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I was just back home from my one week stay at Chinmaya Vibhooti, Kolwan , when the news of the now infamous and self styled Swami Srihari from Kerala hit the headlines . It was very saddening and disgusting that these so called Swamis and godmen again and again exploit the purity and the piety of the saffron robe for power, position, money and sexual thrills. It is because of men like him that the word "ashram" itself has taken a lewd connotation in today's parlance and Swamis are looked down with sneer and mistrust. In my own case, when I tell people that I am going to stay in an ashram for a week, mostly they raise their concern about my safety -my actual physical safety and my psychological safety..."what if they brainwash you and make you a monk? what if they hypnotize you into one of their mad fanatic followers? What if they make you sign over all that you own for their ashram? what if...what if..." the questions go on and on. Having been clos...

Image courtesy www.doyouyoga.com The last of the five yamas is aparighraha. Parighraha means grasping / holing on tight. So obviously a-parighraha means non-grasping. What is the ultimate thing that I am grasping on to tightly? Isn't it my life? And how is it that I am perceiving this "life" right now? As this body -the gross physical form, and as the mind -the subtle astral form. I am holing on tight to these two as the only definition and expression of the "life" that is in me. Letting go of the misconception that the Self/Life is the body and the mind is the ultimate meaning and practice of aparighraha. Going a little further, if I examine WHY I tend to hold on tightly , it is purely driven by fear. All of our thoughts, words and actions are driven either by love or by fear . If based on love, then the tendency is to expand, to share, to be open, free, happy. If based on fear, then the tendency is to hold on tight, to grasp, to contract, to h...

As we saw in this earlier post about what it is that we are aiming to achieve by all these disciplines, let's move on to reflect about brahmacharya.  The word brahmacharya literally means "going after Brahman (Supreme Reality, Self, God)". If I aim to go in search of God, it is absolutely essential that I MUST purify the mind. So, let us see a little bit about the mind. What is the mind? The mind is an equipment or a vehicle of the self or the soul, just like the body. While the physical body is gross, the mind is extremely subtle. The power of the mind resides in its subtlety. I can't perceive my mind through the sense organs -I can't see it, touch it, taste it, smell it or hear it with my physical ear. But, the mind is powered by these exact sense organs. In the sense, the mind is the repository of ALL the perceptions that are gathered through our sense organs. The sense organs collect all the data about this physical world and submits it to the m...

It is kind of overwhelming to write about Brahmacharya, the fourth of the yamas or restraints. Not because of the content, but because the gross misunderstanding of the context or the implication of the word brahmacharya in today's parlance. Brahmacharya does not mean celibacy alone. Celibacy is only an aspect of Brahmacharya. Then, what is brahmacharya? Why should one practice it? And why is a part of yogic discipline? Before I write more about brahmacharya, I feel that a little bit of premise setting is essential here. So let us start with what exactly are we trying to achieve by practicing these restraints and how it fits with yoga. The ultimate goal of yoga: At the risk of sounding repetitive and boring, let me reiterate that yoga is much bigger than the asanas and pranayama, as we know it. It is a path to self realization. It is a path through which the individual consciousness merges with God consciousness or Universal Consciousness. That is why all the major path...

Image courtesy: Paulo Zerbato -https://fineartamerica.com/featured/self-expression-paulo-zerbato.html There are many times when I deeply regret that the best way for me to express myself is through words. They are the most gross and inadequate. I wish that I was a painter, who can color her thoughts and paint her feelings. The canvas nothing but an extension of my soul. A mirror that reflects that which is within me, now bright, now dark. Sometimes brilliant, sometimes full of shadows. Vibrant and sedate, pious and petty -an amalgamation of lines, colors and textures that talks directly through the mirror of another pair of eyes and reflects in their own soul. No interference from the mind or the brain. No processing of the clumsy letters and chunky words. No need of sentences and paragraphs, tiring the reader and boring their brains.   Sometimes, I wish I am a composer, where the notes are sufficient to convey the mood. A musician, where I can create magic from pla...

Astheya means non stealing. And I felt, wow! This is one observance that I have always followed. But, as always, there is more than what meets the eye. Of course, the most obvious meaning is not actually stealing things, money etc from others. Most of us don't do it, simply because it is not in our upbringing. It is beyond our capacities to even entertain thoughts of stealing. The masters say that even bringing stationary and other items from office for personal use is stealing. When I feel that someone is having something that I desire -be it money, jewelry, things, fame, power -and I don't have the capacity to fulfil this desire, I try to obtain the same by using shortcuts -the easiest one is to steal it from someone who already has it or who has it in excess, so that he won't notice that some of it is missing. As an extension, we can also interpret astheya to mean not cheating or manipulating others and use their possession (power, money, property etc) fo...

Continuing with the Yamas or restraints, the next one on the list is Sathya or Truth. This works on so many levels and is very fascinating. The immediate thing that comes to  mind about this yama is speaking truth. And Truth is invariably associated with speech. It is said that if a person speaks nothing but the truth for 12 continuous years, he will develop "Vak Siddhi", or the power that makes whatever he utters come true. It came as quite a revelation what I realized how easy and how often I end up speaking non truth -like giving excuses for covering up my short comings, for not having done the things that I didn't do or didn't want to do, covering up some truths lest others may feel bad and so on. The main culprit however, are the made up excuses and false reasons. They are given without even pausing for a moment to reflect that, what is being said is not actually true! Even for very simple instances like, not wanting to go somewhere and giving poor h...