SpiriReadings
Donald Walters (Swami Kriyananda)
ATTITUDES
FOR ACHIEVING INNER PEACE
By Donald
Walters
A restful heart is essential to peace of mind.
Merely to affirm restfulness, however, is like affirming fullness in a milk pail
riddled with holes. We must take practical steps to achieve restfulness.
The yoga teachings list ten attitudes for
achieving peace of mind. Five of them are proscriptive; the other five,
prescriptive: the "don’ts," or yamas as they are called in Sanskrit,
and the "do’s," or niyamas, of the spiritual path. The importance of
these attitudes is that they prevent our energy form "leaking" out.
This they accomplish first by plugging the holes in the pail, and next by
helping us to accumulate the "milk" of inner peace.
The fact that these attitudes number ten
invites comparison with the Ten Commandments of Moses. There is, however, a
difference. For the yamas and niyamas are not commandments so much as
recommendations. Their emphasis is not on what you will suffer if you break
them, but on what your benefits will be from following them. They are directions
of development. One can continue to perfect them indefinitely, until one attains
spiritual perfection.
THE YAMAS
AHIMSA
The first rule of yama (control) was
popularized by Mahatma Gandhi. It is ahimsa (non-violence). The reason for this
negative emphasis (it could have been translated as "benevolence") is
that once a person succeeds in banishing from his heart the impulse to strike
out at others, or to hurt them in any way (including seeking personal benefit at
their expense), benevolence stands self-revealed as a natural quality of the
heart.
The desire to hurt another living being in any
way-or even to harm our environment, which too, in varying degrees, is alive and
conscious-alienates us from out soul-reality, and affirms the delusion of ego.
The important thing inn all the attitudes of
yama and niyama is not so much what we do outwardly, as our inner attitudes of
the heart. It is not possible to live harmlessly, for example, in this world of
relativities. Some harm is done, inevitably, by merely living. Every outing in
the car inadvertently causes the death of numerous insects. Nature herself
decrees the survival of life by the death of other life. It is a tiger’s
nature to kill: Can its method survival, then, be considered sinful? Murder is a
sin for human beings for the primary reason that it degrades us, at our level of
evolution, to kill other human beings.
Of course, there are times, such as in a
defensive war, where killing is necessary. In every case, the essential rule of
ahimsa, and that which removes it from relativity’s uncertainties, is that the
spiritual seeker maintain at all times a non-violent attitude.
By wishing harm to no living creature, even if
it becomes necessary to kill it, we find welling up within ourselves a
consciousness of relaxed acceptance of others and of life, no matter how we
ourselves are treated. When we perfect the quality of non-violence, hostility
ceases in our presence.
TRUTHFULNESS
There is in this quality a subtle as well as a
gross application. For fact and truth are not always synonymous. A statement may
be factual without bearing any relationship to higher truths. A person in the
hospital for example, may look quite as ill as he feels, but if you tell him,
"You look terrible!" your statement might actually worsen his
condition. If, on the other hand, visualizing him in good health, you declare
with deep conviction, "You look great!" your words may invigorate or
even heal him.
Here is a guideline to practicing
truthfulness. Bear in mind that the truth is always beneficial, but that a
statement of fact may be either beneficial or harmful. If there is a chance that
a statement will do harm, it must not be considered a truth in the highest
sense. If you cannot speak sincerely without the risk of inflicting harm, the
best alternative is to remain silent.
Perfection in truthfulness develops mental
power to such an extent that one’s mere work becomes binding on objective
events. One has merely to declare a thing so for it actually to become so.
NON-AVARICE
"Avarice" is not really the mot
juste, implying as it does a desire for worldly gain (money, usually, or
something of monetary value). The
yama of non-avarice implies something much deeper.
What the spiritual seeker must renounce is the
desire for anything that he does not acquire by merit. The implication is that
if he does merit it, he needn’t fear that he won’t attract it. Even if he
must work hard to attract it, he should remain relaxed as to the outcome,
leaving the results wholly in God’s hands. "What comes of itself, let it
come" is his motto. This is a prescription for peace of mind even during
intense activity.
Things are not often achieved effortlessly.
The attitude of non-avarice, then, is not to stop striving, but even in the
process of striving to renounce attachment to the results.
The quality of non-avarice, developed to
perfection, generates a subtle magnetism that enables a person to attract things
to himself effortlessly. He is never anxious, then, that his needs, whatever
they may be, won’t be supplied. They will be, infallibly.
NON-ACCEPTANCE
A natural corollary to the yama of non-avarice
is non-acceptance, which when brought to perfection, bestows the power to
remember one'’ past incarnations. To accomplish this, we must withdraw our
consciousness and energy from our body and enter a state of super-consciousness.
It is only when the soul is not identified with its present body that it
remembers its previous identities.
Non-acceptance, then, pairs naturally with
non-avarice. Non-avarice signifies non-attachment to what is not our own;
non-acceptance signifies non-attachment to what we would normally consider to be
our own. The point is that nothing, truly, belong to us. Everything-our bodies,
our actions, our very thoughts-is the Lord’s.
BRAHMACHARYA
The last yama is brahmacharya-self-control, or
more literally, "flowing with Brahma (the Supreme Spirit)." Usually,
this teaching is applied to the practice of sexual abstinence. It has also,
however, a broader application. For brahmacharya means control of every natural
appetite, of which sexual desire is the strongest but not the only one.
The ideal behind this teaching is to live
identified with the Spirit, realizing ourselves as the soul living through the
body, and no longer as the ego-centered in body-consciousness. We should live in
such a way as to master our appetites, and not allow ourselves to be mastered by
them. The important thing is to achieve self-control, first by moderation,
directing our efforts only gradually toward perfect self-control.
The power that comes through perfect control
of all our natural appetites is an accession of boundless energy. For our energy
and indeed, all that we can express of creativity and enthusiasm flow the more
strongly the more we can tap the wellsprings of life within ourselves.
THE NIYAMAS
The niyamas, or "do’s," are
cleanliness, contentment, austerity, introspection (self-study, or
self-awareness), and devotion to the Supreme Lord. Interestingly, there is a
complementary relationship between the five niyamas and their opposite yamas.
Contentment, for example, is complemented by non-avarice. Introspection
(self-study) has a natural correlation to non-acceptance. Austerity ties in with
brahmacharya; cleanliness, with ahimsa; and devotion to the Supreme Lord with
truthfulness.
CLEANLINESS
Cleanliness applies to purity of the heart far
more than to bodily cleanliness, though of course it includes the latter. It
pairs naturally with ahimsa (non-violence), for only by renouncing the desire to
do violence in any way to others do we develop that sweet innocence which is the
surest sign of a heart inwardly pure and at peace. From cleanliness arises a
disinterest in one’s own body, and a loss of the need for contact with others.
The need for human contact arises from a consciousness of separateness from
others. Mental acceptance of separateness is, in its own way, an act of
violence, for it offends against the realization of life’s underlying unity.
With perfection in non-violence we achieve that absolute inner purity which is
recommended by the niyama of cleanliness.
CONTENTMENT
Contentment is not smugness, but an attitude
that one should hold courageously in the face of the greatest vicissitudes. The
positive aspect of non-avarice, and the way to perfect oneself in this quality,
is to live with an attitude of contentment regardless of any circumstance.
AUSTERITY
Austerity is not the performance of outward
penances, but an attitude of dis-involvement with outwardness. Austerity is the
natural corollary to brahmacharya (self-scontrol), for it means an attitude of
taking energy that was formerly directed outwardly, and rechanneling it with
ever increasing fervor into the spiritual search.
INTROSPECTION
Introspection (self-study, or self-awareness)
would seem to be directed more obviously inward, but it implies much more that
self-analysis. For self-analysis keeps the mind tied to the ego, whereas what is
meant, primarily, is to hold the mind up for guidance by the silent whispers of
intuition.
Non-acceptance, its counterpart, means not
accepting the thought that we own anything. It has as its positive aspect the
contemplation of what we are, rather than what we are not. Since all
yama-niyamas refer more to mental qualities than to outer practices, swadhyaya
has a deeper meaning that intellectual self-analysis. It is a reference, rather,
to ever deeper self-awareness-a process that transcends mental introspection and
requires us to see ourselves and everything around us in relation to the higher,
divine Self. "Dwell always," it tells us, "in the consciousness
of the Self within."
DEVOTION
Devotion to the Supreme Lord, finally, is a
reference to devotion that is directed inward, not scattered outwardly in
religious ceremonies and rituals. It pairs with truthfulness for perfect
truthfulness means facing unconditionally that there is only one reality in
existence: God. Outside of Him (or Her), we have no existence. To give up the
temptation to put off that moment when we must face the ultimate truth about
ourselves-this fundamental and utter self-honesty permits of only one
conclusion, summed up in the final niyama: "Devotion to the Supreme
Lord."
The yama-niyayma are essential for anyone who would find peace of mind. Be restful in your heart, even as you work to perfect yourself in right spiritual attitudes. Only by inner restfulness during outer activity will you achieve that supreme restfulness which lies beyond all activity.
from Personal
Transformation, Autumn 1999
[Return to The Spiritwalk Reader or Library] [Search Spiritwalk]
© Spiritwalk