Outer
level: to not kill, harm, cause injury to or endanger any living being.
Inner level: to reach a state of nondual appreciation for the life
force in oneself and others through gentleness, dispassion, and increased
self-responsibility
Secret level: "The person who is perfected in non-violence will
pacify and obtain the friendship of all other living creatures. No
animal will fear him/her, and even those predisposed to violent ways
will be transformed." --Yoga Sutra II.35, Sadhana Pada
The
Sanskrit language, like Arabic and other ancient Semitic languages,
is a poetical one, multi-tiered in meaning, and at the same time concise
and direct for the context in which it is utilized. For this we can
thank the ancient sages who devised it to lead us for posterity in
the timeless light of Yoga, and in these singular teachings of Yama
and Niyama, which in themselves are cause for a whole lifetime of
contemplation.
Ahimsa is comprised of two roots: the prefix "a"
which denotes a lack of something, and "himsa" or harming.
Ahimsa refers to the qualities of a sublime and consistent patience,
lack of aggression, lack of competitiveness and temperance. Among
all of the Yamas, Ahimsa is perhaps the most difficult and comprehensive
to grasp as it involves understanding not only our actions and impulses
but the root causes that underly them, and asks that we take responsibility
for ourselves on three tiers: those of the body (action), speech (creative
power), and mind (our relationship to "our" thoughts).
Ahimsa, on the level of the body awareness, is at the most basic level
a lack of physical violence towards self and others. The person practicing
ahimsa neither directly nor through collusion with others participates
in creating any kind of injury to other beings. Nonviolence is a tenet
of spirituality found in many of the world's traditions and is promoted
to some extent by our common laws: it seems to be a very obvious agreement
that one would be enticed to make with oneself for the betterment
of one's person and society at large. But ahimsa also includes becoming
aware also of our unconscious tendencies that lead to different levels
of violent self-expression through the build-up of stress, such as
hurrying, impatience, and aggressiveness. It asks us to weed out these
influences which can, if unmitigated, lead to violent or hostile activity
towards others and towards ourselves.
Ahimsa can be as simple and yet profound as being present. Action
that is not grounded in awareness of Self and our environment is often
guided by our unconscious habits and assumptions and is responsible
for a good percentage of all physical accidents we get into (and those
we unconsciously involve others in), whether driving, stumbling on
the street, or accidentally harming someone else physically or verbally.
In the Yoga asana practice, the principle of Ahimsa guides our inquiry
into the body. Are we being friendly, demanding, curious, competitive,
gracious, interrogating, or compassionate towards ourselves as we
move into, sustain, and transition through postures? It's likely that
we experience a combination of attitudes throughout the practice,
which are also influenced by our likes and dislikes of what we asking
ourselves to do, and whether we perceive our will to participate as
being influenced from the outside (by a teacher, by projections onto
what other students are experiencing and how we measure up in comparison,
or by a superegoic force telling us how we "should" be,
etc.)-- or if our motivation for our practice is coming increasingly
from within. It is also useful to observe how our motivation towards
practice changes over time. For instance, we may come to the Asana
practice for reasons as varied as to heal a physical injury, to develop
concentration, to befriend ourselves, to become a better people, and
to find community (add your own....).
The practice of the powerful tenet of Ahimsa helps us to maintain
our commitment to working on ourselves with humility--to affirm that
we are willing, at least for a small amount of time in our day, to
abandon the twin illusions that we can control that which is outside
of ourselves in an absence of self-regulation, and that "something
better" exists under some other ideal circumstances for which
we have for one reason or another deemed ourselves not fit to behold.
In the Yoga practice there is an acknowledgment that we have entered
a safe space to open honestly to the ingredients of our whole Being,
not just the body as in exercise, not just the mental-emotional-personality
complex as in psychotherapy, not just the intellect as in academia.
We have cast a magic circle of intention for at least the time we
are consciously engaged with our practice, be it an hour a week or
three hours a day, until we have developed and stretched the pervasiveness,
practicality, and usefulness of the wisdom of the practice into all
other areas of our lives.
Likes and dislikes, or raga (attraction) and dvesa (aversion), are
extremely powerful influences on the mind, body and nervous system,
and are reflected directly back to us through the practice of Ahimsa
in asana and pranayama. In the practice of Pranayama, we initially
study the flow, and later in our practice, the retention of the breath
to heal, strengthen, and avail ourselves to the bliss of the life
force unconditionally available for our well-being. Ahimsa can be
applied when looking at the quality of the breath as we practice,
with or without the combined influence of asana or posture. What level
of ease or comfort do you have with inhale, and by contrast with exhale?
Is there a sense of urgency in any part of the inhale or exhale breath?
What is that telling us about our attitude in the moment, about the
body's level of comfort or any pains we are dealing with? What emotions
arise when you attempt to establish evenness in the breathing? Is
it easier to perform internal or external breath retention? What is
the breath like when you are angry? Afraid? Excited? Happy? In love?
In difficult company? Prana, the life essence in our breathing, is
said to be the great mediator between the koshas or sheaths of the
body, which include the physical, emotional, energetic, intellectual,
and spiritual layers of the Self. It is with us throughout our life
faithfully until we expire (no pun intended) and so is a loyal reference
and point of focus for self-inquiry and self-knowledge. When we apply
the salve of Ahimsa to the practice of breathing, patience, peace,
self-acceptance and appreciation for where we are at is won. We can
draw from our innate resources whatever is needed for our increased
stability and balance and contribute to the well-being of others by
being established in that.
On the physical level, Ahimsa asks us to see the effects of unconscious
motivators endemic in our culture such as the subtle violence of hurrying,
or basic impatience. Whether or not we are aware of it, what is inside
of us is also being projected out to others and we inevitably influence
each other for better and worse, energetically. Rushing, pushing,
deferring our responsiblity for being present by pressing our will
onto someone else to do something faster, or moving ahead too quickly
into something we are not ready for--all of these stem from a restlessness
inside that gets expressed, validated, and perpetuated by hurrying.
We reinforce our hurried lives somewhat enthusiastically at times,
by overloading our schedules and appointment books with too many activities.
This increases the rajasic or active quality of the body-mind complex
which disturbs the mind and reduces the ability to remain rooted in
peacefulness by causing us to feel pulled in too many directions.
It detracts from our ability to be present at the very things we endeavor
at, and causes us to lose the quality of connection with each other
and with each precious moment Life offers. It makes our minds greedy
for more and more experience of activity, by which we can never be
satisifed, and by which we lose our appreciation for the beauty of
those aspects of life which revolve around a slower-moving continuum--such
as nature, the stars, the Moon, and Sun.
Hurrying also increases the stress of people around us and is often
a way that emotional repression and feelings of isolation get worked
out. The dissatisfaction and impatience we experience in hurrying
becomes the unfortunate business of all those whom we encounter, creating
a kind of negative connection with others that substitutes for the
alienation inherent in living by our American cultural prerogatives
of individualism and "productivity". Yet at the same time,
this learned selfishness further separates us from each other by making
us "more important" somehow than everyone else, which satisfies
an emotional longing to be needed or useful, if only to ourselves.
On the level of speech, Ahimsa asks that we not lie or exaggerate,
distorting reality in order to serve ourselves. By not telling the
truth about a situation, we are harming another by creating more layers
of delusion for them and ultimately for ourselves too, with unforeseeable
consequences. We set into motion a chain of events which causes us
to live in the incongruence of that lie or exaggeration, to constantly
cover up and manipulate appearances in order to maintain something
that ultimately causes more suffering than good. We waste time and
energy emotionally and otherwise preserving this kind of false reality.
This kind of situation can exist in even the most well-intended lies
or withholding of truthfulness.
Ahimsa also teaches us not to indulge in negative talk intended in
any way to harm another, whether the subject of what is being said
is present or not. Therefore, Ahimsa also includes not gossiping or
verbally making careless assumptions or judgments about a person or
group of people. It is nearly a part of the social creature of the
human being to crave group affinity or solidarity around ideas and
feelings, but it is also due to a lack of inner self-mastery and wrong
ideas about where our self-concept comes from that we congregate around
condemning people or issues when in groups, finding a perverse kind
of social cohesion in reinforcing a negative opinion about another
person or group of people. It takes less courage to incite others
to believe something negative about someone else than it does to resolve
issues personally, which is what Yoga asks us to do first before we
look elsewhere for blame--to take responsibility for ourselves; the
content of what our minds pay attention to and the subsequent feelings
we hold onto. Secondly, Yoga asks us to develop dispassion or vairagya,
the increasing ability to step away from our instant reactivity towards
a situation or person, in order to have a more mature and balanced
perspective of how we can best respond, if at all required to.
Upaya, or the acquisition of skillful means that enable
one to respond approprately and at the right time in any circumstance,
is one of the treasures that become available to the person who practices
the kind of self-restraint described by ahimsa, among the other limbs
of Yoga. There is a wonderful Sutra which indirectly describes the
attitudes a person has to master before they can properly ignore something,
pointing out four attitudes that are remedies for overcoming obstacles.
You must be able to not surrender joyfulness--mudita--in
the face of adversity. You must not surrender your lovingkindness--maitri--
towards the perceived object of adversity. You cannot sidestep having
compassion--karuna-- for that which appears
to cause your grief. Only then are you entitled to do nothing about
it (upeksa). Otherwise, inaction is simply avoidance of dealing with
the issue at hand.
Yoga holds that each individual jiva or
soul is a combination of a myriad of influences which color our perceptions
about our world, each other, and ourselves. Yoga respects and encourages
diversity of opinion as one of the hallmarks of developing creativity,
flexibility and intellectual discrimination or what is called vivekakhyanti,
but also upholds truthfulness first and foremost. So, one of the entanglements
with practicing ahimsa in speech becomes the potential conflict with
another Yama, that of satya or "honesty",
which asks us to tell the truth as we best know it whenever called
upon (in addition to other ways of honest living that are described
elsewhere on this website). There are several cautions when one wants
to tell someone something that is difficult. Is the "truth"
which you have to tell a person merely your opinion on a given situation
that you feel you have to subject them to (a "personal"
truth), or is it knowledge (an "objective" truth) that will
affect the person directly? Is disclosure of the matter at hand going
to create harm for that person? Some factors in this are whether a
person is able to receive what is being told, if they are emotionally
available and capable of processing what is given. Will withholding
the truth cause even more harm for that person? Most importantly,
is our motivation clear that we want to help the person who needs
to hear something difficult from us? If it is not, the advice from
Yoga is to opt with ahimsa first. When it is obvious that the benefits
of telling someone something difficult outweighs the potential for
harm, then it is time to tell.
The most subtle level of work in the Yama of ahimsa is that of uprooting
harmful impulses in the mind. Slowly, we begin to give up a little
more and more to the exhaustion of trying to identify with the thoughts
and their conflictual stories. Meditation practice becomes the physician
and medicine. Meditation "practice" is called such because
sustaining a state of detachment from the citta vrittis,
the turning of the thoughts, takes effort. There is nowhere to arrive
at, nothing to hold onto, no grand plateaus and no certficates of
achievement throughout the practice that we can attain to to mark
our progress.
It takes a lot of patience and persistence to develop detachment from
identifying with the thoughts, to relinquish our basic possessiveness
around keeping a sense of fixed selfhood which revolves (samsara)
around the attachment to the things we like and approve of, and aversion
towards that which we do not. The habitual clinging in the mind on
conscious and unconscious levels to "likes" (or
raga: attraction) and "dislikes" (or dvesa:
aversion) creates suffering and pain. When we desire something, even
if and when we obtain it, the happiness from obtaining that thing--that
job title, that relationship, that pair of shoes, that fire of newly
acquired knowledge or insight--is all subject to extinction, and a
new desire takes place of the former one. Similarly, when we fascinate
on what we don't want, or when we try to avoid something, it preoccupies
the same real estate in our mind and causes us the pain of concretely
associating a passionate negative emotion with another object (person,
situation, quality) and thus becoming that negative emotion simply
by giving it harbor.
Defining who we are and who other people are by our thoughts and desires,
our likes and dislikes, is what the "I-am" sense does to
perpetuate itself uniquely, to "protect" us from the very
things we need to see and overcome: our fear of our mutual interdependence
and the inevitability of our oneness with everything else. As long
as we go on being "the good guys" and labelling others as
"the bad guys", there is no room for dialogue, and not much
chance for nirodha--cessation--of the impulses
which continue to create suffering in all kinds of manifest ways.
It is similar within our own minds: the wars we are at within ourselves
stem from the same kinds of conflicts between what we find desirable
to identify ourselves with and what we refuse to accept. Both result
in clinging. This clinging is a stark attempt to hold onto something
for our security, even when we don't perceive ourselves incorporating
the things we don't want into our "security". Clinging,
as abhinivesa, used to denote literally
a fear of death, is one of the five basic kinds of klesas or afflictions
that Yoga Sutra mentions as far back as 250-500BC. Clinging in the
mind limits our ability to experience the freedom and creativity which
stem from having a healthy relationship with the reality of impermanence
and change, which point to forces much larger than we can generally
perceive operating in our midst, offering us the opportunity through
whatever we focus on to create beauty or pain in our lives. Meditation
helps us to transcend all of our fixed assumptions about "how
things are", and the often drastic lengths that we'll go to to
prove "how things are" to ourselves and others. This freedom
from the trappings of the mind that seeks to destroy that which it
cannot control or hold on to is the practice of ahimsa at it's most
refined level.
The practice of Ahimsa at this level requires consistency in concentration,
dispassion and evenness of character throughout whatever surfaces
in the moment. Meditation practices are various and there are so many
techniques for all kinds of people to help disentangle our passionate
identification with the contents of our thoughts, which constitute
only one part of our consciousness awareness but usually occupy more
than their fair share of our intelligence and attention.
Some of the greatest transformations in social and political history
were championed through leaders who adhered to the teachings of this
Yama. "Mahatma" Mohandas K. Gandhi, who along with his people
won independence for India through persistent nonviolent resistance
to the British occupation and control of India's resources, is an
incredible example. He took the teachings of the Yamas--especially
those of ahimsa, satya, and brahmacharya--to great lengths in his
personal life as his responsibility as a leader increased with the
changes taking light in Indian society. Martin Luther King Jr. also
took inspiration from Gandhi's success in becoming a vehicle for a
people's movement to overcome the oppression of institutionalized
racism and bring people of all backgrounds closer together during
the time of the Civil Rights Era. Cesar Chavez also practiced Yoga
directly and was guided by his commitment to Ahimsa in his resistance
to the exploitation of Mexican farmworkers by ranchers, and was victorious
in obtaining higher standards for their quality of life as well as
for the production of agriculture using human labor. Great souls like
these are yet in our midst, quietly going about effecting changes
for the better in others' lives. By living closely with the principles
of Ahimsa, it is possible to recognize more and more of the good works
that others are doing to improve our human condition.
see also Asteya, Satya,
Brahmacharya, Aparigraha
