Om One of the first aspects of Patanjali's eightfold steps of yoga is yama, the first rung of the eight rungs of the ladder of yoga. And the first aspect of yama out of its five aspects is ahimsa. Himsa means 'killing', 'injury', 'rudness', hurting by thought or word. A-himsa means 'non killing' and being polite to everybody.
In this spiritual journey ahimsa is regarded as the highest, and in yama, ahmisa stands out very strongly. Yet we, as individuals who have lost our identity in the process of this life and this journey, can stand out and live a non-ahimsa life, during this transition period on earth. And why do we do this? Because the second verse of Patanjali's Yoga Sutra says 'Yoga is the modification of mind afflictions'. We do it because we have not modified the mind afflictions. We have not destroyed them. So we go around hurting people, killing, causing injury: mental injury, physical injury. Yet we stand out and we want to be recognised as 'the society of Hindu dharma' or Hinduism. We want people to think we follow sanatan dharma. That means righteous living. Dharma is good. We don't live one day of our life righteously, yet we have such a beautiful religion. We go around injuring, hurting and killing.
I'm not trying to make you vegetarians here. Don't get me wrong. I'm trying to make you aware of the fact that you've lost your identity. Ramana Maharishi asked himself at the age of seven: 'Who am I?' And he could not find an answer. By pretense he experienced a state of depth and realised that this body is only here for enjoyment on the physical plane. There is no transition to this body. Nobody can tell me that their body is getting better daily. All of you will say daily that your body is worse than yesterday. When you get up, you've got some pain somewhere. Yet, if you live in the soul, the atma, the jivan: jivatma, we would not have a situation like this.
As Swami Rama says: 'The most beautiful time to enjoy the spiritual journey is during Kali Yuga...' Because in this yuga you're given the chance to integrate the physical, material and spiritual. In the days before this they had to stay away from society and family to do sadhana. In Kali Yuga you're given the opportunity to do sadhana by integration. That is: to carry on with your daily life and enjoy a spiritual journey. But we don't because we are so accustomed to Western society's style of living, whether on a farm, in a town or a city, there's no difference. Somewhere along the line Western culture, the Western disease, has started to destroy our lives and our sanatan dharma.
The most beautiful religion in the whole universe is that of sanatan dharma. Which other religion in the world allows you to pray to a stone, to identify the stone as God's creation? To pray to a snake and identify the snake as God's creation? Which religion in the world prays to a bull and identifies the bull as God's creation? Only Hinduism. Every other religion, especially that of China, eat everything else. Hinduism is saying 'ahimsa'. Beautiful isn't it? Ahimsa.
You know there's a story called Little Buddha, And in Little Buddha, a man was dragging a goat he wanted to slaughter; and the goat was laughing and laughing. The man was upset that the goat was laughing, so he gave it a few slaps, pulled it, and when he was about to slaughter it, it started to cry. And he asked it why it was crying? The goat told him that he would be a goat in his next life and he was crying because the man didn't know that. Wise men know that we should not kill to sustain this life.
In Genesis it says clearly, 'I filled the earth with vegetation so that man can toil the earth and live off the earth'. It says that grass is created for grass-eating animals, and meat animals have been created for meat-eating animals. I'm not here to convert you, but to make you aware that we don't have lesser beings, and we don't have higher beings. We are creating lesser beings by saying the animal is a lesser being. The animal is not a lesser being. Animals can do things that we can't do because we don't have the mental faculty to do them. If I asked you to just jump up into that tree, you'll tell me you can't because you aren't a monkey. But in other ways we behave like monkeys. Our thoughts are everywhere except where we should concentrate them.
So, coming back to ahmisa. In this kali yuga, as Christians will say on the day of judgment, 'You'll be weighed, and according to the scale you'll go to heaven or hell'. What is it that they're going to weigh? They're going to weigh your Christian and your non-Christian; your good and your bad. In Hinduism we've created a word for that called karma, but we use it incorrectly. Karma is good and bad and we need to enjoy our current karmic state without creating more karma for our next life. So when we come back in the next life we don't need any paving, we just carry on with what we were doing in this life, spiritually.
So the first aspect of Patanjali's Yoga Sutra is ahimsa. The second aspect is satya. I will discuss that next week. This is what we call a series. Why do I want to do this? Because, as Hindus, some of you seated here have never heard of Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, so I want to touch on the main aspects.
Aroghara.
