Why yoga students are vegetarian

[Guest guest]

Hello everybody.

 

I thought we'd just post some of the reasons why we're vegetarian.

 

Our family is vegetarian because the entire family are yoga

students/practitioners. The three kids are vegetarian since

conception. Ages 19,14 and 6. I have been in this lifestyle for 27

years and my spouse for around 24 years.

 

We to ananda marga yoga (anandamarga.org)which was founded

in 1955 by its guru or preceptor, Shrii Shrii Anandamurtii.

 

In our yoga practice, meditation is done twice a day and diet is

controlled. While there are other yoga systems which do not require a

change in lifestyle, this one does.

 

This yoga believes that the strongest driving force of human

existence is the drive for mental and spiritual expansion. Anything

that obstructs that natural propensity is bad and anything that helps

this advancement is good. This yoga believes that no one has the

right to obstruct the mental and spiritual progress of any being in

the universe and that the universe is the common patrimony of all

beings - not only human.

 

Through experimentation and direct experience, yoga masters from time

immemorial have come to the conclusion that inflicting pain

(disrupting another being's neural structure) obstructs one's

progress and others.

 

While some have taken this position to the extreme, Anandamurti,

however, has adjusted the practice owing to the fact that it is

impossible to exist within the relative world and not cause some pain

(stepping on grass or insects while walking). Since plants do

have a developed neural structure as animals, they experience less

pain. So in this practice vegetarianism is accepted as a compromise,

the objective being, to cause the least pain.

 

In this practice, food is classified as -

 

- sentient - good for the body and the mind (spiritual practice) ;

example : fruits and vegetables

 

- mutative - good for the body or the mind but indifferent to the

other. Example : coffee

 

- static - bad for the body and the mind

Example : meat, intoxicants

 

There are notable exceptions to the above. If the ambient temperature

becomes very cold, some static food becomes mutative and mutative

become sentient. This becomes interesting for such places which

are snowbound most of the year and you only have a yak herd !

 

We have a hatha yoga (asanas) component to our lifestyle.

Caution ! One has to be vegetarian if hatha yoga is practised

or else it could be injurious, inspite of what others say.

 

Formal meditation is practised by sitting in lotus position

and stepping through an internal ideation process prescribed

by the yoga teacher. The ideation ultimately goes through

an incantitative process which uses a personal mantra. By

perfecting this process, the student attains spiritual

absorption into the Cosmic consciousness and the goal

of human life is attained. Simple to explain but hard to

do. It is very difficult (not impossible) for anybody who

eats static food (non vegetarian) to do this process.

 

That's all for now and hoping to meet all of you

some time.

 

Krsna and Shaalaja