Path Of Yoga

He excels who has sameness of appreciation (or valuation - buds towards well-wishers, friends, enemies, strangers, neutrals, haters, and kinsmen, and even saints and sinners

  

Another verse speaks of him as regarding a lump of earth, a rock, or gold as the same. It states that he is also perfectly poised amidst cold and heat, pleasure and pain, respect and contumely. And why so? Because he is satisfied with knowledge and experience, and above all with the Self within Because he recognizes the value of all these things for the inner man he is not only not emotionally upset, but he is positively pleased. It does not mean that he is physically - insensitive to cold and heat Though yoga practices in connexion with breathing and relaxation do make him very adaptable in this respect) but that his emotional attitude IS calm.

As the path of yoga is one of definite endeavours, as listed in the remaining six limbs (angas) it should be clearly understood that the aspirant is accepting gladly all the adverse circumstances that arise, regarding them as opportunity, instead of lamenting the situation. It is similar to the doctrine of the Stoic, Epictetus, who declared, 'There is only one thing for which God has sent me into the world, and that is to develop every kind of virtue or strength, and there is nothing in all the world that I cannot use for this purpose.'

Further, it is generally believed that the circumstances which arrive 'without effort which means not as the result of our immediate or recent action - are not purely accidental, but are related to our defects and merits of character, on account of which we did some actions in the past even in past lives which have caused this experience now. This is, quite akin to a modern view expressed by the first Henry

Ford When being interviewed by a news reporter he happened to remark that he never made a mistake. The reporter, surprised, asked for an explanation, and was told, 'Of course, I have done many things ignorantly and sometimes without sufficient thought, but I learned from those actions, and would not have learned otherwise, so they were not fundamentally mistakes.

In India there is also a definite doctrine of 'fate' with regard to events which is expounded in the Bhagavad Grits. There the teacher says:

Learn from me the five lines of causation (which appear) in the achievement of every action, as stated in the concluding portion of the sdnkhya (philosophy):

(I) The site for it;

(2) The Doer of It;

(3) The Different Kinds of Instruments Used In It;

(4) The Various Different Kinds of Functions (Or Motions) Employed; And

(5) The Divinity (or Fate). Whatever Action A Man Undertakes Whether in the right way or in the wrong way - these five are the causes of it.

It may not occur lo the reader at first glance, but the fifth of these reasons always comes in. The average Hindu is therefore in accord with the statement of Robert Burns, that 'the best laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft agley'. More than that, we may always expect an unseen (adrishta) element to come in, which may in fact upset a good plan or, on the other hand, bring a bad one to a successful conclusion.