is yoga and buddhism the answer to world problems?

is yoga and buddhism the answer to world problems?

Namaste:



With all the news full of stories about bombings, mass murders,

militias, militant religious extremists of all stripes, spouting hatred

and distrust, and tales of assorted horrors perpetrated by a sweeping

spectrum of kooks, krazies, and bad guys in general, one could be

forgiven for wondering if we should be spending our time standing on our

heads. Maybe we should, I don't know, DO something!







Huh?



Maybe that answer makes more sense if we bear in mind that yoga is really

much broader in its scope than standing on our heads. Although most of

us initially become acquainted with yoga by learning yoga postures

(asanas), the classical approach to the practice of yoga as delineated by

Patanjali in the Yoga Sutra doesn't start with asanas. It begins with

five ethical principles called yama. The first and most important of

these is ahimsa, which is generally translated as nonviolence. Like the

other principles of yama, it is not a commandment: it doesn't say "Dont'

be violent." What the stutra actually says is that when the practitioner

is firmly established in nonviolence, hostility in his presence is

abandoned, which is to say that when we ourselves are nonviolenct,

violence will not take place around us.



As he does throughout the sutras, Patanjali in this sutra has cut

staight to the core of the matter. The problem of violence lies not

soemwhere outside us. It is within us. It is we who are violent. If we

were not, violence would not occur around us if we are to believe the

Yoga Sutra.



Hey! Whoa! Wait a minute. I didn't blow up any buildings. What do I have

to do with that? Looks like it was those weird malitia dudes. But not me.

I sure don't have anything to do with any of those wackos. And besides,

I'm a nonviolent person anyway.



But how many of us are truly nonviolent in the deepest sense, as

Patanjali surely meant it: nonviolent in tought and word as well as

deed? No doubt there are degrees of violence. Blowing up a building is

clearly of another order from shouting at the guy who cuts you off in

traffic, which is obviously different from keepng your mouth shut but

wanting to ram your car into his. Yet if we define violencw in this

broadest sense, although of different degrees, these are all acts of

violence. In that light, I think we'll have to admit that we are not

completely nonviolent people. I suspect such folk are few and far in between.

So, how are we to become nonviolent? How do we "do" nonviolence?

Well, it doesn't seem to me that we CAN do nonviolence; we can

ony BE nonviolent.

Alright then, how do we BE nonviolent?

I don't think it is by trying to not do violent acts or not say

violent words or not think violent thoughts, although each of these is

certainly worthwhile. No doubt we could whittle away alot of the

violence in our lives, in our culture, in the world by so doing. But I

don't think that approach will get to the root of violence. It would be

like pruning the leaves of a creeping vine but leaving the root

untouched. The leaves will eventually grow back.

The root of violence, it seems to me, lies in our inability to

experience our connectedness - to other peole, other creatures, our

environnment, the planet, the cosmos, the Great Spirit. We are much less

likely to do violence to those whom we truly hold in our hearts. I think

if we observe carefully, when we do harm even to those we love, we have,

at least for the moment and for whatever reason, put them out of our hearts.

I was listening to NPR the other day and heard an interview with

the writer, W. D. Snodgrass, about something he wrote called, as I

recollect, the Fuehrer's Bunker. I've treid to find it but have been

unable. I gathered from the discussion however, that it was written from

Hitler's perspective. Snodgrass, in his wonderfully gravelly voice, said

that he had received a tremendous amount of very angry mail.. One person

he recalled has asked how he could "glorify" someone as despicable as

Hitler. He said that he later heard from the same person who expressed

the same sentiment, except that the word "glorify" had been changed to

"humanize" Snodgrass said that that was the point. Hitler WAS human just

as we are humans.

I was reminded of a poem, Please Call Me by My True Names, by

Thich Nhat Hanh, the well-known Vietneamese Zen master. Because of space

considerations I reprint only part of it.



Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow

because even today I still arrive...

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,

in order to fear and to hope,

the rhythm of my heart is the birth and death

of all that are alive . . .

I am a frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond,

and I am the grass-snake, who, approaching

in silence, feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,

my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,

and I am the arms merchant selling deadly

weapons to Uganda

I am the twelve year old girl, refuggee on

a small boat,

who throws herself into the ocean

after being raped by a sea pirate,

and I am the pirate, my heart not yet

capable of seeing and loving . . .

Please call me by my true names,

So I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,

So I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names

So I can wake up and so the door of my heart can be left open

The door of compassion.



When we deomonize others, try to make them something other than

human, other than us, in so doing we deny a part of ourselves, We not

only disconnect from them, we disconnect from parts of ourselves. We do

it with words lke "kooks" and "wackos", "thugs" and "fundamentalists",

"good guys" and "bad guys". We do it by closing our eyes and our hearts

to the pain and suffering of those near to us and not so near. We do it

because to be related is painful. But to be related is also to be

joyful. To feel unrelated, disconnected is a deeper pain: there is no joy

in it anywhere only a living death.

To try to turn another person or group of people into monsters or

demons is to demonize ourselves. To declare that they are not a part of

us is to try to cut off a part of ourselves. To put them out of our

hearts is to deaden another little piece of our own hearts. This is the

root of violence.

We are not unrelated. We are not separated. We are part of a

vast jigsaw puzzle made up of countless pieces of varying sizes, shapes

and colors. Yet in spite of those differences, by all being peices of

the same puzzle, we are connected.

When we say "Namaste" to you at the end of class, that's our way

of acknowledging and honoring that place where we are connected, unified,

where when you're in yours and I'm in mine and we're in the same place,

we are One. That's yoga. That's why to the question of violence, to

whatever the question . . . the answer is . . . more yoga.



Namaste