My Guru eats meat

Walking through the city center, I noticed a large number of various yoga clubs, Ayurvedic centers and other places where people are given the opportunity to get acquainted with various areas of yoga. Every two hundred meters, the eyes now and then stumble upon another advertising poster with mysterious drawings and promises like “we will help open all the chakras right now.” And on the porch of one such yoga center (we will not mention its name now), a tall young man stood smoking a cigarette, who, as it turned out later, taught yoga there. The very fact of a smoking yoga knocked me down, but for the sake of interest, I still decided to ask this yoga guru a vegetarian, to which a negative answer mixed with slight bewilderment followed. This situation puzzled me a little: how is it that a modern yoga teacher allows himself to smoke and eat lethal food? Maybe this is not even the whole list … How compatible are these things with each other? It turns out that when working with people, you tell them about the principles of non-violence (ahimsa), about the importance of controlling the senses (brahmacharya), while you quietly smoke in between pranayama and eat shawarma? Would practicing under a “non-vegetarian” guru be beneficial? The sage Patanjali, the compiler of the famous “Yoga Sutras”, introduces us to the first two steps of yoga, which help to begin our long path of spiritual development – yama and niyama. Yama advises everyone to give up violence, murder, theft, lying, lust, anger and greed. It turns out that yoga begins with the deepest work on oneself, both on a subtle and on a gross external level. Inside, the yogi learns to control his own mind and control material desires. Outside, he keeps his surroundings clean, including the food that ends up on his plate. Refusal to eat the products of murder is the very ahimsa (non-violence) that Patanjali mentioned back in the XNUMXnd century. BC. Then the second step is niyama. Being at this stage, the life of a yogi includes such obligatory things as purity, discipline, the ability to be content with what you have, self-education, dedication of all your affairs to God. The process of cleansing from a bunch of bad habits just takes place on these two initial steps. And only then follows the practice of asanas, pranayama, but not vice versa. What a pity that the phrase “I work as a yogi” began to flicker in our speech. I decipher: working as a yogi means working a couple of hours a day in a yoga center, being flexible and fit, talking about sublime things, repeating the names of asanas memorized by heart, and the rest of the day continue to indulge your dirty habits. Chairs in the morning, money in the evening. First I will start teaching others, and only then I will somehow deal with my own problems. But it shouldn’t be like that. During the classes between the student and the teacher there is a subtle contact, a kind of mutual exchange. If your yoga guru really follows all the rules and regulations, constantly works on himself, monitors the purity of the external and internal, then he will certainly give you his spiritual power, which will help you on the path of self-development and self-improvement … But it is unlikely that something like this will be able to convey to you a teacher who has not managed to put things in order in his own gastronomic addictions. The people we interact with have an amazing impact on our lives. Like a sponge, we absorb the qualities of character, taste and values ​​of those people with whom we come into close contact. Probably, many have noticed that after many years of living together, a husband and wife become very similar to each other – the same habits, manner of speaking, gestures, etc. The same is true in the interaction between teacher and student. The student, with humility and respect, accepts knowledge from the teacher, who, in turn, willingly shares his experience with the student. Now think about what experience you will get from a person who has not yet learned anything himself? Let your yoga teacher not get the perfect asana, absolutely even shape, but he will not smoke on the porch and eat chop for dinner. Believe me, this is much more important. Internal and external purity is the result of long-term work with one’s own character, habits, and environment. It is this taste that a yoga guru should give to his students. [email protected]  www.ruzov.ru