for this first ethic is Ahimsa, which is usually translated as Nonviolence. Most people are aware that Nonviolence is associated with Yoga, and practice begins by concentrating on not harming yourself.
Nonviolence is listed as the first of the ten ethics because the practice of the other nine depends on it. For example, as you are trying to practice Truthfulness (Chapter 5, Ethic #2), you will realize that lying to yourself is a form of causing harm to yourself. In the same way, stealing from yourself or others (Chapter 6, Ethic #3) is a form of harming yourself. So you can see that as you become more aware of this ethic of Nonviolence, you will have a head start on practicing all the other ethics as well.
Harming ourselves most often manifests as self-destructive behavior. Some common examples of self-destructive behavior that we engage in often — many times unconsciously — are when we overeat; overindulge in substances such as alcohol, caffeine, or sugar; neglect wearing a seat belt while driving; become stressed by overwork; and fail to get enough rest. You can probably think of several other examples.
Do not misunderstand me and think that in this chapter I will be lecturing you about reforming your lifestyle; on the contrary, as a Yoga teacher my job is to help you become more aware of what you do and why you do it so you can make a choice. If you consciously practice Nonviolence, for instance, you will not feel the need to overindulge in something like alcohol because you know it would harm your body and reduce your capacity for safety. Similarly, when you practice this ethic, you gain great regard for the wonderful qualities of your mind, and so you would realize that using mind-destroying drugs would cause violence to yourself.
I have found that most self-destructive behavior is caused by feelings of guilt or fear: for instance, perhaps when you are stressed you lash out at coworkers or family; afterward you feel guilty and berate yourself for losing your temper. Practicing Nonviolence is a way to reduce those feelings of guilt. At the same time, as you need to lash out less, you will be less afraid of retaliation.
In this new awareness of what causes you harm, you must also include so-called passive-aggression, or violence caused by refusing to act, the results of which are often as harmful to you as overt violence. A newly married woman I knew many years ago neglected to remind her husband that her birthday was approaching, thinking to herself, "If he loves me he will remember on his own." When the day came, and she began receiving congratulations from friends, he was greatly embarrassed and humiliated because he had forgotten, and her feelings were terribly hurt. Her choice not to act therefore caused harm to both of them.
The practice of this ethic of Nonviolence teaches you how to protect yourself from your own self-destructive behaviors. Eventually your practice will begin to affect others in the world; in fact, Yogic texts say that when a nonviolent person is present, the violence in the immediate environment must subside. I must add that this happens only when the person reaches a great mastery of the practice. However, Yoga states that even in the beginning of the practice of Nonviolence, by not harming yourself you are, in a way, automatically not harming others, because all life is considered to come from the same divine source.
The result of this constant attention to not harming yourself is that you eventually become free from a great many upsets that are caused by fear and guilt. If you do not fear retaliation or confrontation, and if, during the course of the day, you manage to reduce your self-destructive behavior even a little, you can go to bed at night thinking, I have done my best, and sleep well.
This letter from a student shows how Nonviolence helps reduce self-destructive attitudes:
I had been really focusing on Nonviolence when I started using your "I Love You" Meditation Technique [see Resources]. I began to feel saturated with a wonderful feeling: as if something was filling all the cracks and fissures in my psyche. It was more than a feeling of good self-esteem; it was as if I had uncovered an underground foundation of support that was being reinforced or called into awareness.
Throughout the next week or so, I also noticed a new awareness of my own sense of vulnerability — a feeling from which I’ve always felt I had to protect myself. It’s almost as if as a child I made a vow never to allow myself to become really vulnerable. I know I may not have consciously made such a choice, but as I look back on my life, that concept seems ever-present.
The "I Love You" technique combined with my work on Nonviolence provided me with a feeling of being loved that is not contingent on approval, judgment, or that is external to myself. I don’t have much experience with experiencing this feeling at all, especially over an extended period of time. But thus far I do feel quite different. It doesn’t seem to depend on someone else loving or liking me.
I feel something underneath the psychological processes of simply improving my self-esteem that will really support me no matter what. There is an acceptance of myself as I am.
HOW TO BEGIN PRACTICING NONVIOLENCE
1. Observe when you are feeling uncomfortable. In my experience, feelings of discomfort usually signal that something is hurting you (whether inside or outside you). As soon as you notice these feelings, ask yourself whether you are harming yourself in some way. It may take some time before the reasons for your discomfort reveal themselves, especially if you are not used to acknowledging your feelings. If you indeed discover that you are being self-destructive in some way, try the two fantasy exercises below to help you get back on track.
2. Practice visualizing a violent feeling as a separate being in fantasy. By doing this, you will feel disconnected from that feeling and can avoid harm that would be caused by saying or doing something violent.
For instance, pretend someone has said something very hurtful to you and you feel anger toward that person; you would really like to "get back" somehow. You cannot shake that feeling, and it is making you feel uncomfortable. Pretend that your violent feelings have a body and a shape, as if it were a person standing next to you. To take revenge upon the person who maliciously hurt you, you would have to order this personification of violence to act in your name according to your specifications. You would be asking violence to operate for your own use. You would be making a slave of violence.
Remember, according to our premise in this book, you cannot own violence, or any other emotion; if you think you can, you are operating from false ego (See Chapter 1). Violence exists without you. You are simply an observer. Training in the ethic of Nonviolence helps you observe violence in this new way; in turn, seeing violence as separate from you makes it easy to choose your behavior, and therefore accept responsibility for it.
3. Use fantasy to protect yourself before the fact. This is an exercise that is especially helpful if you know you are heading into a situation that might become destructive. For example, suppose you need to have a meeting with a subordinate about that person’s faulty work on a project. The person has been difficult to deal with in the past, and you are dreading the meeting. You do not want to harm yourself by becoming stressed and ill prior to the meeting, and if the person reacts angrily to you, you want to try to explain the truth of the situation without causing harm either to the other person or to yourself.
Do this exercise when you have a few minutes alone. Sit quietly, close your eyes, and relax your body and breath. Then:
Imagine that you are standing at the end of a long hallway. There are doors on either side of the hall, and one of them is labeled "Meeting with [person’s name]." Before you do anything else, notice that there is a suit of armor hanging on a hook next to you. Visualize all its various shapes and colors and fastenings as you would like them to be. Put on the armor carefully, piece by piece, making sure that your entire body is protected. Buckle on your sword, feeling its weight and power.
You are now ready to face the meeting in your fantasy. Walk to the door that opens to your meeting, open the door, and stand there, observing what is in the room. You do not have to do anything or go any further unless you want to. If the person you are meeting is in the room, observe what he or she does and says. If you want to respond, do so, always remembering that you are completely protected.
When you have had enough, close the door, walk back to the end of the hall, remove your armor, and slowly bring yourself back to your everyday surroundings.
This fantasy exercise can help you practice and prepare for any difficult situations that you have to face.
4. Take care of your body and protect yourself from illness. Life is precious. I like to think of the things I do to take care of myself as feeling or tasting sweet because I love their effect. For instance, I take vitamins every day. I do not like the taste of vitamins, but I like what they do for me. So vitamins become sweet to me. I have transformed my reaction to them. I have chosen to make them sweet. In the same way, I do not like the constriction of wearing a seat belt in the car, but I like knowing that I am protected from serious injury by wearing it, so wearing it then becomes sweet to me.
Try this test in every area of your life. Does the food you eat give you a sweet feeling or does it make you uncomfortable? Remember that discomfort is the most obvious sign that you are doing something that may be harmful to you or anyone else. Observe your relationships. Are they full of demands and disappointments that make you feel uncomfortable, or are they fulfilling and enjoyable?
5. Watch your inner conversation. Do you find yourself constantly calling yourself a failure, ugly, incompetent, miserable, ill, and so on? Perpetuating negative attitudes about yourself is clearly a violent action. Always return to observation and feeling. "What am I doing? Does it feel sweet or does it feel uncomfortable and painful?" If there is discomfort, you can be sure you are harming yourself in some way.
This practice brings great power, because increasing your observation of your feelings and reactions paves the way for the emergence of the spiritual body and its expression. Usually the physical body acts as a policeman to the spiritual body, whose natural inclination is to be free. Continually restraining its freedom is violence toward you and your spiritual self. When you remove this restraint, the result is delight, wonder, and astonishment.
In the remainder of this chapter, I will concentrate on two areas: food and love. I have chosen these two areas because food and love relationships are two of the things that seem to be most important to us as human beings, and areas in which we are most likely to cause harm to ourselves.
NONVIOLENCE AND FOOD
The Shaivite philosophy believes that it is not only the food itself but your desire for food that supports your body. This idea addresses a very primitive feeling that arises in all living things when encountering another being: Am I going to eat it or is it going to eat me? This is obviously a feeling loaded with fear, because no living thing wants to be killed and eaten. In this section I will discuss the relationship between food and violence in a way that might be new to you, and show you how you can learn to make more nonviolent choices.
I have already talked about how self-destructive behavior manifests in overindulgence or in ingesting too much of substances that can harm you, such as alcohol or drugs. Moderation in food and drink is a way to practice Nonviolence, because the body is then able to use what it needs without becoming stressed having to defend itself against the onslaught of overindulgence. Because of the practice of Nonviolence, you learn to choose to eat what is protective and helpful, protecting yourself from the self-destructive behaviors concerning food that we have discussed previously.
Yoga says that different foods have different qualities inherent in them. You are probably already aware of how certain substances, such as sugar and caffeine, affect your moods. In the Bhagavad Gita there is a clear division of food into three main types according to how they affect a person. These three categories correspond to the three gunas, tendencies or qualities of nature, which are found in everything in the world in varying amounts.
1. Sattwa guna describes attributes of calmness, purity, and balance. Sattwic food, according to the Gita, promotes longevity, intelligence, strength, health, happiness, and delight; it is sweet, not too spicy, nourishing, and good-tasting. In other words, sattwic food promotes both physical and emotional health. Some examples of sattwic food would be fruit, vegetables, milk, and whole grains.
2. The attributes of the second category, rajas guna, are activity, passion, and restlessness. Rajasic food is bitter, acidic, salty, spicy, dry, and pungent; it excites the body’s systems. Some examples of rajasic food are hot spices and extremely salty foods.
3. The third quality of nature is the tamas guna, whose attributes are sleep, ignorance, dullness, and inertia. Tamasic food is that which is nonnutritive, rotten, leftover, or stale; it contributes to listlessness, dullness of mind, and depression. Some examples are "empty calorie" foods such as diet colas, artificial foods — and probably anything that has been sitting in your refrigerator for more than a week. Meat is considered a tamasic food because it is dead and, therefore, inert.
All the qualities described in the gunas about food describe attributes of the physical body, which is constantly changing; the spiritual body is the resting place of the feelings that the food inspires in you.
These three gunas actually reside in every food, though each food carries a predominance of one of the three qualities. Yoga says that the qualities of food of the types I outlined above, such as sweetness, passion, or dullness, actually reside in the food and are then expressed in your body; food is used as the vehicle for expression of feeling which comes from the spiritual body. For instance, a Yogi would say that the quality of sweetness "lives" in fruit and is transferred to your body when you eat it, expressing itself in you as a feeling of sweetness. The quality of excitement "lives" in spices, so when you eat spicy foods, the quality of excitement expresses itself in you.
In the same way, it is felt that violence lives in meat. This concept is discussed in ancient Yogic texts, where the eating of meat is compared to eating the quality of violence itself. By killing in order to eat, you have moved into that primitive feeling of fear and aggression I mentioned at the beginning of this section — Am I going to eat it or is it going to eat me? — and the violence that lives in the meat expresses itself through you. This is why a vegetarian diet is usually associated with Yoga and the practice of Nonviolence.
You certainly do not have to become a vegetarian to practice Yoga, but if you wish to practice Yogic ethics, you will continue to make personal choices about what you eat. Many students find, after some practice, that they gradually lose their taste for meat and become vegetarian almost without realizing it. You could actually say that they did not give up meat; meat gave them up. This is what happens when Nonviolence begins to take form.
When I was first beginning to practice Yoga, I did not talk a lot about what I was doing, but word would leak out anyway, especially when people at a dinner party or some other event found out that I was a vegetarian. I never tried to convince anyone else to eat the way I did, and I continue that practice to this day. I believe that this would be an invasion of another person’s privacy and thus a subtle form of violence, because I would be demanding that the person be like me.
When pressed about my diet, I tried to explain my views about Nonviolence, trying not to intrude on other people’s views. When they asked how I could be sure of getting enough protein, I could honestly reply that I had studied nutrition and had learned how to count protein grams and adjust my diet accordingly (something I urge anyone to do who wishes to become vegetarian). Some people would insist on continuing: "Well I’m almost a vegetarian. I only eat fish and chicken. Do you?" Then I would be forced to explain myself further by saying, "No, I never eat anything that looks back." I tried to explain simply that my diet was my own choice, and that, like every other individual, I have a choice about what I want to eat.
I eventually realized that I was unique in that respect; very few people have a choice about what they eat. Most people eat what is put in front of them, the implication being that they are lucky to have it. Especially during the traditional family holidays, people are expected to eat the traditional fare, not a menu that is chosen for individual taste — not to mention a menu such as mine, which was so often portrayed as exotic then, but of course is becoming so much more common today. My idea is that people get together at holidays to be together, not to eat the same things.
The reasons for a vegetarian diet are much deeper that the simple principle of not causing harm to a living thing. Shaivism teaches that hatred springs from meat, and that violence hunts you like an animal, through meat. It goes on to say that the way an animal dies has an effect on you, even if you yourself have not done the actual killing.
Some of the old books on Kashmir Shaivism actually outline three specific crimes against living things (animals or human beings). The first is taking away life, even though the animal or person is innocent and has done nothing to deserve death. The second is the crime of inflicting great pain while killing. And the third is the crime of taking away its strength by trussing it up and tying it down. These old books say further that one has to pay dearly for acts such as these and that it take twenty lifetimes to pay for such violence. All violence is a result of when the spiritual body is ignored, denied expression, and repressed.
I asked Swami Lakshmanjoo once whether these statements are to be taken literally. He said yes, but when I asked if there was anything that one could do to alleviate this penance, he said that according to Shaivite philosophy, the practice of Yoga does help to lessen the burden of repayment. The Bhagavad Gita states that anyone who begins serious practice of the ethical guidelines immediately finds relief from the burden of violence in their lives.
From Yoga of the Heart: Ten Ethical Guidelines for Gaining Limitless Confidence, Growth, and Achievement, by Alice Christensen (Daybreak/Rodale Books, 1998).
Copyright 2002 by The American Yoga Association. All Rights Reserved.
