Why Yoga?

Yoga is an essential part of life on earth to cure oneself from physical and mental ailments. The root cause of diseases, it is by now well known, is the faulty ways of living, bad habits, absence of proper knowledge of things, improper food, etc. The malfunctioning of the body causes imbalance in the body and so one gets sick.

In order to keep a disease free body and mind, human beings on earth have been adjusting themselves from time to time to the prevailing environment. They have to see that the environment in which they live remains congenial. Atmospheric pressure, temperature, presence of gases like oxygen and nutrients are essential for sustaining life on earth. Physiological –internal –environment like body temperature, fluids in the body, functioning of various organs, development of body are equally necessary. Psychological factors like likes and dislikes, various beliefs and fear also affect human beings on earth.

But, contrary to our wishes, it is not necessary that environment is always helpful or favorable. Often it becomes so hostile that human beings suffer pain and misery. That is why our ancestors thought over the problems of fellow beings, made researches and out came sciences ,philosophies and political and religious activities. All these were aimed at reducing tension and human misery.

Peace Within

Yoga is an essential part of life on earth to cure oneself from physical and mental ailments. The root cause of diseases, it is by now well known, is the faulty ways of living, bad habits, absence of proper knowledge of things, improper food, etc. The malfunctioning of the body causes imbalance in the body and so one gets sick.

In order to keep a disease free body and mind, human beings on earth have been adjusting themselves from time to time to the prevailing environment. They have to see that the environment in which they live remains congenial. Atmospheric pressure, temperature, presence of gases like oxygen and nutrients are essential for sustaining life on earth. Physiological –internal –environment like body temperature, fluids in the body, functioning of various organs, development of body are equally necessary. Psychological factors like likes and dislikes, various beliefs and fear also affect human beings on earth.

But, contrary to our wishes, it is not necessary that environment is always helpful or favorable. Often it becomes so hostile that human beings suffer pain and misery. That is why our ancestors thought over the problems of fellow beings, made researches and out came sciences ,philosophies and political and religious activities. All these were aimed at reducing tension and human misery.

Yoga useless?

A yogi who had also attained the goal of yoga jivanmukthi – Jnaneswara also terms in his Anubhavamrita, yogic techniques as useless as the moon in day time when compared with mokshya. J. krishnamurti in his commentaries on living (he is supposes to have reached the goal of yoga) ventures to notify that both those individuals who practice yoga and those who are pursuing to acquire worldly comforts do not differ much from each other. They are both greedy and nature ambitions. According to him the desire to free oneself from the cycle of birth and death is also a form of desire like other desires for worldly enjoyments.
Yet another version from Maitreyi upanisha teaches us that the pleasure one gets through the pursuit of mukti is not real for the simple reason that it is not an experience of the state of emancipation.

But the techniques do help those who have not yet seen the light of mokskya. There is much weight in the argument that mukti is not a state. Which can be acquired by following the instructions of others. It is without doubt that a liberated person cannot make others liberated through his sermons. One can learn the process to proceed but he/she has to himself/herself attain state of awareness to understand oneself and the world. This naturally, needs a special effort to train mind the ability to look at anything as it is.
We may go through scriptures and come to know of the various processes t go ahead and hear sermons from sages and saints, thus learning intellectually about the state of mukti, but the bridge between our steps and the state of mukti remains.

Purifying the mind

Purifying the mind
It is at this point that yoga comes to our rescue. It is well known that one has to purify his mind and thereby his intellect before he can reach the state of self realization. Here it will not be out place to quote yoga sutra that an honest practice of eight parts of yoga removes impurities of mind an done proceeds to have atmadarshan. Once the mind is pure , attachment, running after mundane objects ,anger, jealousy, etc are gone and one can attain mukti. Although very, very few people one in thousands can attain the state of mukti , but still the importance of yoga cannot be dismissed altogether.