Ashtanga Yoga - the 8 fold path
Part 1 - Yamas: Social Discipline
The first component of the eight fold path of Ashtanga Yoga is the social discipline or Yama. These are the guidelines of the social interaction with the outside world in relationship to others.
These Yamas tell us that we should not do anybody any harm in any possible
way: not in our deeds, not with our words not even with our mind. These Yamas
are universal laws to be respected everywhere and as they are quiet natural
they should be easy to follow.
There are 5 Yamas:
1. Ahimsa: non-violence
2. Satya: truthfulness
3. Asteya: non-stealing
4. Brahmacharya: sexual control
5. Aparigraha: non-possessiveness
The Yamas are to be followed fully, irrespective of place, time cast or exception. For higher Yoga practise the Yamas are to be followed 100%, for preliminary Yoga practice try to follow the Yamas as much as you can.
If you follow the Yamas and Niyamas as much as possible you will notice that you can perform the Asanas and Pranayama better. If you practise Asanas and Pranayama better you will automatically start following the Yamas and Niyamas. Following the Yamas and Niyamas will help obtain the goal of Yoga which is the total control of mental activities
This is a mode of behaviour towards all living creatures; it is the awareness of practise of non violence in thought, speech or action.
You should control all your actions – do not cause any physical harm to any living creature – your speech – do not speak bad of anyone or hurt them with your word – as well as your thoughts – do not have bad or negative thoughts about somebody. Instead you should generate love and compassion towards all living creatures.
Patanjali describes truthfulness as: “To be in harmony with mind, word and action, to conduct speech and mind according to truth, to express through speech and to retain it in the intellect what has been seen, understood or heard.” A perfectly truthful person is he who expresses in his speech exactly what he thinks in his mind and in the end acts according to it.
A fact is a fact; there is not other way than to accept it. We often try to hide the facts and no accept them. A lie often requires a number of others lies for its’ support. Untruthfulness in any form creates unnecessary complications in life; truthfulness is an absolute necessity for the enfoldment of the reality.
3. Asteya: non stealing (Honesty)
The non-stealing should be considered in the broadest possible meaning: the forgoing of unauthorized possession of worldly goods, thoughts or actions. You are not supposed to take credit for something you did not do. If you find something (e.g. money) you should not take it as it does not belong to you, even if you do not know who owns it.
4. Brahmacharya: sexual continence
Celibacy is believed to be a behaviour that brings us closer to the Divine. According to the yogic beliefs, you cannot get the real bliss and transcendent knowledge of the higher yogic life and sexual pleasures at the same time. Brahmacharya means the freedom from cravings, freeing the mind of any kind of sexual enjoyment.
Following continence does not necessarily mean that one should renounce family life and become a monk or a nun; this is not expected in the Yoga science. When a yogi progresses further on the path of Yoga, on his own he feels that he should renounce the worldly activities and he will be free from all desires, and hence can easily study Dhyana and Dharana. However, not all of us need to follow this path; there is no need to stretch the meaning of continence to this level. Controlled enjoyment of desires can be interpreted as continence. If we understand this meaning and behave accordingly, we will be able to progress in Yoga.
Due to uncontrolled behaviour, we will be more restricted. Desires and their fulfilment do have a place in family life, but there should be some limit. It is we who should control the desires, and not desires that control us. Once the desires start ruling us, we lose our freedom. If the desires are not fulfilled, we lose our mental and physical well being.
5. Aparigraha: non-possessiveness
We have the tendency to accumulate worldly goods; it is considered to be a basic instinct of human life. We seem to have the desire to appear superior to our fellow humans through our possessions. In the worldly goods there are some necessities, but we should not collect luxuries for the sake of collecting.
We spend a lot of time and energy in accumulating things we do not really need, then we need to maintain and guard the things we accumulated, which causes the (constant) fear of losing them. We spend our limited resources, time and energy to generate a constant source of disturbance for our mind. We should cut down our possessions to what we really need.
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