Yoga is life.
Dharma is the path of our life. Indifferent Atman is being carried along this path thru maya by the body. Know what maya is! Know what Atman is! Know your dharma. Know yourself! Know God!
The Eight limbs. Practically speaking. 1. How we treat ourselves. 2. How we treat others. 3. our posture throughout the day. 4. Breahing. 5. Control of our senses. 6. Concentration. 7. Awareness of true reality. 8. and it doesn’t feel right for me to even speak of this eighth limb.
Be aware of yourself and what your relationship with the other truly is. Master your body and your breath by becoming more and more aware. Control your senses knowing the source of all your desires. Be aware, be totally totally aware of all states of being. Know the root of all perception and act as witness rather than as actor or re-actor. Complete acceptance of all of life (truth consciousness contentment).
So yoga teaches you to know yourself thru all states of your being, all states of consciousness, and all states of mind. It gives lessons on how to act, how to work, how to teach to give to receive to live… it does this while still leaving the doors open to anything. Yoga accepts ever action, every behaviour, every bit of thing or happening that comes and goes from existence. Yoga accepts that everything comes and goes. Everything that arises, passes away. It also teaches that whatever changes cannot be real because truth does not change. We’ll maybe get into this another time.
In the mea
n time we have to take care of these ever changing (and thus very “unreal) bodies. We have to act with some degree of care, use our body (our muscles, our lungs, our organs, our heart and our brains) correctly. Yoga teaches all of this. Yoga teaches us to learn from ourselves the finer features of our bodies, our minds, and our emotions and our deeper motivations.
The practice of yoga includes a much wider variety of activities than is normally thought. asanas, meditation, chanting, singing, mantra, concentration, dancing, breathing, living with awareness…. it’s scientific, energetic, spiritual, practical, humanitarian, devotional, and, surprisingly after all I’ve said, very simple. It encompasses all aspects of life. No matter what your personality type or natural inclination, there’s a place in yoga for everyone.