Its natural to be angry and sad and to cry and screo how can it be healthy to just be neutral, calm all the time?
In other thread said to do what’s natural, y’all said its natural to squat when shitting and some of u went far as getting a bowl for this purpose
so one should scream and cry when needed?
Btw, is murder natural reaction to anger?
Wow, there’s so much negativity in this post, I’m wondering why someone with your point of view would seek out a yoga forum. I’m guessing you’re yoga-curious but not from a background or environment that approves of such things.
First of all let me remove your misconception that yoga is about being calm and neutral all the time. Yoga is not about not having emotions, it is about not identifying with them. In that way, they lose their grip on us and we are able to act in more reasonable ways.
Now let me see if I can correct this false analogy that you’ve made, that living in ways that are more in tune with the natural order is akin to allowing our emotions to run unchecked. It’s just a false analogy.
So what is your problem? If you want to try yoga, go ahead. It won’t hurt you. You don’t have to become some kind of pinko freak. But once you find that it does have some benefits, you might also find that some of your other attitudes start to change.
What’s the difference between not having emotions and not identifying with them?
attachments . . . ?
There’s no such thing as not having emotions. Not identifying with them means being able to recognize them as fluctuations of consciousness, and not I. In practical terms, it means being able to feel something without getting caught up in it.
Nics thanks
@ Bolno
You’ve selected an interesting analogy. Of all the possibilities under the sun, defecating is the one you found most effective for communicating your concept? Assuming that is even remotely possible, the language itself is quite crude and perhaps even profane. And while there’s no need to brand such choices in one fashion or another, you can imagine how it might bewilder members of this particular community, yes?
Relative to your point, there’s no suggestion that a human being should be devoid of feelings or emotions. Anyone suggesting such a thing is either joking, taking advantage of you, or simply doesn’t have enough understanding of the practice.
What is part of the practice of yoga is a refinement of the human being (which one may loosely call transformation, change, growth, evolving) such that the way the emotions are handled is more “mature” and less reactive. To BE angry or feel anger is one thing. To have to punch a wall in order to deal or cope is something altogether different. The latter shows a lack of awareness, self-control, and understanding, though still that is where many of us are.
“You can have all the emotions you want, but beware of reactions, of induced emotions. Be entirely self-determined and ruled from within, not from without. Merely giving up a thing to secure a better one is not true relinquishment. Give it up because you see its valuelessness. As you keep on giving up, you will find that you grow spontaneously in intelligence and power and inexhaustible love and joy.” ~Nisargadatta Maharaj
I just want to add that I tried to answer this poster by looking at yoga from his point of view, and it has occurred to me that some readers might not understand what I was trying to say, so in the interest of clarity and removing any offense that might have occurred I will rephrase one statement that I made.
Because there are so many women who practice yoga, and because it is not the same kind of exercise that most men are used to, some men may feel that yoga is a less than manly thing to do. But that kind of thinking is unfounded. Also, people who practice yoga tend to be liberal minded and I believe that is the crux of what the poster was getting at when he referred to the ‘squatting to defecate’ thread. What I mean to say is that there is no need to change one’s political views in order to practice yoga, although a conservative minded person might have to endure some discomfort at being associated with more liberal minded people.
The practice of Yoga is to finally achieve total cessation of all activities/fluctuations of the mind(cognitions, emotions etc) in order to manifest pure consciousness which is otherwise occluded by all of this. So yes, at the final stage of Yoga all emotions are gone. However, in the beginning stages of Yoga one cannot deny any of their emotions, but must acknowledge them and recognize that they exist. A space must be created where one is able to see themselves as experiencing an emotion e.g. “I am now experiencing anger”, rather than seeing themselves as identical with the emotion e.g. “I am angry”
In this way you will begin to recognize that you(the I) are not the same as any of the emotions you witness. They are just like passing seasons, changing scenes. Whatever emotion comes you will be able to see it in this way:
I am now experiencing anger
I am now experiencing lust
I am now experiencing pride
I am now experiencing jealousy
The same is true for any cognitive state you are experiencing:
I am now experiencing a memory
I am now experiencing imagination/hallucination
I am now experiencing faulty thinking
I am now experiencing correct thinking
I am now experiencing an altered state of consciousness
Yoga arms you with a vocabulary to help you identify exactly what emotion or cognition you are experiencing to help you monitor your thoughts, similar to thought-monitoring in CBT.
When you experience your emotions in this frame you are still going to feel the emotion, but you are not going to feel it as strongly as you would if you were in the frame of “I am angry, I am sad, I am jealous, I am scared” This is because the latter frame identifies yourself with the emotion and thus the emotion hits you a lot more strongly and lasts much longer(even years) On the other hand, when you recognize it as just another change of state you are experiencing, its affects are only momentary and it soon passes. If you experiencing anger, you can tell yourself:
I am now experiencing the emotion of anger. It is a disturbing emotion and I would prefer not to experience it, but it does not always have to be this way and most of the time I am not experiencing anger. It will soon pass and I will be back to normal again.
By saying this to yourself when the emotion of anger comes you instantly put yourself in the witness frame and reduce the power and time of the anger to affect you. Everytime you repeat this when the anger comes like a mantra, you will weaken the power of anger to affect you gradually, until it is all but gone.
[QUOTE=bolno;73165]Its natural to be angry and sad and to cry and screo how can it be healthy to just be neutral, calm all the time?
In other thread said to do what’s natural, y’all said its natural to squat when shitting and some of u went far as getting a bowl for this purpose
so one should scream and cry when needed?
Btw, is murder natural reaction to anger?[/QUOTE]
Zen isn’t about not responding to what you feel. If you are angry then you address why you are angry. If you are feeling murderous then you need to address first why you are feeling this way. You don’t get to the calmer states until you have addressed these things. How can one be at peace if one is not at peace?
bolno
first figure out what you are saying when you say Zen and go from there because based only on your first post I can say you have no idea what you are saying.