Restraints (Yama)

Divine Life Society Publication: Path to Blessedness by Sri Swami Chidananda

Om Sri Sadguru Paramatmane Namah

You find that the external gross physical manifestation of the mind is in the form of the activities of the body. Therefore Sage Patanjali says, “All right, I have to remove the impurities of the mind. For that first of all, let me try to close up the effects. Let me suppress the symptoms”. He says that the cause is kept up by the play of the symptoms. The functions of the mind are fattened more and more when you give expressions to them in the form of actions. The real thing is to control the mind, yet the wise experience of Patanjali during his meditations was that actions also react upon thought. Every time you act, you strengthen the thought. Thoughts gain momentum when they are taken up to their logical conclusion—external act. At least stop its grossest physical manifestation. Of course, the perfectionist would at once raise the objection that there is no use of suppressing action and that the actual thing is to change your mind.

But it is not so easy a job. Directly controlling the mind is very difficult. Mind does whatever it wants to do. Whatever fancy it takes, it is made into action. First of all put a number of checks. Where it tries to manifest itself as activity say ‘No’. Declare a war against the mind in its most external manifestations. The various resolves and vows which appear to be foolish for the unthinking man who says that transformation of the mind is real Yoga, may not be useful for one who has transcended the stage; but we cannot afford to disregard them in the initial stages. We who are on the threshold should know that these things are as important as the next stages. Supposing there is a ladder where the rungs are so placed that you cannot just manage to avoid any rung. If you say that you do not want the first rung, you will always be on the ground.

The mind is very deceptive. It will bring in subtle excuses. It will bring philosophy: “I have passed that stage in my previous lives. It does not matter if I take five cups of tea and go on eating meat”. One who says like this is a slave to his tongue. He cannot give up eating meat. What is giving up of meat? It means you assert your mastery over your mind. If you say: “I will get up at 4 a.m. and take bath in cold water”, it all means a continuous process of again and again asserting the superiority of your spiritual nature over the pull of your unreal lower nature. You cannot all of a sudden separate your higher spiritual nature and the lower material nature. In order to separate them, you have to observe spiritual vows. But one must remember that giving up certain things that you like alone is not Yoga, but such practices are important for the attainment of real Yoga. Therefore, Sage Patanjali said, “First of all put a check on your external nature”. At least control your physical actions, if you cannot control your desires all of a sudden.

Everyone knows that the physical action has got the greatest effect on mind. You can go on thinking about certain indulgence, but the shock that is given back on the psyche by actually putting into action the indulgence is the greatest. The shock through an imagination is not so very great as the shock given to the psyche by the actual action. Action becomes a concrete part of man’s memory and agitates him much more than mere thinking, fancying or imagining. Therefore, Patanjali said, first of all purify every activity and put a check on all of them. How to do it? He said, take certain vows and conform your conduct to certain universal laws. What are they? They constitute the Yamas. Take up a vow that I shall act according to the laws of truth, non-injury, non-covetousness, non-stealing, etc.

There are five Yamas. Why only five, why not ten? This is also based upon wisdom and experience. He found that if the five fundamental universal laws are made to prevail in your life, then all the other lesser good qualifies will come to you of their own accord. He calls these five fundamental virtues as universal vows, i.e., vows which should be observed under all conditions, at all places and at all times. They are Ahimsa (non-injury), Satya (truth), Brahmacharya (celibacy), Asteya (non-stealing) and Aparigraha (non-covetousness). The resolutions taken and the aspirants’ struggle to observe these vows will be found to have their effect of putting a stop to almost all wrong activity of human being. All unrighteous actions are due to either falsehood, dishonesty, cunningness or due to greed, impurity, lust, passions, or due to cruel nature, harming others, or causing loss to others. In this way, all the actions of a bad or wicked man will be found to pertain to one or other of these evil qualities—falsehood, cruelty, lust, greed and the tendency to deprive others of what belongs to them. So this is the conclusion of Patanjali. He asks the aspirants to stop all external manifestations of evil thoughts in the mind, evil motives and evil feelings, and see that their actions are made to conform to these five great universal laws of love, truth, purity, absence of greed and non-stealing. In these, he first laid the foundation for bringing about a thorough transformation of the lower nature of the mind, and freeing it from its outermost manifestations. From the circumference he goes to the centre.

We have found how external discipline is very necessary, because it has got a very great influence on the mind. If evil thoughts arise in the mind, the duty would be to inhibit the actions which come as their result. You know if a particular muscle is not exercised, it shrinks and becomes atrophied. Just like that, the physical action of the mind becomes atrophied. So a habit is formed. If a thought comes, the mind goes to the action constantly checking the senses, and this habit acts as a sort of Nirodha. Nirodha means something that checks. You make use of the pernicious nature of mind itself to counteract it. Counter the bad actions by good actions. This is Yama. This is the first stage in the attack directed against the lower mind for subduing it.

Om Tat Sat Brahmaparnamastu

 Excerpts from:  Restraints (Yama) - Path to Blessedness by Sri Swami Chidananda