People seem to like challenges. That is why you started reading this, right? And why not, we like to prove that we can do what others believe cannot be done. Yogis especially know discipline and consistency and patience. I see a lot of asana-based yoga challenges and I think many of them are quite inspiring. Beautiful lithe bodies in graceful poses are captivating. Physical practice as an art form is quite moving.
I would like to put it out there that we can challenge our yoga practice in yet another way, in a way that is even more beautiful and transcendent, one that acknowledges not only our own beauty but that of others. I would like to challenge you on the first yama of the yoga practice: ahimsa. Ahimsa is a Sanskrit word that means non-violence or non-harming. It is a yama, which means it is a restraint that refers to our relationship with others. The reference to others is all-inclusive. It includes all human beings and all animals and all of nature. My teacher Sharon Gannon says, and I often quote, yogis are practical people. If we want to be practical in the pursuit of ahimsa then, the logical choice in reducing our participation in violence and harm in this world is to make vegan choices. Vegan choices mean that we stop hurting and killing animals, we stop exploiting our natural resources, we stop participating in a system that perpetuates world hunger, and we stop creating jobs where killing is a necessary skill. As yogis, we learn to become honest with our bodies and how we move these bodies within the space we share with everyone else. So let us be honest. When we put the bodies and secretions of animals in our own bodies, we create a world of fear and suffering. By doing the opposite, by going vegan, we create a different world, a world where we acknowledge that this space is shared space, that our basic desires to be happy and to be free are the same. We know how good it feels to be able to stretch our limbs and twist to the side and stand on our heads. Animals desire something similar, to have the freedom to move, the freedom to own their own lives, to live out their natural lives without a death sentence determined by taste and convenience. We yogis understand that our practice, even as it is a work in progress, changes lives. That is why I am challenging you, if you are not yet vegan, to try veganism for the month of January. Just 31 days to give it a try. It is up to you if you want to keep this challenge a quiet one or if you would like to announce it to the world. What matters is that you commit to it and try your best. Here are some steps I suggest to get you started: 1. They say when the WHY is clear, the HOW follows. Please watch any or all of these: Earthlings, Meet Your Meat, From Farm to Fridge, A Peaceable Kingdom and A Life Connected. Read Yoga and Vegetarianism, The Food Revolution, and Eating Animals. 2. Get information on the practical aspects of going vegan. Try the recipes at The Post Punk Kitchen, The Superfood Grocer, or take cooking classes with The Kitchen Revolution. Eating out? Check out the listings at the Happy Cow online directory. 3. Understand the other aspects of the vegan lifestyle. Listen to The Vegetarian Food for Thought podcast, connect with online or offline vegan communities, or even find a vegan mentor. Going vegan is not just about what we eat. It is a web of choices that affect how we interact with other people and how we view animals used in all other industries beyond food. Challenges can be life-changing. In this case, you save 8 lives by going vegan for 31 days. The number is based on the very conservative estimate that a vegan spares the lives of 100 land animals a year (there is no known calculation for sea animals at the moment). Maybe 8 lives do not seem like a lot, but 8 lives that are allowed to live rather than signed off to die means a lot in the practice of ahimsa. We are yogis who live in an economy-driven system. We can change the system if we actively participate in changing the economy. We eliminate the animal products and by-products we consume and we effectively reduce the demand. Yes, yogis are practical people indeed. Balancing on our arms is an amazing feat, but giving animals the freedom to explore their own strength is even better. Reaching for our ankles in wheel is impressive, but seeing other beings as equal to us is a more profound practice of our flexibility. Standing on our head shifts our view of the world, but going vegan allows us to change alongside the world. This body that we have is strong and resilient and beautiful, but if we rely only on our physical body to practice yoga, it is very limiting. We can get an injury or lose a limb, and what then? But if we practice yoga with both our physical body and our sense of compassion, then our practice can only expand. No external condition can then stop the growth of our spirits. We become limitless. Try it. Just 31 days. Be vegan. You can do it.
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There is a prevailing myth about perfect timing that is begging to be debunked. How many of us have said "if only the timing were right" and lived on regrets? I used to join swimming competitions. When the time comes for your event, you go up the diving board of your assigned lane, and you wait for the sound that signals the start, and you dive in the moment you hear it. You have to have the perfect timing. A second later and you lose out, a second sooner and it doesn't count. But it happens sometimes. Someone would get a little excited and dive in before the official start. This is anticipated so the rules have factored this in. It's called a false start. When it happens, you get to try again. It is a competition and human errors are allowed. And yet we are often unforgiving when we find ourselves in situations that are similar to that false start. Many of us even have timelines. At this age, I must do this. At that age, I must do that. By this time, I should make this much money. By that time, I should have met the love of my life. And when things do not turn out as planned, we start to feel like failures. We say should have, could have, would have, if only this, if only that. The truth is, it is never a straight path from A to B. Life is complicated and sometimes difficult, but it is also full of joy and inspiration and beautiful events. We tend to forget that as long as we are alive, we get a new start with every breath that we take. We get a second chance and a third chance and a fourth chance- in fact, we get unlimited chances. We get to start again anytime that we want. I think an exercise we can do to let go of this perfect timing myth is to look into a situation where we might still be holding on to some regrets. Perhaps we blamed ourselves. If I were more of this and less of that, if this happened 3 months sooner, if I had said something different at that time, things might be different. Perhaps. But to speculate on something that we have no control of and cannot change does not give us freedom or peace of mind. It would help us more to just acknowledge what happened, accept it, and start to release it. Release the person or situation over whom or which we still have feelings of regret. It may help to visualize that we are cutting the cords between ourselves and the situation. We are letting it go. Letting it float away. Releasing it to where it belongs, not with us but with the past. We are going to have false starts. We are human after all. But it is a myth to believe that our happiness lays on a fragile house of cards, that we get the timing wrong and we are forever doomed. That is only our insecurity speaking. Those timelines are not real, our pressures self-created. Time is democratic and forgiving. We have access to it now just as we have always had access to it from the first breath that we took. And regardless of how many false starts we make, in this life we need not compete with anyone, and in this life we are never disqualified. We get to start again. And again. And again. All the time. Perfect timing is just a myth. We can keep holding on to it if we want to punish ourselves, or we can let go of it if we want our freedom back. We always have a choice. I recently dreamt that I had just graduated from high school, and I was wondering if I should go to college or not. In this dream, I had already known that I wanted to be a yoga teacher after high school. So the consideration was: Why waste four years if I already knew what I wanted to do? My reality though is far from that dream. When I graduated from high school, I did not know what I wanted to do. When I graduated from college, I still did not know what I wanted to do. When I took on my first job, I still did not know what I wanted to do. When I took on my second job, I still did not know what I wanted to do. I had a lot of other jobs, still I did not know what I truly wanted to do. After my last corporate job, I thought that maybe possibly perhaps there is a chance that I might want to be a yoga teacher, but even then I was not very sure. I had many doubts. Would I ever conquer my fear of public speaking? Would I be good at it? Would I be able to make a living? But I put one foot in front of the other and I finally affirmed that this indeed is what I want to do with my life: to teach yoga and encourage people to look inwards, to talk about nonviolence and veganism and animal rights, to let people realize that they are capable and deserving of happiness and freedom. It was not a straightforward path, not at all. And I can say all those years that I spent wondering and searching and exploring and even feeling stuck were not wasted time. The whole process is a lot like our yoga asana practice. When I first found out there was such a pose as headstand, I did not try it right away. It took me a while to take the first steps. Then it took me some more time practicing against the wall. Then I spent some more time kicking up even though teachers made it very clear it is not a good idea to kick up. Then I spent a lot of time falling. And then one day I got it. Would I say I wasted a lot of time against the wall and then falling? Would I say I should have saved time and went up on a headstand right away? No. Because it does not make any sense. I needed all that time to get to where I am because it is part of the process. There are situations in our lives where we may have judged the way in which we have used our time. We may have spent three years on a relationship that did not work out, and we blame ourselves for wasting time. We may have quit our job to work on a promising project for a year, only to find out it is not going to pan out. We may have taken time off to travel or even just do nothing for months on end. Was it wasted time? When we think about it, all the time that we used gave us something in return. Relationships that ended opened our eyes and let us see the shadows that are otherwise invisible to us. Unmaterialized projects showed us where our passions lie or affirmed our determination or even showed us alternative paths. Time off to be by ourselves was a way to gain back the vitality for life we may have momentarily lost, much like a needed child's pose during a practice where we feel particularly challenged. All our difficulties and challenges are not wasted time. We have spent our time in the best way that we knew how, and we really should give ourselves credit for that. We come to our mats to practice day in and day out. Some days we feel attuned to our bodies. Other days we feel quite disconnected. There are days we feel accomplished and there are days where we seem unable to do poses that are normally accessible to us. But we do not see any of these as wasted time. When we fall, we do not judge it as wasted time. We get back up. When our legs shake, we take a deep breath and keep our composure. We carry on. We acknowledge where we are and not let our perceived failures defeat us. This is the way we have been using our time. This is how we go through the process. This is our life. This is our practice. Sometimes it's tough and there are a lot of doubts and insecurities, but they are all part of it. All this time that we spend with ourselves to look within ourselves is not wasted time. Preachy. Self-righteous. Rude. These are the things many vegans have been called when we point out the reality of animal suffering. I don't want to know. It's my choice. They taste good. These are the things many vegans hear when non-vegans react to our choices. There are times vegans are labeled angry vegans. And sometimes, I act like one. If that is the case and I was not a good representation of the vegan cause at that moment, I apologize in behalf of nonhuman animals. I do not mean to hurt them and my chances of effectively speaking about their plight. Allow me to offer not an excuse but an explanation. Please know that when you meet an angry vegan, this anger comes from a place of intense pain. We have witnessed the horrible suffering of our fellow beings and took on that suffering as our own. That is why we are called emotional, because we do in fact take on the emotions of others. We know that for every single second that we do not speak up, animals suffer. We are invested in doing everything we can to reduce this. And even if we are not successful, we are determined to try. Even if you do not agree with our approach, we try, because we would rather do something than nothing. Sometimes we are eloquent and tactful and good with our words. Other times we are confrontational and our timing is way off. When that happens, I hope you can see past the personality and think about the issue at hand. We are sometimes angry, yes, and we are angry for a reason. If we did not feel anger, we would not have felt the sense of injustice and turned vegan in the first place. If we err, it is from a place of passion. If we make a mistake, it is because we are human. What I do wonder about, though, is the case of angry non-vegans. There are quite a lot of them but hardly anyone considers them preachy or self-righteous or rude, even when they insist they know more about protein than we do, even when they claim superiority over other sentient beings, even when they snicker and roll their eyes when they hear us ordering and making sure our food is free from the cruelty of meat, eggs, and dairy. Angry non-vegans are everywhere. They yell at us when we are peacefully handing out animal rights flyers. They challenge our moral inconsistencies by pointing out that we have accidentally stepped on ants. They tell us with hearty laughter that they will eat two animals for every one that we spare. I do wonder, where does this intense pain come from? I do wonder, why is there such a strong desire to put down our choice? I do wonder, why is it a big deal to them that we speak up and that we are unstoppable? Is it possible that they want to remain in apathy and it is getting harder and harder to do so? If they allow themselves to feel, is it possible that the guilt would be overwhelming and the pain unbearable? Are they that threatened? Are they afraid because they do not want to confront the way in which they live their lives? A few vegan friends of mine were upset upon seeing this joke (image above) at a fastfood steakhouse. They were angry at the putdown. They were offended at the irresponsibility of promoting abstinence from cruelty as abstinence from pleasure. The angry vegans were angry at the angry non-vegans. I, however, was partly flattered. If you need to crack a lame joke about vegetarians to sell corpses, that appears to me to be a recognition that your business is in some way threatened. Thank you for the publicity. There are many angry vegans and many angry non-vegans. Often forgotten in this conflict are the real victims: the animals. We are fighting over who gets airtime, who gets to win the argument, who gets more people to agree with them, whose comebacks are more snappy, whose jokes are funnier. Meanwhile, animals suffer and we ourselves lose our precious energy. Maybe it's time we stop fighting and labeling and judging. We can all use a little less anger. We can all care a little bit more. We can challenge our compassion a little bit more. As vegans, we can empathize with non-vegans who are struggling if not for the issue of veganism then the other struggles that they may be confronting in their lives. As much as I would love for non-vegans to start caring about animals, that is not really something we have control over. We cannot live our lives trying to please them or trying to win them over. That would be exhausting. As vegans, I think what we can do is speak from our hearts and learn to be more eloquent and effective and ultimately to learn to let go. We learn that there is so much more to learn. We also learn that even at our most eloquent, we may not please everyone and that is okay. We did not become vegan to please others, but we also did not become vegan because we want to get stuck in anger. We may lose friends and relationships, but we must always keep our heads up high. We may be labelled and put down, but we must always remember the animals. We must find a way to lose our anger- if not for ourselves then for the animals, so we can keep speaking up for them and fight for their liberation. I taught my first Jivamukti yoga retreat over the weekend, and I am simply grateful. What an honor it was to be trusted both by students who have taken my classes before and students who have never even heard of Jivamukti. It was very moving to hear many say that there is something about Jivamukti that resonates with them. This is exactly how I feel about the practice the very first time I encountered it. One of my favorite parts about the practice is the dharma talk. Some days I love thinking about it and writing it and editing it and delivering it, and other days I love having only a few bullet points and letting the words naturally unfold in class. I am very thankful for students who are present, who tune in to what is channeled through me by my teachers' teachings. I am thankful for their acceptance of me despite my imperfections. I am thankful for their openness and kindness. It has been an amazing experience meeting everyone in the retreat, meeting both the staff and guests of Bahay Kalipay, being in this environment for a few days and living quite simply. I feel grateful and yes, complete. My heart is filled with love and hope and contentment. Thank you for the opportunity. During a Satsang that I led the other night, I spoke about animal rights and veganism as they relate to the five yamas. A student shared that she had visited many small farms where the farmers loved the animals they milked. Another student asked how the animals are killed when the "time" came, to which she replied that their throats were slit. No wonder we are afraid to be loved. No wonder we are afraid to love. No wonder we are suspicious of love. Veganism is often associated with the actions that we take, or more accurately, the actions that we choose not to take. Others tend to see this as a restriction that disallows us to eat this and that or do this and that. But the root of veganism and any social justice movement is about how we think. Do we think of animals as things or as sentient beings? If I view animals as things, not different from my iPhone or my favorite pair of yoga pants, then I can claim to love them and throw them away when they are no longer useful to me. But if I view animals as sentient beings who have interests of their own, then I recognize that to love them means to give them the power to make choices. If we love, then we should love freely and without condition. Love is a gift we offer without expecting anything in return. If we truly love animals, it is because we want them to be happy, not because we want them to be happy so we feel a little less guilty when we steal their milk or eat their flesh. How we say we love others is often dysfunctional. We cannot truly love others if all we want is to enslave them. We cannot truly love others if we cannot respect their true nature and who they are. We cannot truly love others if it is about how we feel about ourselves rather than how we make them feel about themselves. If we want to love others, human or nonhuman, I think it means giving them their freedom. Love is not about loving enslavement and most certainly not about ethical killing. Both are oxymorons. If we care about animals at all, then we do not harm them, we do not steal their milk, we do not lie about them, we do not sexually abuse them, we do not use them for our greed. This love that we claim to have- let's think about it and act on it and give it some justice. I'm listening to the pitter patter sounds of the pouring rain. Warm underneath a thin layer of blanket, I am reminded that life can be simple, that it ought to be simple. I am comforted knowing that all that I ever need exists in this moment. |
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