non violence
Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 12:52 pm
I am posting this because I see alot of people on this forum trying to put into words what I found nicely explained in ancient teachings.
I have learned the most about non violence from studying Ajita's "model" and the teaching he gives with it.
Here is an extract from his interpetation of the Yoga Sutras.
35. Ahimsa Pratishthayam Tat Samnidhau Vairatyagah
On being firmly established in non-violence there is abandonment of hostility in
(his) presence.
The Sanskrit word Ahimsa means “Non-violence”. “A” means “not”, “Himsa” means
“violence”.
This is the first refusal or Yama of a group of five: non-violence, truthfulness, honesty, chastity
and non-desire. Together they can be viewed as vows that you express at the start of your
spiritual development. This old tradition of vows has also been preserved in Christianity and
other spiritual practices.
The idea behind the Yama’s is actually simple:
You refuse anything that you do not want, do not understand or do not want to think about.
In this way you create room for yourself to first think before you act. It enlarges your critical
powers. You do not allow yourself to be dragged into things anymore that you do not want.
You will do things your own way and become argumentative, in the first place against
violence.
What is violence?
To be able to refuse violence you have to know what violence is:
Violence is disturbance, a breach. Violence causes pain, physically, emotionally and/or
mentally. Violence can be committed against anything.
What is “anything”?
In the end everything is energy. It moves/appears in the quality of a vibration.
In the beginning, says the Sankhya philosophy, there was only Brahman, God. And Brahman
was energy, Prana. We visualize this as a straight line of energy, undisturbed, eternal and
infinite.
As time goes by a light vibration occurs with small waves, caused by subtle desire, Vasana.
The waves become bigger, flip over, and little balls or particles arise, called Anus in Sanskrit.
The Greeks called them inseparable: atomos, or atom. There are big and small Anus that spin
around. This is the energy that has turned into mass. They are called Sharira or body, or
Chakra, eddy/whirl. Long ago Rishi’s or seers saw this this way.
Albert Einstein formulated this in his relativity theory and world famous E=mc2, or energy “E”
is equal to mass “m”, multiplied by the square of the acceleration “c”. With this he proves that
energy can move in a straight line as well as that it can remain spinning on its own forming
mass. He also indicates that you can move from one condition into the other. And remarkably,
that is exactly what we do in Yoga: via purifying exercises we accelerate our energy, reduce
the condensation of our being, which is also an Anu, and at last we achieve Moksha, liberation.
The Sankhya philosophy is the second oldest philosophy, after Yoga, of the six philosophical
fundaments of Hinduism: Yoga, Sankhya, Nyaya, Vaiseshika, Purvamimansa and
Uttaramimansa.
It tries to explain the principles of Yoga in a scientific way.
Why should you refuse violence?
A person, who has been involved in violence a lot, is marked by it and becomes numb. His
powers of perception become affected. He becomes anxious. All the collisions that he
experienced cause a condensation in him. Darkness appears in that person, ignorance. His
world condenses. He is losing control, and subconsciously he is aware of that. This expresses
itself in different ways: in the form of insecurity, doubt, fear or even in the form of phobia or
panic. The majority of mankind suffers from this. Research indicates 95% and more.
So violence is a disturbance or breach in energy. Energy can be visualized as an undulating
flow. You can see violence as something that is caused by a coil or a Vritti that collides with
this wave or vibration and makes a dent in it. This dent causes a change in the course of the
energy; the energy vibration starts to wave more strongly, produces loops/energy balls quicker
and thoroughly disrupts the original straight lined energy stream.
Committing violence is like throwing a pebble into the water: ripples occur that spread all the
way out to the borders of the water and then return back to the place where the pebble hit the
water. That is also how violence behaves: it always comes back to you. Everything you do
always comes back to you.
What we do in Yoga is to avoid incurring dents and removing of the dents that you have
already incurred. To avoid inciting others to violence is also part of the practice of nonviolence.
How do you act when you come across violence?
The Bible says: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. This means that when somebody hits
you, you immediately hit him back. You respond with the same kind of force. Do not respond
with more force, because then you put the spiral of violence in motion. If you hit back
immediately, with the same force, it is not violence. When you wait, you are too late and you
produce another breach, committing violence.
In this way you learn to deal with violence, to become one with violence. You learn to
accurately dose and prepare yourself for the advanced stage of non-violence: When you get hit,
turn the other cheek. This is a considerable step forward, in which you try to process the hit
that you received as information about the person that hit you: you try to feel the person and
his problems. Then, when you continue to “weld” his energy breaches or influence them with
love, something essential will change in that person. Only then you turn the other cheek.
Because of the sympathy that arises he will not be able to hit you any longer.
This trick works according to the three transformations or Parinama’s of Patanjali: Samadhi-,
Ekagrata- and Nirodha Parinama: Go along in the vibration, become one with the situation,
sense the situation, continue to empathize, shout back if necessary, and continue to follow it. If
you want to go directly into another direction, you have missed the contact and your attempt
will be futile; you break something. When you sense that you have the situation under control,
you transform in the direction of mitigation. So you slowly reconcile. Because you first
became one with the violence you were able to give it another direction.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~rajayoga/EN/Yoga% ... 0Ajita.pdf
I have learned the most about non violence from studying Ajita's "model" and the teaching he gives with it.
Here is an extract from his interpetation of the Yoga Sutras.
35. Ahimsa Pratishthayam Tat Samnidhau Vairatyagah
On being firmly established in non-violence there is abandonment of hostility in
(his) presence.
The Sanskrit word Ahimsa means “Non-violence”. “A” means “not”, “Himsa” means
“violence”.
This is the first refusal or Yama of a group of five: non-violence, truthfulness, honesty, chastity
and non-desire. Together they can be viewed as vows that you express at the start of your
spiritual development. This old tradition of vows has also been preserved in Christianity and
other spiritual practices.
The idea behind the Yama’s is actually simple:
You refuse anything that you do not want, do not understand or do not want to think about.
In this way you create room for yourself to first think before you act. It enlarges your critical
powers. You do not allow yourself to be dragged into things anymore that you do not want.
You will do things your own way and become argumentative, in the first place against
violence.
What is violence?
To be able to refuse violence you have to know what violence is:
Violence is disturbance, a breach. Violence causes pain, physically, emotionally and/or
mentally. Violence can be committed against anything.
What is “anything”?
In the end everything is energy. It moves/appears in the quality of a vibration.
In the beginning, says the Sankhya philosophy, there was only Brahman, God. And Brahman
was energy, Prana. We visualize this as a straight line of energy, undisturbed, eternal and
infinite.
As time goes by a light vibration occurs with small waves, caused by subtle desire, Vasana.
The waves become bigger, flip over, and little balls or particles arise, called Anus in Sanskrit.
The Greeks called them inseparable: atomos, or atom. There are big and small Anus that spin
around. This is the energy that has turned into mass. They are called Sharira or body, or
Chakra, eddy/whirl. Long ago Rishi’s or seers saw this this way.
Albert Einstein formulated this in his relativity theory and world famous E=mc2, or energy “E”
is equal to mass “m”, multiplied by the square of the acceleration “c”. With this he proves that
energy can move in a straight line as well as that it can remain spinning on its own forming
mass. He also indicates that you can move from one condition into the other. And remarkably,
that is exactly what we do in Yoga: via purifying exercises we accelerate our energy, reduce
the condensation of our being, which is also an Anu, and at last we achieve Moksha, liberation.
The Sankhya philosophy is the second oldest philosophy, after Yoga, of the six philosophical
fundaments of Hinduism: Yoga, Sankhya, Nyaya, Vaiseshika, Purvamimansa and
Uttaramimansa.
It tries to explain the principles of Yoga in a scientific way.
Why should you refuse violence?
A person, who has been involved in violence a lot, is marked by it and becomes numb. His
powers of perception become affected. He becomes anxious. All the collisions that he
experienced cause a condensation in him. Darkness appears in that person, ignorance. His
world condenses. He is losing control, and subconsciously he is aware of that. This expresses
itself in different ways: in the form of insecurity, doubt, fear or even in the form of phobia or
panic. The majority of mankind suffers from this. Research indicates 95% and more.
So violence is a disturbance or breach in energy. Energy can be visualized as an undulating
flow. You can see violence as something that is caused by a coil or a Vritti that collides with
this wave or vibration and makes a dent in it. This dent causes a change in the course of the
energy; the energy vibration starts to wave more strongly, produces loops/energy balls quicker
and thoroughly disrupts the original straight lined energy stream.
Committing violence is like throwing a pebble into the water: ripples occur that spread all the
way out to the borders of the water and then return back to the place where the pebble hit the
water. That is also how violence behaves: it always comes back to you. Everything you do
always comes back to you.
What we do in Yoga is to avoid incurring dents and removing of the dents that you have
already incurred. To avoid inciting others to violence is also part of the practice of nonviolence.
How do you act when you come across violence?
The Bible says: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. This means that when somebody hits
you, you immediately hit him back. You respond with the same kind of force. Do not respond
with more force, because then you put the spiral of violence in motion. If you hit back
immediately, with the same force, it is not violence. When you wait, you are too late and you
produce another breach, committing violence.
In this way you learn to deal with violence, to become one with violence. You learn to
accurately dose and prepare yourself for the advanced stage of non-violence: When you get hit,
turn the other cheek. This is a considerable step forward, in which you try to process the hit
that you received as information about the person that hit you: you try to feel the person and
his problems. Then, when you continue to “weld” his energy breaches or influence them with
love, something essential will change in that person. Only then you turn the other cheek.
Because of the sympathy that arises he will not be able to hit you any longer.
This trick works according to the three transformations or Parinama’s of Patanjali: Samadhi-,
Ekagrata- and Nirodha Parinama: Go along in the vibration, become one with the situation,
sense the situation, continue to empathize, shout back if necessary, and continue to follow it. If
you want to go directly into another direction, you have missed the contact and your attempt
will be futile; you break something. When you sense that you have the situation under control,
you transform in the direction of mitigation. So you slowly reconcile. Because you first
became one with the violence you were able to give it another direction.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~rajayoga/EN/Yoga% ... 0Ajita.pdf
