Nonviolence, Hypocrisy and Veganism
I have only been in one fight. It was in the third grade. I don’t recall what the impetus was but it ended up in a war of words between me and another boy on the basketball court. I remember deciding to hit him but when I went to strike my arm went slack. It was as if my body overrode my minds directive and I was incapable of trying to harm him.
The other boy did not have the same issue and I was quickly pinned and squirming to be free. The only black girl in our class, La Tisha, came to my aid and pushed him off of me before he got any punches in. We were friends and no one messed with La Tisha.
I can trace my inclination for yoga back to that day. I learned something important about myself. I am not naturally inclined towards violence. Even as a boy, I recognized that this was not true of everyone. As an adult, it makes sense that I embrace a life philosophy that puts a premium on nonviolence.
The first yama of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra’s is ahimsa, often translated as “non-harming.” Aligning myself with Yoga turned something that I had always seen as a weakness into a strength.
Yet, somewhere along the way, an unconscious loophole developed. While I was incapable of intentionally doing others wrong, I seemed to have no problem doing considerable inadvertent harm to myself. In fairness, I was under the impression that I was working towards enlightenment and did not grasp the full extent to which I was mistreating myself.
I remember a particular occasion when I was teaching one of my trademark power vinyasa classes. I was barking out my well prepared sequence and, instead of my usual attention to everyone’s alignment, I happened to be noticing the facial expressions of the people in my class.
They looked miserable. They were filled with struggle and strain, just doing their best to get through and not enjoying themselves much in the process. There was a distinct lack of joy.
Afterwards, several students came up to thank me and tell me how great the class was. It made me feel uncomfortable. Walking home, I kept thinking: “What am I doing?”
Fact is, I was proficient in the practice I was teaching but it was not really helping me feel well. I had a lot of chronic pain that I rarely admitted to, even to myself. I was convinced it meant “opening.” Shortly thereafter, I blew my knee out doing Baddhakonasana with a belt and an assist. For all my diligent studies and abilities, super yogi couldn’t walk.
Around that same time, a friend of mine attended a large yoga event in NYC with a venerable teacher, considered to be a living “master.” She was one of a very small percentage of the 600 participants to have the guru assist her in one of her poses, only to have her hamstring connector popped at his forceful hand. I remember seeing her several days later, she was still in considerable pain.
Experiences like this have often left me feeling horribly disenchanted with the yoga community. The issue of overly forceful assists aside, how can yoga teachers who espouse ahimsa not be held accountable for harm done under their auspices? Adding insult to injury, common in hip yoga circles today is to cite ahimsa as a case for veganism. Basically, Patanjali says that if you want to be a real yogi then you can’t eat animal products.
I have been vegetarian for twenty years. I was vegan for three of them but it left me somewhat anemic. Introducing eggs and cheese into my diet made me feel better. I continue to maintain a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet because that’s what feels right for me, not because I think eating meat is wrong. I do try to eat organic but I don’t know exactly where all the eggs and cheese I eat is coming from, nor do I know the treatment of the animals who provide me this food.
While it would be nice if this were different and modern food production was not so dictated by corporate profits, I still think it strains common sense to suggest that my eating habits constitute violence. Especially, when the assertion comes from teachers who do not take personal responsibility for injuries that readily happen in their classes.
Another way ahimsa can be translated is “loving kindness and compassion.” There is a big difference between simply being nonviolent and actually being kind. I figure, if you can learn to show yourself and others genuine kindness, which most certainly includes not over working and harming your body in practice, and you enjoy eating meat, you’re still gonna be OK with the yoga powers that be.
It’s been my misfortune to discover that yoga teachers and practitioners who preach the loudest about veganism are often the most brutal on their own bodies, or their students bodies. Ahimsa seems to me to be last thing on their minds
Mostly this comes across as a justification for an eating disorder, body image issues and a manifestation of a rigid mindset, although there are exceptions.
While being a vegan is all the rage, I often wonder why Patanjali’s Sutras are taken as the ultimate rationale for the western beliefs and practices of Hatha Yoga? Asana practice is Hatha yoga and Patanjali actually has very little to say about Hatha Yoga.
The Hatha Yoga Pradipika is a manual of hatha yoga practice and yet it is largely ignored, because studying it would take a little effort, and scholarship. It’s so easy to quote sutras that are aphorisms – you can make them mean anything you want them to.
Niki,
I’m afraid it’s true. Patanjali did say that Yogis must be vegetarian.
A Yogi must be vegetarian, because the Hindu science of Yoga proscribes violence towards the defenceless, via the Principle of Ahimsa, which is enshrined within the Hindu science of Yoga. Ahimsa must not be confused with cowardice, for participation in a Dharma-Yudh (a noble, selfless war, fought against the forces of evil, in order to uphold righteousness) is not only encouraged, it is demanded of all right-thinking men and women.
Every discipline makes certain demands of its disciples. This holds true for any of the Oriental martial arts such as Kung-fu, Karate, Tae-kwon-do, etc.
And just so does the Hindu science of Yoga demand vegetarianism from its disciples.
One cannot have one’s Mat AND one’s Meat. So, we must choose wisely !
If you don’t know the difference between the terms ‘vegan’ and ‘vegetarian’, there’s very little that can be said
Vegetarian is a good starting point for a Yogi, with Vegan being the desired goal.
Veganism is *not* the desired goal. Reading the older texts, they clearly indicate ghee is considered a sattvic (and thereby desireable) food, as are some other animal products. You are importing a Jainist notion of ahimsa (or more likely, a Western, leftist view of animal rights or environmentalism) into the Yogic nutritional recommendations based on ayurveda.
Hey Chris-
Respectfully, Yoga predates Hinduism. The “Hindu Science of Yoga”, as you refer to it, represents only one strain of classical yoga, which is based on a dualistic framework and is a departure from the “Pre-Classical” or “Archaic” origins of Yoga. As Georg Feuerstein, a prominent Yoga scholar, writes:
“Archaic Yoga is nothing like Patanjali’s well-known eightfold path or the better known approach of Hatha-Yoga with its elaborate arsenal of postures (asana). From what we can gather from the Vedic hymns, Archaic Yoga was less individualistic and, like shamanism, more intrinsically linked to the weal of the community rather than the salvation of the individual. Its principle concern was to discover cosmic order through inspired inner vision, and to help preserve that order in the realm of human interaction through appropriate attitudes and actions.”
Having offered that, Sanskrit texts are open to wide interpretation. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras can be interpreted in non-dual, dual and religious ways. I only mean to represent my viewpoint. You are certainly entitled to yours.
I might add that while there are parallels between Yoga and martial arts, there are some fundamental differences (“martial” being the key word.) I also take some issue with the notion that Yoga demands anything of us. Yoga is a fact. Breath coming in and out, heart beating, sun, moon and stars circumambulating, Life is occurring. Yoga.
Yoga does not demand anything of us. Perhaps it asks something of us but it need not demand. Male doctrine holders who have co-opted Yoga as a vehicle for power and influence make demands. Yoga is a nurturing force that expresses itself as Life.
JB,
Quote : “From what we can gather from the Vedic hymns, Archaic Yoga was less individualistic and, like shamanism, more intrinsically linked to the weal of the community rather than the salvation of the individual.” End-quote.
Vedic Hymns = Hinduism.
So, Yoga is a Hindu science, a Hindu practice. Hinduism is the source, the mother of Yoga.
So, Yoga could not possibly predate Hinduism.
Yoga does too demand vegetarianism. However, you are right, Yoga asks gently, nicely, not rudely
.
“Vedic Hymns = Hinduism”
I respectfully disagree. Hinduism may have evolved out of the early hymns but, as far as I know, there is no mention of Hindu deities in the Rig-Veda.
At least we can agree that Yoga is not rude.
Cheers.
It is woven through Buddhism, Hinduism & Jainism…
What no mention of that kid who took your Squirmels and pushed you into the wall so that you needed stitches? Fights with your brother don’t count?
Brothers horsing around and ruining their parents night out definitely does not count. Haven’t thought of Squirmels in years.
Not wanting to fight does not equal being truly non-violent or being kind. some folks(and families) are brutal with words and other actions that don’t leave bruises. Childhood aggression, anger, frustration and status seeking is expressed through name-calling, shunning, ignoring, “teasing,” laughing at, and not helping as well as through pushing tripping, pinching, shoving & punching and we al have to learn to own not just reject those feelings as we learn to control them. La Tisha’s push could have been delivered in anger at the mean kid or in the almost automatic fear for everyone’s safety a caretaker child learns very young—I kept on breaking up fights all my life to protect my little bro, then the taunted special kid to drunken grownups as a grownup–it comes in part from having seen people hurt but it’s not necessarily from a place of calm unless you’re the teacher and you’re sure none of the kids have knives.
And the kids who act it out are not necessarily any more angry or mean or violent than the ones who hide—often it’s just what’s normal & expected in their family/neighborhood.
I don’t think ahimsa is just a a style you or I choose because it suits our nature. I think it’s a challenge for anyone. Wasn’t it your superior or at least equally aggressive combat in the “war of words” that escalated the playground dispute ? He couldn’t get you to stop whatever upsetting things you were saying so he pinned you. And did you stop the verbal aggression then?
It’s fine to rank & rate what is “worse” harm and/or acceptable harm, helpful to your students(as a new reader of your blog, I’d gratefully count myself as one) to explain your philosophy, but the implication that particular vegan teachers have specifically called you out for eating eggs and cheese while repeatedly injuring students seems like a very serious and scary situation apart from how you made your decision.
Was the guru even a vegan, and how did that influence his behavior? I’ve been had unwanted, unexpected forced painful positioning from two senior teacher and while I would not generalize based on their school/training/masters to others of their training, neither were vegans. As a matter of fact, both followed strong aryuvedic tradition–very anti-vegan re diet. The one who injured me to the point of yes not being able to walk, surgery recommended physical therapy & yoga hiatus was an aryuvedic practioner, very anti-vegan. The style of guru who feels comfortable pushing you deeper without knowing anything more about your joints or muscles except that you are not squatting low enough can be attributed to many influences more traditional and widespread in the last 150 years of yoga than veganism!
J Brown! Where have you been all these years? I wish more yoga teachers had your introspection.
Another take on the issues J Brown brings up in this post:
My mother, who lives in India and is a yoga instructor there, has been a vegetarian for about two decades. When she was visiting me in Spain, when we ate out I would always enter these conversations with the waiters about vegetarian food (e.g. green beans sauteed with bits of jamon serrano is considered “vegetarian”). After a few days my mom asked me to stop insisting on the vegetarianism, on the grounds that the principle of ahimsa would entail not causing undue inconvenience to others, and that under those circumstances adherence to “vegetarianism” demonstrated ego and unhealthy attachment.
On the grounds of letting go of her vanity, a few years prior to the above time she had stopped dyeing her hair.
For more than two decades, The Yoga Institute in Mumbai has been clearly stating that there are NO additional physical or mental health benefits to doing head stands as opposed to shoulder stands, and head stands entail assuming greater risk of injury. So if you are doing head stands, ask yourself why you are doing them.
Greetings. Another very interesting post. Here are my comments. Just note that I like to criticize things and sometimes don’t know a gentle way to deliver what I think should be said, so I am sorry if some of my remarks are too straightforward.
“I remember deciding to hit him but . . .I am not naturally inclined towards violence.” — I have no mention that this is a very interesting conclusion. Deciding to hit someone after a verbal argument shows, I’d say, a certain natural inclination towards violence. Conversely, it is clear that the other boy had a natural desire to protect himself after being physically attacked. Thus, even if he was naturally peaceful, perhaps he got scared. Thus, there is not enough information to determine, who of the two was more naturally inclined towards violence, if this can be compared at all based on a single incident.
“I am not naturally inclined towards violence. Even as a boy, I recognized that this was not true of everyone. As an adult, it makes sense that I embrace a life philosophy that puts a premium on nonviolence.” — this makes sense. However, it makes equal sense that someone else naturally inclined towards violence would embrace a life philosophy that puts a premium on violence. Rich people embrace a life philosophy that puts a premium on being rich, which may be atheism/rationalism/liberalism/conservatism, and poor people embrace a life philosophy that puts a premium on being poor, which may be Christianity/some other moral or ethical code. People choose what’s convenient for them. I would hope that there is more to ahimsa than that.
“Aligning myself with Yoga turned something that I had always seen as a weakness into a strength.” — unfortunately not. In my understanding, sometimes you may have to physically harm someone in order to stay true to ahimsa – perhaps to protect someone else. Of course, you have to see clearly to not make a terrible mistake, yet our world is too complex. Even if we want to insist on not physically harming anyone, which sounds great, we would like to do it out of a clear vision, out of openness, not out of inability to harm anyone.
“Yet, somewhere along the way, an unconscious loophole developed. While I was incapable of intentionally doing others wrong, I seemed to have no problem doing considerable inadvertent harm to myself. ” — I’d say that this is not a loophole, but a confirmation of what I said earlier. True nonviolence towards others – at least this is my understanding – starts from true nonviolence towards oneself. Otherwise we simply get an inability to harm someone else, which seems to be a weakness.
“Shortly thereafter, I blew my knee out doing Baddhakonasana with a belt and an assist.” – Oh, I did stupid things too. For example, I used to practice the classical Pilates sequence every day that had the Roll over a.k.a. Halasana as #3. I guess Joe Pilates put it as #3 assuming that it would be done the right way, engaging all the right muscles. One day something went loose in my back when I threw my legs over my had, as prescribed, and, indeed, it took me a couple of hours before I could walk and I few days before I was free from my pain.
“I was barking out…” – well, to me this certainly sounds as a lack of compassion towards oneself.
“The issue of overly forceful assists aside…” — actually, my first yoga teacher was not doing any assists at all, as far as I remember, or very few, and there was nothing wrong with it. Here is her website: http://www.christinesyoga.com She probably did something right, since I have become a yoga teacher myself. She obviously knows a lot about hands on as a practitioner of Jin Shin Jyutsu and as a massage therapist – I believe she was already doing all that when I studied with her. Yet somehow she rarely used touch in class. I actually think that yoga assists as alignment corrections are overrated. Hands-on assists are rarely used in ballet/modern dance classes, if at all. Most of the yoga assists that I have experienced in my life had questionable value and occasionally caused moderate damage. Turning the head further in a seated spinal twist, gently moving the shoulder joint out of alignment to make the arm go directly up in revolved triangle, rotating the torso further into a twist in the extended side angle – how useful is that? Helping to lean deeper in Paschimottanasana, then suddenly ending the assist so the muscles immediately contracted to where they were, adding “grounding” in the pigeon pose so that it was straining the ligaments in the knee… I do remember a few teachers who gave me great assists on some occasion, and, if I remember correctly, none of them were experienced yoga teachers with a big following. I have to admit though, that many experienced yoga teachers that I know also do very few assists, perhaps choosing not to do anything when they can’t do anything useful. Some of the good assists I can recall were: aligning the pelvis in the center in the pigeon pose (leaning forward) when it was tilted to one side, aligning the feet to face directly forward in downward dog when they were facing diagonally in or out.
Regarding vegetarianism/veganism:
“Basically, Patanjali says that if you want to be a real yogi then you can’t eat animal products.” — wait, wait, wait… There is no such things as “a real yogi”. Patanjali never said anything like that, did he? Being “a real yogi” is in itself a hip thing. Besides, we are talking about Patanjali’s yoga as a path. There is no end, no arriving at the destination, unless we are talking about enlightenment. Thich Nhat Hanh wrote “Peace is every step” -or, if you prefer, recall A.J.Muste’s “There is no way to peace, peace is the way”.
I do feel that vegetarianism naturally follows from the principle of ahimsa, at least on some level. I am not yet there myself, but I am starting to see how I can arrive there. I probably would try even today if I were not afraid for my own well-being. I feel that I can do so much more good for the world, and it would be stupid and uncompassionate if I allowed myself to suffer and perhaps die in misery in order to become and stay vegetarian. However unethical it may be considered, I do feel that I have other priorities. I do feel sorry for not being vegetarian too. However, at the same time I feel that many of the people preaching vegetarianism do not see all the complexity of the world they live in or choose not to see this complexity. In other words, many of the people preaching vegetarianism are not being truthful.
I would even go as far as to say that the movement of ethical vegetarianism is in itself spreading violence, at least on some level. In my yoga school one of the assigned readings was a book by Sharon Gannon. No, they did not push us to agree with it, they just wanted us to read it and to take a note. Well, the book certainly did make me feel uncomfortable. Perhaps the karma of eating animals is indeed very strong – the book made me feel disgusted. When shortly thereafter I saw that Sharon Gannon was giving a lecture in a school where I did my training, I also felt disgusted with the school where I did my training – the only time in my life. I was something like “how dare this piece of garbage come and spew her nonsense at such a nice community…”
Interesting, right? I had never had any opinion about vegetarianism prior to the yoga school. I had always thought that this was simply a way of spending money when one couldn’t afford meat. I was introduced to the ideas of ethical vegetarianism through this book, I wrote a short essay as assigned, we had a small discussion, and that was about it. How come it made me so anxious that every the very image of Sharon Gannon made me disgusted? If her book alienated me so much – also a dancer, at that time almost also a yoga teacher, also a person deeply interested in philosophy – what can be said about a general population?
While I fundamentally agree with the general precepts of the vegetarian movement, even leaving aside the issues of healthy nutrition and the general applicability of a vegetarian diet, it seems to me that the vegetarian movement in the modern United States is essentially a hip trend, a large group of fanatics who don’t have much solid knowledge about the subject of their devotion, and thus, basically, a bad and dangerous thing that has little to do with compassion and nonviolence.
Thus, I offer the following, modified, zen-inspired slogan: “If you are not vegetarian, then you are not doing yoga. If you are vegetarian, then you are definitely not doing yoga.”