YS1.41 - kṣīṇavṛtterabhijātasyevamaṇergrahītṛgrahaṇagrāhyeṣu tatsthatadañjanatā samāpattiḥ ||

[However, it is urgent] to arrive to the concordance (samāpatti), that is, the condition in which [the effects of mental] vortices are almost extinct (kṣīṇa): so is the gem, completely transparent, [finally] capable of taking the tint of whatever object is placed before it, [revealing the concomitance that] there is between the pluck (grahītṛ), the act of grasping (grahaṇa) and what is caught (grāhya).

[Yoga Sūtra of Patañjali 1.41]

A Prismatic and Unifying Perspective

I would like to propose some reflections on the prismatic and unifying vision that should be the expected outcome of the philosophies of exercise called 'yoga'. I speak from a wave of a discomfort that I recently experienced about the relationship between 'yoga', its ethical principles and current debates on topical issues. I feel the urgency to do it not only as a yoga practitioner but, above all, with regard to my professional deontology.

I believe that the most useful service that can be done as teachers of yoga on social media, compared to current topical issues, is above all to avoid its exploitation for partisan purposes. Yes, because by virtue of the positive values it embodies (non-violence, truth, respect, community life, spirituality, etc.) it is at great risk of being used to support positions inconsistent with its actual ethical assumptions. It has always happened, to be clear, and in this regard, there is a fair literature for those interested in going deeper. It happens both economically, when 'yoga' is used as a passe-partout for marketing purposes, and it also happens in political debates such as those related to Hindu nationalism or the devastating tragedy of the Gaza Strip.

Antibodies Against the Habit of Dividing

Obviously, I do not contest anyone the right to take a stand and have a personal opinion: I simply hope that first of all an instrumental use of 'yoga' is avoided.

Moreover, in the hyper-simplified narration of social media, the polarization and dichotomization of discourses must be handled with caution, in order not to fall into a flattening of the contents that one can try to transmit, perhaps with the best intentions, and slip into a confrontation between 'sides', which in fact prevents a critical and articulate reasoning, which is always useful, has the chance to emerge. I believe that no strict polarization can help us reduce the complexity of society to a reasoned decoding nor can it help us to develop a critical capacity or a mind open to dialogue.

The reductio to the minimum terms there will be, at a certain point, because this is how human cognition tends to proceed, and it must finally necessarily come to a 'verdict' in order not to remain stalled, paralyzed. To have opinions and make decisions is to take sides, of course. However, the transition from a ‘funnel path’, which is the decision-making process of information processing, must require at least moments of digestion and deepening, and especially the recognition of all the light/ dark of each party discourse. Light/darkness that, honestly, dwell in every human being, community and society of every place and time.

Overturning the polarizing decision-making process into an  expansive and inclusive one

Returning then to the main theme of this reasoning, namely ethical principles of 'yoga', current debates and misleading use of 'yoga', it is precisely at the bottleneck point of the decision-making process that, I think, 'yoga' can and should help us to overturn the funnel, transforming the polarizing and divisive movement (I-you, us-them, subject-object, etc.) into a unifying, inclusive and expansive movement (we, together, cooperation, community, inclusiveness, etc.).

In fact, this movement towards empathic feelings of tolerance and closeness to the other (and in general of greater permeability with what is external to us), are one of the expected effects of these practices, that with certainty go far beyond the iconic forms of asanas with which the contemporary visual narration (especially in social media) has often accustomed us to associate them, flattening them to the one-dimensional plan of fitness, corporeal exercise or aesthetics, even without an explicit intention to do so. And here we could open an extensive mea culpa.

If we rely on the great 'yoga' literature we would find many very refined arguments about the harmful effect of 'dividing’. Therefore, for 'yoga’, the 'relativism' of judgment (and the legitimate taking sides) ends where, going far backwards against all the dichotomies that separate and categorize reality for the constitutive need to simplify in order to act, you get to the a-priori that unites us all, that is: be human. Here begins the line in the sand, the universal ethical values to which 'yoga' refers (called #mahavrata) and that have no flag because they are valid for all lands (#sarvabauma) and therefore superior to the smallness of our divisive ideas.

This line is described admirably in Yoga Sutra 2.30-2.34 (for those who want to deepen), but abstentions (#yama) and prescriptions (#nyama) were transversal to the multiple and polysemic traditions of the corpus of philosophies of yogic exercise. So obvious as to be considered foreplay at the beginning of #sadhana. As to say, if we do not agree on those, we might as well not even mention 'yoga'. And for those who might be tempted to cite the dilemma of Arjuna in the Bhagavadgita, and his final resolution to act by fighting his own relatives, I would remind them that this is a metaphor for the stalemate that a iper hyper-proliferation of thoughts can generate in the mind (and also a discourse on dharma) and not a hymn to war. And if it ever was, then we should ask ourselves serious questions about this text. But it’s not.

Read these few verses from Yoga Sutra:

YS 2.30 - ahiṃsāsatyāsteyabrahmacaryāparigrahā yamāḥ ||

YS 2.31 - jātideśakālasamayānavacchinnāḥ sārvabhaumā mahāvratam ||

YS 2.32 - śaucasaṃtoṣatapaḥsvādhyāyeśvarapraṇidhānāni niyamāḥ ||

YS 2.33 - vitarkabādhane pratipakṣabhāvanam ||

YS 2.34 - vitarkā hiṃsādayaḥ kṛtakāritānumoditā lobhakrodhamohapūrvakā mṛdumadhyādhimātrā duḥkhājñānānanta phalā iti pratipakṣabhāvanam ||

Where Does Judgment Neutrality End?

Be careful not to confuse my reasoning with a call to disinterest. Neutrality ends where a violation of the ethical principles of #mahavrata begins, and this should not even require us to bother 'yoga', so it is obvious moral principles. Yet, here we are, weighing words as if the principle of 'nonviolence' was something complex and sophisticated. From this collective distortion that admits and distinguishes, that identifies the legal cases in which violence is permissible, that points and argues to justify violence and intolerance, from here arises the need that 'yoga' is not only an instrument of individual growth. My wish is that the change of perspective induced by 'yoga' (from a gaze that separates to a gaze that unites) helps us for collective purposes contributing to develop a culture of tolerance in those who enter into contact with it, who are many millions actually. In this sense, I think that 'yoga' itself would be happy to be bothered in contemporary debates.

Only with these ethical principles can one yogin or yogini 'take sides'. So let 'yoga' do what it can and must do, namely give us the discriminatory and prismatic ability to unite what seems to be separated, promoting an inclusive and tolerant attitude in any contest. the utopia of a path of individual evolution to create a community based on justice, I’m fine with that and, at least, let us be inspired!

References

Jain, A. (2020). Peace Love Yoga: The Politics of Global Spirituality. New York Oxford University Press.

Anusha, Lakshmi (2000). Choreographing Tolerance: Narendra Modi, Hindu Nationalism, and International Yoga Day. Race and Yoga, 5(1). UC Berkeley Eds.