Yesterday, in our
Online Meditation Session, a student asked me, "If we suppress our anger, will that count as negative karma too?"
It has become very common these days. Most of us feel that when it comes to anger, or any other negative emotion, there are only two ways out: Expression or Suppression.
If we express we hurt others and if we suppress we hurt ourselves. This is such an unnecessary 'Avoidance-Avoidance' conflict. Unnecessary, because yoga has a third solution to this conflict. The right solution- Transform our negative emotion into positive one. Aha! Simple.
In yogic
darshan (philosophy), negative emotions are considered as
adhis (afflictions) of our
manomaya kosa (seat of our mind), if they go untreated, they penetrate our
pranic body (seat of our life force) and create
vyadhis (diseases) in our physical body.
Therefore, for the well-being of our physical organism it is important that we don't suppress our negative emotions but transform them into a positive one.
For this purpose, Yogis Wisdom gives a list of opposites, a list of positive emotions that act as antidote to our afflictions. Here's the list :)
Antidote to Anger
Patience.
Yoga recommends that we look at our trigger for anger as our trigger for practicing patience. In spirituality, there's lot of merit/ good karma attached to the practice of patience. So, next time when you notice anger rising in you:
1. Smile, because you have noticed it. It's step one in breaking the cycle.
2. Look at your trigger for anger with gratitude because it is giving you a chance to accumulate good karma by practicing patience.
3. Remind yourself of kshan bhangurata, every moment is here to pass away. So, keeping your energies directed towards patience. Watch the moment pass by.
Antidote to Attachment
Anitya- Impermanence
First of all, let's not mistake attachment for love. Love is good, attachment is the root of our miseries. Attachment is sticky. It's tamasic. An easy example to understand this is:
One of my cousins loves, tamarind chutney. We were little kids, I was perhaps seven & she was two years of age and we were sharing a bowl of tamarind chutney. As a natural course of action, we polished it off. The minute that happened, she started to cry. Oh my god, she was howling so loudly that we had to shut doors and windows of the house, so that are neighbors don't get worked up.
Moral of the story is: Loving tamarind chutney is okay. There's nothing wrong in enjoying it. However, feeling miserable when it is taken away, that's an affliction, an attachment. It needs to because it clearly causes suffering.
Therefore, yogic texts prescribe the wisdom of Anitya, impermanence as antidote to attachment. One must acknowledge that everything that comes into existence will go out of existence one day. So relish it immensely, but not to fall in the trap that this particular thing is source of all my joys. It's not. My mind is the source of all my joys & miseries.
In Vedic culture we have two very interesting practices to learn the art of detachment.
1. Rangoli: We wake up early morning. Take a cold shower. Wash the floor and then spend hours creating beautiful designs on floor using color powder. Then, next day, we take a broom and sweep that work of art off the floor. Once again, sitting down to create a new design. This engraves in our minds that all creation is will be swept off but it will be replaced by something new.
2. Ganpati: Every year, we take clay from our gardens and make beautiful Ganesha idol with our hands. For eleven days we celebrate it, rejoice it, and treat that idol with all the comforts & luxuries we can offer. On the eleventh day, we take out a procession and with same joy & festivity we submerge that idol ourselves. Smiling, singing & dancing all the while, because we know next year this cycle is going to be repeated.
In our modern lifestyles, we can practice detachment daily at small levels. So that when that big testing moment arrives, we are ready. For instance, yesterday, a friend of mine was asking, "How do you fall asleep just like that, I need my side of the bed, always." For her, a good place to start will be 'her side of bed'.
Antidote to being Arrogance
Positive Potential of others.
Many of us think we are not arrogant and yet we are motivated by the desire to be praised by other. Whenever we notice this happening, a craving to be praised by others. That's when we should stop for a moment and reflect:
1. Of course my talented is unique and that's the most common thing about it. Nature has given everyone a unique talent.
2. I am grateful though that I could identify my talent and had the will & situations to nurture it.
3. My talent has lot of positive potential to bring well-being to others & I must look at creative ways in which I can use my talent to benefit others.
Antidote to need for Approval
Love and compassion for our-self.
Antidote to jealousy
Empathetic joy.
I was a jealous person. It once costed me a friendship with a dear friend of mine. That's when I realized what an idiot I was. I lost a friend and in the process didn't gain the quality I was jealous of it still rests with that person. Who's the loser here. So, I started practicing empathetic joy. Whenever I would find myself getting jealous. I would:
1. Tell myself- this is stupid. Me getting jealous will not change the reality.
2. Then I would try to rejoice in the other person having my object of desire.
Earlier, this rejoicing meant me faking a smile to myself & then telling myself, "I am so happy this person has xyz, may this object brings lot of joy and happiness to this person." Slowly, my fake smile became genuine and instead of saying above words, I actually started feeling them. The situations that made me jealous earlier, now started making me joyful.
Isn't it wonderful? That's what transformation of negative emotions do, it sows seeds for positive emotions in future. The same trigger of anger becomes a trigger for patience & kindness.
You must have noticed, that application of these antidotes require practice of watching one's mind & thoughts. Therefore in our
Online Meditation Course , we not only conduct sessions on the 'art of watching our mind', but we also conduct sessions on training our minds to apply the antidote of transformation, each time an affliction arises. Yes, we do take all the above mentioned afflictions individually :)
To register for our coming batch of online meditation course, please write to us at homeyogishome@gmail.com
