yama: the diamond of integrity
Life rests upon an acute organic sensitivity to death. Human life maintains itself through the painpleasure mechanism functioning continuously in every living cell, tissue and organ. This mechanism is an unerring ability to ditinguish between danger and safety, pain and pleasure, life and death. It tells us to move our hand from a hot stove; to put on a coat in winter. Misjudgement on a cellular level means death. The guru within is embedded infallibly as cellular integrity. An integrity that rests upon the unnerring intelligence of the painpleasure mechanism.
It is not knowledge that we need to practice yoga: but sensitivity to the painpleasure mechanism. By becoming more and more sensitive and responsive to physical sensations we recover and express the inherent integrity of the body naturally and effortlessly. As we recover the inherent integrity of the body, its inherent unity with mind and spirit manifest and the deeper fruits of yoga ripen spontaneously without any need to rely on esoteric rumours.
The methodology of yoga is not so much a set of techniques as it is the way technique is applied. This is called by Patanjali “yama” and has five aspects: sensitivity (ahimsa), honesty (satya), openness (asteya), presence (brahmacharya), and generosity (aparaigraha). Any technique must embody these principles if it is to invite the infolding of yoga: asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, samadhi.
By using these principles as lenses, rather than commandments, they invites us to feel (ahimsa), recognise (satya), acknowledge (asteya), embrace (brahmacharya) and accept (aparaigraha) the wisdom of the body sepaking through and as sensation. Then they bring us closer to life’s depths and subtleties, and release us from depending on unreliable external authority.
