The topic for the English Satsang on Sunday, 10th March, 2013 was ‘Niyamas.’
Following is the transcript of the speech made by Dr. Jayadeva Yogendra on the topic.
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Listen to the audio:
“The Yamas are considered as negative – don’t hurt, don’t tell lies – and all that. The Niyamas are positive – maintain cleanliness of the mind and the body and various such things. However, these remain more like instructions, injunctions, advice. These have to occur from within. This kind of feeling we don’t have. We generally look for prodding, orders, and then we are able to follow something. A good student of yoga, he has made a change from within and these kinds of proddings come naturally. You remain contented, that becomes a habit, you remain satisfied because you don’t have any false ambitions. The difficulty is that we don’t give much thought to these basics in our life. These are just some advises that we have received in our school time but which we have never examined or never tried to work out into our life. The results are that ours becomes a very irregular life, lot of tension.
Now a person learning yoga, he tries to handle the life, tries to set it in the correct lines and as a result he has less problems, less worries, less anxieties. Niyamas are as important as the Yamas. Yamas tell us what we should not do and Niyamas tell us what we should do. If we can understand the value of these mentions, we would become very different. Right from our heart, we would resist certain things, deep down we would try to carry out certain things and that would provide us the uniqueness that come what may, somethings I just cant do. See, right from my childhood, I was educated in this fashion. So later on, the right kind of conduct used to come very naturally. No force, no orders, it was natural and it continued. Many opportunities came, but I just didn’t carry out. When I passed with distinction in my university exams, opportunities were there, people came to pick me up for good jobs and what not. But I had decided; never looked right or left, just a straight narrow path and at least today, I am internally quite satisfied and generally people are also satisfied that I can be trusted and I am a useful member of the society. So Yamas and Niyamas, they go together and they have lot of meaning.”
Satsang is an open meeting held every Sunday from 9:30 to 10:30 am at The Yoga Institute, Santacruz East, Mumbai. It involves an interesting presentation to the public, made by the students of the Teacher Training Course. Each week, a new presentation of a Yogic concept is made in a simple way through skits and decoration for the general public, followed by a short speech from our Gurus, Dr. Jayadeva and Smt. Hansaji Yogendra.