Hi,
I just tumbled over a link and a video clip showing yoginis and yogis travelling around the world doing yoga and aid projects. The link:
The video (scroll down a bit):
offthematintotheworld.org/india.html
To me it looks like some kind of self-discovering action: find a poor country with helpless people, do something, find yourself. Honestly, my guts do not feel good when I watch this.
I feel you, brother. I think they would probably tell you that you need a process of self discovery to find out why you react this way. My guess is you would discover you are a conservative, i.e. someone who hates liberals.
The politically correct view is that this is karma yoga, social activism aimed at helping people who are less fortunate than yourself. The more cynical view is that this is a fund-raising organization whose target market is the liberal minded yoga community. What troubles me is that they don’t have a specific cause that they work for all the time, it’s different every year. That tells me that it’s really more about organization building and fund raising than it is about any altruistic motive.
Living yoga and taking it off the mat is Yoga. Politically correct or not!
“I feel you, brother. I think they would probably tell you that you need a process of self discovery to find out why you react this way. My guess is you would discover you are a conservative, i.e. someone who hates liberals.”
Hehe…
I think, my process of studying economics and working in Africa for some time, also reading books about development aid are part of what lead me to that reaction. If 60 years of development aid do not help, what gives those yogis the ability to change something?
My feeling is similar to what I feel when I see advertisement with messages like “You want to practice Yoga and be non-attached, buy our glamour luxury Yoga mats!!”
The communication on the website and in the clip is a lot about “oneself”:
“What’s inside you? What needs to be healed? That needs to be expressed?”
“My life shifted in ways that I never could have imagined.”
“A journey that will change their (the yogi’s) lives forever”
“We then take a small group of leaders and push them to expand their self-confidence and capabilities by exposing them to unique physical and spiritual challenges.”
Where is the boundary between narcissism and altriusm? Does it have to be so much about yourself to help other people? If you help some and harm others (e.g. by giving free food and clothes, by doing work for free) don’t you lose the ahimsa of your actions?
Just some thoughts… :roll:
I don’t have a problem with people trying to live their yoga. I’d like to see the organization do something that doesn’t involve the three founders taking a trip to a different country every year.
Hi again,
thanks for the contributions so far. I indeed did some deep soul-searching in the past months and found some codependent behaviour on my site. I am trying to help, in order to suppress my own insecurities and do sometimes more harm than good. I think, there is one possible explanation why this organisation irritated me. If I see in others what I hate about myself, I hate them. Since some time I am working with these issues in myself and now decided to give this thread another dimension.
Well, in spiritual circles helping is often promoted. If you feel bad, just help, and you feel better. There are cases when this is not the “right” thing to do and I find it difficult to properly address this subject spiritually. In Christianity you can ask God to take over the unsolvable tasks and trust in His actions. Doing Yoga, I try to learn to “let go” and stop caring about things I cannot change.
How is Yoga, or specifically Karma Yoga, separating help that really helps others on the one hand from compulsive care taking (codependent and controlling behaviour) in your opinions?
I went to an off the mat seminar. They do somethings in other countries but they encourage you to bring it into your everyday life in ways that you need and what you can do for life. Most people dont go overseas as far as I could tell. First you do self discovery to determine what you need and to overcome the thought that this is selfish (which is hard because even yogis throw this at you, like you guys). For instance, some people needed to work on communication and not being taken advantage of. Their inspiration to do this was almsot always advocating for someone else, whether it was their kids or other kids or job or whatever it was. That is why there are so many different types of projects. It is not about a cause it is about becoming more compassiontea and everyone finding their passion. If the founders passion is to help people, bring compassion to the world, and travel, I do not understand why that is any more altruistic than what anyone else is doing. Its volunteer work but it is work.
We went through a journaling exercise to set up journaling about our yoga practice and what we need and how to use that for our goals in life and how those goals can help bring compassion to people. If more people in the world felt the need to help their own community change would be much more attainable. That was the theme of the seminar. It had two excellent asana classes with it, several guided meditations that you can use to help you figure out how to improve your life and to improve the lives of those around you, and lasted all day for 30 or 40 dollars. No one was making a lot of money off of it. No one asked for donations for a trip or a cause. In fact there was no cause, it was about finding your own cause.
And how is going on one trip to an undeveloped part of the world such a bad thing for people who do donate a lot of their time. Is it all true Karma yoga? Probably not, but does that mean they cant help someone? And just becaues you cannot change something does not mean you cannot act compassionately towards someone. Learning to not attach to a situation does not necessarily mean to let the situation go or do nothing. I think the self reflection of figuring out what something means to you and how to become more conscious of the effects of your decisions helps elimate the controlling part of codependence. You have to give into the fact that life is codependent thought. Our actions affect others.
Karma is simply doing good without expecting benefit, it does not mean you cannot accept a benefit from it or htat you should not. If you do something because of reasons you should not it will probably come back and bite you in the butt. But you can make the same decision for good reasons and bad reasons. So people who make the same decision as you might be able to make that from a better place. To beleive they cannot is the most narcissistic thing. Karma as a cycle will distinguish between the two if you choose to beleive in that. Sin if you beleive in that. If you can connect to yourself enough you can normal determine where the line lies in most situations. Which is why the self realization is important.
I really do not understand what you mean by if you give someone something for free it hurts other people.
Hi upcycledbliss,
thanks for your answer. I think, I understand what you mean. One should first know about oneself and deal with one’s own issues, then decide how one can act in the world and help others. This is different from finding needy ones and caring for them in order to avoid the self-searching. I think, it is quite complicated, but I am curious how it will work out for me within the next months or years. Thanks for mentioning some steps, like the journal and the meditation.
Let me answer your question at the end. If you prepare, say, 500 lunch bags with sandwiches, drinks and a piece of fruit, then go into the city centre (where all the sandwich shops are) by lunchtime and give the sandwiches away for free, you harm the sandwich shops and their employees, as hardly anyone would pay money to buy their products that day. In the development aid “business”, actions like this are somewhat deprecated and not considered useful any more. Nevertheless often people (young and idealistic) and organisations launch actions like this.
Mukimuki
First good luck with the journey. If more people made it the world would be better in my opinion.
I would say for your last part that if you gave the sandwhiches to people who could really use them, they were not going to buy a sandwhich from another shop anyway. There is a thought that a large amount of people that if you give good to one person there is less good for others. This is not true because there is unlimited ammount of good. You will never be able to make zero impact on the evnironment and people around you, which is a good and bad thing at the same time, and comes out pretty nuetral in the end. Even bad things can teach good people what not to do.
I would agree that going to help people without learning what the area needs/is like/wants/can be gotten sustainably is fairly naive. However, I think that is something that is learned through experience only. I think in a lifetime it ends up balanced out individually for same thing mentioned above.
Sometimes we need to just live authentically. Sometimes this might involve helping the poor or traveling or doing both at the same time. Sometimes this might involve being a good mechanic or doctor or teacher or ____. I think you need to find what this is in you and realize that this is in you, not the results or attitudes of other people which can discourage us when we have done it so long and get jaded. An inspiring person is very influential in many people’s lives but might not help people in ways that they are measuring.
In a book by Paulo Coelho called Brida a woman is teaching a young girl about magic and powers and they are waiting for a mechanic to fix their car. The young girl is starting to feel jaded about the world and how her path is more right and how going after these powers makes her more intune with the world than people who focus on cars during the day. The teacher tells her to watch the mechanic, he can sense what the car need understand intuitively. Some people get that and the world would not work without this. She is no better or worse than this mechanic, he is intune with his “magic” which is to read cars. If you can see this in the world, you can see that even young and idealistic organziations can reach a goal, even if it is not a path you personally can walk any more with out seeing only the problems. They might, however, be able to use someone with your experience to better tailor their projects if you can get past the judgement and jaded aspect. This might take a while and it might not even be what you want. Just a suggestion.