Are we just helping ourselves?
I hope you made the most of those four glorious weeks between the last existential crisis and the current one.
Just as we Europeans were allowing ourselves to feel cautiously optimistic about the receding threat of Covid-19 and its effects on our lives, we've had to face up to the possibility of being plunged into World War III.
The worries we had in 2019 about the effects of Brexit on Europe seem quaint by comparison.
It seems that we have been cursed to live in interesting times.
When we think about practising yoga during times like these it can sometimes feel self-indulgent, self-obsessed even. We wonder if all we're doing is just taking care of ourselves; looking after number one, while others are suffering so much. When we practise yoga are there any benefits for others?
Well, the end goal of yoga practice is that we achieve, not just health and vitality (in fact those are really just by-products on the path) but a sense of equanimity in all situations. That is, we realise that regardless of any external factors, our mental state is something that we alone are responsible for and are, indeed, able to control.
To put it very simply, we have the potential, through practice, to experience contentment in all situations.
The benefit of this to the wider, global community is that contented people are not searching for anything outside themselves. They are not jealous, they are not cruel, they are not greedy, they are not insecure, and they are not violent.
Any act of aggression or violence is borne of frustration, craving, or a desire for control. In Putin, we can see this. Does he seem contented? Emphatically not. In fact, he is an extreme example to all of us of what can happen if we become obsessed with power, greed, and status.
Do we all have the potential to cause the death of thousands, even millions of people to satisfy our own cravings? Maybe not. But we can see how, on a smaller scale, a lack of contentment in our own lives could cause us to commit acts based on our own jealousy, greed, ego, and dissatisfaction.
Although practising yoga may not be a solution to the aggression of others, we may be able to vaccinate ourselves from our own potentially problematic desires and actions through regular practice. And Gandhi, were he to read this, would surely even disagree with the first half of that sentence. He fought the aggression of the British empire by observing, in a fundamental sense, just one of the Yamas; ahimsa (non-violence).
The more we can spread this practice through the world the better it will be for humanity. A happy person is a non-violent person, and a happy world is a non-violent world.