Pratyahara (Jing Wei)
3/6 Pratyahara is described by the theory manual as ‘withdrawal of the senses from objects and subjects and moving consciousness inwards’. I think this long phrase is best explained with an illustration. Say a bee stings me. If I don’t practice pratyahara, my reaction would be to scream and run. But by practising pratyahara, I take control over my natural reaction, and instead consciously choose how to respond – so instead of screaming and running, I may choose to admire the bee for its bravery.
Ahimsa (Jing Wei)
5 more posts to go. Now I want to talk about Ahimsa. I like Ahimsa. I want to share with everybody that my current thought is that it is in Ahimsa that one develops love. It is not in willing your mind to love someone – more often that not we are lying to ourselves. And for love to be pure it has to come from the heart. It is Ahimsa that works. That’s why I like Ahimsa. So what is Ahimsa about? It is translated to non-violence. It must be applied to one’s thought, word and deed. The magic is in applying Ahimsa to one’s words. The trick is to replace negative thoughts with thoughts of love and forgiveness. From this, then I think, we would see our transformation to ‘love of all’.
Karma Yoga (Jing Wei)
I am supposed to write something. The problem is that my mind is quite still – no thoughts seem to be flowing through. There’s a possibility that I might have reached a state of Samadhi. Or that the time of the day is too Tamasic for me to make my mind work. These are big questions – questions to which I might never have an answer. That said I probably can’t end this post here. It would’t bode well for my grade. So I shall extract something from the notes I created today. The topic I want to share today is Karma yoga. Karma yoga is simply this: it is to joyfully work for work itself, without thinking about the fruits of the work. The purpose of this practice is to bring the yogi into the here and now. And that’s it. That’s all to it.
