Santosha

Last post, I mentioned ahimsa. Ahimsa is one of the five yama, the univeral ethics principles that guide our interactions with others. Today, one of the niyamas is on my mind, santosha, contentment. Niyamas, simply put, are principles that guide or interaction internally. Not that these are distinct realms, but I find it useful to think about ethics both as how I comport myself with respect to others and also in terms of what I do with respect to self-comportment.

For example, I like many people, have a inner samsakara that says, do more work harder, be better, a very future oriented outlook and it is a great deal of work for me to stay focused on the present moment and not get overwhelmed by all I think I have do to.

The niyama that addresses this tendency is santosha, contentment. Yesterday, I was listening to Patrica Walden's reading of Light on Life and in that book BKS remarks, that we should be content with even "a little progress." Of course, he also says we should strive to continual improve but to do it with contentment. Then, I was practicing Ardha Matysendrasana yesterday in a class and low and behold I could feel the inside of my pelvic bone with my back hand. Now I was not holding the inner thigh mind you, but I did get the other side of the pelvic bone which is clearly on the way to the thigh.

The day before that, I had spent 12 minutes trying various stages of that pose and M3 not really even going for the clasps but working on getting length and rotation with the rope wall. It was great because the notion of progress wasn't on my mind, it just happened, well, it did not just happen but I really was content with the small progress.

Then this morning the philosophy works quote of the day, is “If there are people at once rich and content, be assured that they are content because they know how to be so, not because they are rich.”

Charles Wagner
(1852 – 1918)
French reformed pastor

I like this quote because it gets at the heart of a mistake of the mind that we often make about contentment. We often think it has to do with what we have or don't have, but really it is a skill, something we either know how to do or don't know how to do. The good news about that, of course, is that like any skill, we can acquire it through practice.