5 yamas five yamas—kindness, truthfulness, abundance, continence, and self-reliance (responsiblity for self contentment - willingness to question cravings)
5 niyamas -
aparigraha --abstinence from greed
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Liebermann describes how much conventional yoga tourism degenerates into shopping.
"Nevertheless, quite a few ofthose Americans who have cultivated a “practice” - usually referred topossessively as “my practice” - find their way to India to secure furtherinstruction at dozens, if not hundreds, of centers for teaching “yoga.”
Few ofthese centers offer much more than asana and a web-site, although someelementary pranayama may be included. At a number of these establishmentsthe commodification of yoga has taken hold, and ad hoc yoga-tourism industries,actively promoted by the Government of India, have bloomed whereverAmerican yoga students gather. (I speak of “Americans,” since I know thembest, but much of what I describe may be applied to European and LatinAmerican nationalities.)
Yoga is for sale, almost exclusively asana, and thereare a great many purchasers who come for periods of a few weeks to a fewmonths and even years, if they can secure the visas. The commodification –yoga mats, yoga bags, yoga shirts, yoga leotards, etc., mostly geared to thepractice of asana – is an American modification of yoga, and not part of theoriginal ascetic ideal of a yogi practicing aparigraha, perhaps living in the forestsitting on an animal skin in padmasana. But it does ironically fulfill SwamiVivekananda’s dream of American investment in India."
"A few enterprising Indian yoga teachers have learned thatthere is a solid niche in the yoga market for an 8 am starting time, and they areable to secure more students that way. Following a post-asana shower, there isalways a large, healthy vegetarian breakfast to be found. This usually takes place in the dining room or yard of an enterprising Indian housewife, but a number of yoga students themselves have recognized the opening for a moreWestern-oriented menu, and Westerner owned and operated black market restaurants have appeared spontaneously, which permit the students tofraternize among themselves, uninterrupted by actual people from India.
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Enterprising Americans (“Are all Americans so enterprising? I wish we Indianswere equally enterprising,” an Indian housewife once told me) have purchasedautomatic washing machines and will do yoga students’ laundry for a fee,relieving students of the opportunity to attempt to communicate with even adhobi (an Indian washer-person), or indeed wash their own clothes by hand. "
"Insulated by a critical mass of like-minded pleasure-seekers,they are socialized quickly to a mild hedonism, and they unnecessarily limit theiropportunities for discovering India; instead, they invest a good deal of theirenergies shopping, a task at which they are masters.
It can be said without any cynicism that Americans are brilliant atshopping, and India offers quality and bargains that cannot be obtained in theUS. The same brand-name clothing Indians ship to the US is available on theIndian market for a fraction of its US cost. The cotton and silk garments areluxurious, and woolen shawls and sweaters are rich, natural, and sold for lessthan a second-hand store in the US would sell them.
Cassettes of the latestworld music are available for $2 each, and a fabulous array of Indian classicalmusic is available for $1 each (CDs $2). India is the world’s second largestpublisher of books in English, but they sell them for a tenth of what an Americanpublisher charges.
Woodcrafts, beauty oils, soaps, jewelry, the list ofinexpensive items available keeps the “yoga” students’ heads spinning, and thesatisfaction of acquiring so much for little money leaves the students satisfiedthat they have been living fruitfully.
But is that satisfaction a healthy thing, atleast for a yogi who should be practicing abstinence from greed (aparigraha)instead of coveting everything that is spread out before one and is within one’sgrasp? What is troubling about this is that the students are building vasana –habitual, automatic mind-energy patterns – for doing even more shopping, andit is not difficult to imagine that this vasana will continue to operate after theyreturn to the US, rendering their trip to India a failure, by any yogic standard.
Itis not difficult to encounter American yogis who are shopping animals, ravenousfor yet another bargain-filled outing. Even for Americans with modest incomes,it is as if they have become rich at last.
The serious problem here is not that they acquired a good book at a low cost, but that they have developed not more,but less, ability to be satisfied with few possessions (the practice of santosha,during which one learns to be responsible for one’s own contentment, with out any props) – an accomplishment that will endlessly enrich their lives and thatcan serve as the basis for a real practice of yoga.
That is why santosha andaparigraha belong to the niyama and yama (respectively) and are placed at thebeginning of a yogi’s quest. Ask most students what is the meaning ofaparigraha, and they will not be able to offer a response. This is rendered morepathetic by considering that a majority of these yoga tourists are yoga teachersin the US."
and
"Whilesome impromptu classes are offered by an ad hoc yoga tourism industry(including Indian cooking, Ayurvedic massage, Sanskrit, etc.), the Indianteachers of these classes, mostly ordinary householders, nearly always report surprise and dismay over the lack of responsibility many yoga students displayby not showing up at classes for they have registered, skipping classes (for the pool or party), or leaving town inadvertently forgetting to pay balances(insignificant to them but significant to most Indians) owed on servicesrendered.
“One expects more from yoga students!” is the exasperated lament Ihave heard most frequently from Indians.
Study of any yoga that SwamiVivekananda would have recognized is rarely undertaken.Even book-reading is kept to a minimum, and most serious texts that elucidate the thought of Vedanta, Buddhism or Jainism are considered “too heady.” That is because many of the people who are attracted to yoga are vehemently anti-intellectual.
The strategy of using the body and one’s 72,000 nerves in skillful ways to produce harmony - which is surely the genius of yoga -attracts Americans who have mostly rejected analytic strategies.
Yes, we have bodies, but the point is to use them to gain more control over the mind, for theobject of a practice of yoga is to control the mind.
In Vivekachudamani (which some attribute to Shankara) the sage himself cautions against “book-knowledge,” and yet Shankara is tendering this advice in a book.
While the Chandogya Upanishad asserts, “If speech were not there, there would be no knowledge of virtue, truth and falsehood, good and bad, pleasant andunpleasant. Surely speech makes all this known.” Yet Swami Sivananda s correctly that since samadhi is “beyond the reach of speech and mind, you will have to realize this yourself.”
Hence, the study of texts is a necessary but not sufficient part of swadhaya (self-study), yet most yoga tourists skip the text study part, while offering glib anti-intellectual cants about the shallowness of words and the need for “actual practice.”
"One expects more from people who will teach yoga."
The entire article is worth a look.