All of us have negative emotions, that is why the Jivamukti focus of the month for July is how to overcome them rather than how not to have them or how to escape them. My teacher Sharon Gannon says yogis are radical, in that we investigate the root cause. So I thought about the root of our present-day cultural dissatisfaction and emptiness, and I dug back into the messages that we were exposed to as children, the same messages that children now are still exposed to. Ariel the little mermaid is one of my favorite Disney princess characters, but she really isn't much of a heroine for little girls. In the song Part of Your World, she goes on to explain how perfect her life is, how she really has everything a princess could want, but that is not enough. Everything is not enough. She wants more than everything. That doesn't even make sense. Everything is everything. What is more than everything? And so we are told. Want more. Be more. You can never have enough. And we wonder why we are a raging self-centered pleasure-seeking empty generation. In the yoga sutras, Patanjali gives us a practical advice. YS II.33 vitarka-bādhane prati-paksa-bhāvanam. When disturbed by disturbing thoughts, think of the opposite. When we are starting to want more and this dissatisfaction starts to disturb our peace of mind, think instead of all the conditions that are right in our lives. A lot of things had to be right for us to have a yoga practice. Even as studios say yoga is for everyone, not everyone can afford to pay for classes. Those who can afford yoga classes may not have the time. Those who have the time may not have the physical health. Those who have the physical health may not have the inclination, and so on and so forth. And yet we forget that. We go to a yoga class, do some 15 poses very well, and the moment we come to that one pose we struggle in, we start to feel like victims. We succumb to our negative emotions. Nevermind that we did those 15 very well, we are obssessed in having everything, more than everything, more more more. When that happens, we have a choice to liberate ourselves from the negativity. We can instead focus on the conditions that are right. We can practice gratitude. Being thankful is a very potent antidote to negative emotions. Through the lens of gratitude we see everything as a gift. Through the lens of gratitude the events of our lives are a constant celebration. Through the lens of gratitude we need not look into an imaginary future to be happy. We find it here and now, wanting nothing more, expecting nothing more. When our hearts are filled with gratitude, there is less space for negative emotions to arise, and when they do they don't last as long. Such is its power. Had Ariel the little mermaid followed Patanjali's advice, would she still have a happily ever after with her prince? I don't know. But had she practiced gratitude at her moment of despair, perhaps she would realize she need not change her true nature in order to be happy. Perhaps she would realize that everything is okay, more than okay, the way things are.
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August is less than a week away. I'm excited to be expanding the reach of Jivamukti Yoga- reaching out to more studios and more practitioners in Manila! The new Jivamukti classes will be held at Yoga Plus Makati, Tantra Yoga, and Yogi Yoga. I am also teaching a class at Columns Legazpi exclusive to residents of the building. (On a sidenote, I remember reading about a high-end residential building- possibly in New York- that is all vegan and has in-house Jivamukti Yoga classes. I am likely the only vegan in my building, but hey I got the Jivamukti Yoga class part at least!) My Jivamukti Yoga classes at Yoga Plus at the Fort and Yoga Plus Ortigas have a slight change in schedule, and schedules for classes at White Space and Free-for-All Yoga in the Park remain unchanged. Check out the complete schedule of Jivamukti classes, studio locations, addresses, numbers, and websites! I am teaching my last 4 classes at Bliss Yoga this Sunday 3pm, Monday 830pm, Tuesday 700am, and Tuesday 930am. I am grateful to Bliss Yoga for the one year and one month that they have given me. It takes courage to take on a new style at an established studio- and a controversial one teaching veganism at that. Love and blessings to Bliss! Changes happen- so do teaching schedules. I feel sentimental leaving Bliss which is the first studio that developed my yoga practice, but I am also excited about the new changes that will allow me to serve my purpose of spreading the teachings of Jivamukti in the best capacity that I can. Love to all places where yoga is taught. It doesn't matter if it is called a yoga studio or a yoga school or a shala or an ashram or even a business. Wherever the spirit of yoga is practiced, I support it. Shantih. Mondays to Thursdays, Dr. Tam's at Metrowalk serves 3 dishes cafeteria style. The two shown in picture are vegan fried "chicken" and vegan palabok. Good place to get veganized versions of Filipino comfort food! Mountains. Sunshine. Rain. Rainbow. Double rainbow. Waterfalls. Rice terraces. Trees. Greens. Cows. Dogs. Pigs. Berries. Flowers. Cloud formations. Sagada. What do vegans eat when travelling? I have been teaching Jivamukti's July focus of the month for two weeks now, but today I am feeling quite sad and I start to question what I have been saying in class. Can one really overcome negative emotions?
We all wear masks. The one that I wear is that I have to hold myself back from saying how I feel many times. I feel that I have to withhold judgment because that is not very "yogic". Because I teach compassion, I have to somehow embody it, even if many times I do not feel it, so I just fake it. Because I advocate for animals, my anger would make me "militant" and the wrong choice of words would make me "offensive". The burden is on me to be happy and joyful and compassionate even if there are times I really do not feel it. The burden is for me to be "good enough" so you start listening to what I have to say. I have often considered disabling my accounts in social networking sites because pictures of non-vegan food trigger so much negative emotions in me. A dead fish on a plate with a chicken's period is food? The ground up, dried bits of who used to be alive is objectified and instead of seeing she was once a pig, you just call it pork? Lacto-vegetarians who profess their love for cheese or ice cream or donuts supposedly care for animals even if they know fully well the rape, cruelty, and eventual murder involved in the dairy industry? I look at these pictures and posts and I secretly judge, and my negativity gnaws at me and I lose my appetite and drive for hours. I sink into hopelessness. When I first became vegan, I wondered if the pain of knowing would eventually fade. To this day, it hasn't. Every time I think of the animals suffering, my heart breaks. Every single time. These negative emotions are keeping me from becoming free. And I teach Jivamukti yoga not because I am more "yogic" than students who attend my class, but perhaps because this is the way I cope with my pain, because perhaps I need to somehow believe I am responding to my pain and negative emotions in a positive and hopefully productive way. Perhaps I need this so I do not sink into depression. Perhaps this is my mantra, my meditation, my kindness, and my compassion in its imperfect practice. Will I ever be free? Will I ever be liberated? I have to believe so. But I am attached. I wish for animals to be free first. What if the negative emotion that we experience that is more overpowering than others is not to be overcome, at least not in the quasi-instantaneous way we are expected to? What if it is something we learn to live with? What if, as a friend once suggested and wrote about, it is through this pain that we find our life's purpose? What if our negative emotions are not hindrances, but rather building blocks? I can choose to use this intense pain as a start-off point in my path to liberation. I can use the steps my teacher Sharon Gannon suggested: japa/dhyana, maitri/karuna. Through japa or mantra chanting, I can let the intention Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu seep through me. I can take action to free animals who are victims. I can send my positive thoughts to my fellow human beings who continue to exploit animals, not because they are evil, but because they are victims of their own ignorance. I can surrender my ego attachments and work on my own freedom, because I am myself a victim of my ignorant judgments that make me a prisoner of these negative emotions. I can meditate. Even my teaching can be a reflective process of meditation. This blog post can be a process of observing without judging myself. I can breathe with awareness. I can let go. I can practice kindness. If others are happy that they are eating meat, perhaps I can find solace in the fact that at least in the equation of a happy human being eating an animal who suffered, one of them is happy rather than not one of them happy. I can practice compassion, relating to my fellow human beings through what we have in common: the desire to be happy, avoidance of pain, our human imperfections. The truth is, I do not know whether I myself can overcome negative emotions. What I know is that I trust my teachers, and the teachers of my teachers, all of the lineage tracing back to the first yogi, that when we live by the principles and tenets of yoga, freedom is possible. My yoga practice starts where I am uncomfortable, when I begin to doubt myself, when I ask myself questions like these but have no answers. Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu. May all beings be happy and free, and may the thoughts, words, and actions of my own life contribute in some way to that happiness and to that freedom for all. Tat Twam Asi, a teaching of the Upanishads, translates to That Thou Art or You Are That, That which is the identification to the Absolute, the Infinite, the Self. We can get caught up with these vague yogic ideas with big words, and while chanting Om or Shantih or Tat Twam Asi is beautiful in itself, manifesting these teachings is what yoga is about. As my teacher Sharon Gannon reminds us, yogis are practical people. So in practical terms, what does it mean to us that we are That? That is the idea that you and I are not separate, that all of our notions of separation are either illusory, ignorant or stem from mis-knowing. That acknowledges the Truth that we are one, that we are in this together. Your joy is my joy, your peace is my peace. Your pain is my pain, your suffering is my suffering. Whoever you may be, this applies. That is who we truly are. How can we then see ourselves as one when our experience is that we are separate? You may think you have your own thoughts, your own desires, your own fears, your own story, your own life, your own path. How does this sense of ownership fit into That? Our identification with our thoughts, desires, fears, story, life, path, so on and so forth are our identification with our egoic self. These things strengthen our sense of ego identity, and if we blindly attach to them, we create this web of separation. It is our human experience to be predisposed to having these identities and these attachments. It is the karma, the cause and effect, of having this human body. We do, however, possess something that can untangle this web of attachment. It is like a key that we all have within us, a built-in mechanism. This is our compassion. In Sanskrit, it is called karuna. The word compassion is Latin in origin. It means co-suffering. It means we are in this together. No one left behind. It means that because I am feeling what you are feeling, I am at that moment letting go of my egoic attachments to my thoughts, desires, fears, story, life, path, so on and so forth. Because when I am co-suffering with you, my superficial concerns fade away. The layer of egoic self sheds and allows the Self- That- to take over. We are all compassionate, and many of us are not even aware of the depth of compassion that we have. Perhaps there was a time you saw an elderly homeless man on the street, and momentarily forgot where you were going or what your own worries were. An experience like this is two-sided. We forget our egoic self because we remember our Self- we are That. Or maybe you witnessed a mother cow being slaughtered because she is no longer producing milk and it broke your heart. You are crying because a body other than yours is hurt. Pain is inflicted on someone other than your own egoic self. You let go of your separation and you remember that you are more than this body and this mind. You remember you are That. This forgetting self/remembering Self instinct comes to us in different situations because of the cultural, educational, psychological, speciesist and other biases that we have acquired. Nonetheless, we all have it. That is why we can read a novel or watch a movie or hear a song and be emotionally affected by them- because we are capable of relating to an "other", even as we see others as others. We are all naturally compassionate. From our selective compassion, what steps do we take to be That? We take one step repeatedly: let go. As Alan Watts explained, finding who we are is like falling asleep. We don't command it or attach to it. We let it happen by letting go. Let us take an honest spiritual inventory of where we are, or rather who we are, at the moment. How much anger, jealousy, fear, greediness, resentment, bitterness, pettiness are we keeping in our lives? How many beings have we classified as enemies or inferior to us or unworthy of our consideration? How many past incidents are we still holding on to and unwilling to forgive? How much material comfort are we holding on to in order to mask our fear of confronting who we could be- who we truly are? Why are we holding on to any of these? Let go of the perceived wrong someone did to you five years ago. Let go of your attachment to convenience or taste that keeps you stuck in the cycle of violence that is eating and using animals. Let go of the jealousy you feel towards those whom you feel are more successful than you. Let go of the judgment you make towards those whom you think are less successful than you. Let go of your addiction to bury your pain and emptiness with things and material pursuits and trivial obssessions. Let go. When we let go of this idea that who we are is limited to the outline that is our physical body, then we start to see that who we are is a co-partnership with all beings, that who we are is That which feels what the entire Universe feels. We realize that we are all connected to each other. That connection- knowing that you and I being separate is merely an illusory construct projected by our biased and overthinking yet misled mind- is compassion. That is karuna. Tat Twam Asi. You are That. |
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