This morning, I thought I’d share with you five beautiful quotes from “How Yoga Works” and a little bit about discipline:
“It takes so much courage just to start.”
“I woke at the usual time, before dawn, and went through all my regular morning practices. I had learned a long time before, that keeping them up every day was more important than the problems that would always arise and try to stop them.”
“It’s one of the paradoxes of yoga. To really do a pose right you have to do it a little wrong, a thousand times.”
“Just the way it is doesn’t exist … It’s a lie that people use to cover up the fact that they won’t take the time or the trouble to figure out how things really work.”
“I was really very proud of him, my first real student, because he did the one thing that every successful student of anything has to do: He took what I had tuaght him home and practiced it there on his own, modestly but very steadily, to the best of his personal capacity. I could not have asked for more”
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John Scott writes in “The Way to Ashtanga Yoga: “It takes a combination of dedication, discipline, motivation, and stamina to achieve any lasting benefit. Yoga is a daily practice, one that ultimately becomes a way of life.”
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Sri Sri Ravi Shankar writes further:
“Shasana means rules someone imposes on you. Anushasana is the rule you impose upon yourself. Do you see the difference? Now, why is yoga called a discipline? Where is the need for discipline? When does the need for discipline arise?
When you are thirsty and want to drink water, you do not say “Oh! This is a rule, I must drink water”. When you are hungry, you just eat. When it comes to the question of enjoying oneself, no discipline is necessary.
Discipline arises when something is not very charming to begin with. Isn’t it? When you are happy, when you are in peace or happiness, then you are already in yourself. There is no discipline there. But when the mind is wagging its tail all the time, then discipline is essential to calm it down.
The fruit of it is eventually blissful, joyful. As a diabetic says, “I have the discipline not to eat sugar.”
There are three types of happiness.
- Sattvic — happiness which is not pleasurable to begin with, but ends in joy
- Rajasic — happiness that seems to begin well but ends in misery
- Tamasic — there appears to be happiness but in reality there is only misery from beginning to end
No discipline is necessary for tamasic happiness. Wrong discipline results in rajasic happiness. For sattvic happiness, discipline is essential to begin with. It need not be uncomfortable all the time. But if it is uncomfortable, then you should be able to bear with it. You need discipline. That is why Patanjali begins with the present, when things are not clear and when your heart is not in the right place.
It is nobody’s imposition; it is self-imposed. There is a lot we impose on ourselves — every morning we wake up and brush our teeth. This is your discipline. However, these have been self-imposed from childhood. Haven’t they?
When you were a child, your mother had to impose the discipline on you. Then, once it became a habit, you understood it was for your own good. Then you found it was no longer your mother’s rule but your own.
In the same way, keeping yourself clean, hygienic, exercising, meditating, being kind, considerate etc. All these rules you have imposed on yourself are all discipline.. Isn’t it?
Yoga means uniting with your source. When does that happen? This happens when the mind, which is chattering all the time, suddenly becomes silent, through discipline.
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May you be encouraged to take to your mat, find your first “victorious breath”, and have the discipline to maintain the practice.
