The Common Basis of Every Type of Yoga

[Guest guest]

HARI AUM

 

The following page was culled out from :

http://www.yoga-age.com/modern/philosophy/phylosophy18.html

A fairly good one.

 

Regards

 

Balagopal

 

NARAYANA NARAYANA NARAYANA

 

Adherence to Virtue—The Common Basis of Every Type of

Yoga

 

The Bhagavad Gita throws a lot of light upon this

important dimension of your life. All the different

Yogas, though apparently different in their structure,

in their composition, in their outer form, are

fundamentally one in the ultimate analysis. How?

Because, all these Yogas ultimately raise the Jiva or

the individual being who has fallen into a very gross

state into the net of desires, selfishness, bondage

and ignorance. Basically, all the Yogas have this

common motive or intention to take the individual out

of his present predicament and gradually help him to

ascend higher into a different state of experience and

consciousness. They all have this identical objective

or motivation or aim. Therefore, in order to achieve

this, you have to first shake off the present state of

consciousness in order to free yourself, somehow or

the other, from the prison-house of your present state

of being, where you are completely enslaved by your

ego, by selfishness, greed, anger, passion, envy,

jealousy, hatred, pettiness and meanness. The normal

human individual has so many defects in him that all

Yogas lay down the taking up of firm vows to adhere to

certain principles of higher life. That takes the life

immediately from a lower plane to a higher plane. That

helps the person to get established in a higher level

of living. It is righteous living, noble living,

virtuous living, not unrighteous living, not hating

and yelling, not violence and dishonesty, not impurity

and evil. So, irrespective of whether you are a

student of Vedanta or Bhakti Yoga or Raja Yoga, first

of all you have to rise up from your present state. No

matter what Yoga you may be practising or you may want

to practise, the common basis is Dharma or

righteousness of life; the common basis is the

adoption of certain noble, ethical principles to live

by; the common basis is adherence to virtue. So,

character building, Sadachara, right conduct, good

conduct, becoming established in a noble pattern of

moral and ethical life, righteousness in life—this has

to be the firm basis, whether you are a Vedantin or a

Bhakta or a Raja Yogi or a Hatha Yogi or a Japa Yogi

or a Sankirtan Yogi, whether you are practising Zen or

whether you are practising Christian Yoga or Sufi

Yoga, no matter what particular background you come

from, whether you are Jew, Christian, Muslim or Parsi.

Higher life demands that you lay the firm foundation

of a blameless, ethical and moral life bidding goodbye

once and for all to the ugliness of the ego and its

manifestations of selfishness, crookedness,

cunningness, falsehood, dishonesty, deceit and all

other types of lower impurities. You can have no truck

with these undivine factors any longer if you really

mean business, if you are really earnest and sincere.

That is the plain truth. So, in this matter of an

ethical foundation, all Yogas are one, fundamentally

one.

 

 

 

 

Once upon a time there was 1 GB storage on Mail. Go here for happy

ending http://in.mail.