ahimsa

i picked up a booklet called yoga life by johanna maheshvari mosca. it's a brief guide to the yamas and niyamas, the yogic ethic and moral codes. there are five yamas (restraints) and five niyamas (observances), making ten total, not unlike the ten commandments of the western bible, but without wrath of god bearing down in thou-shalts. the first yama is ahimsa, non-violence. it is the foundation upon which the remaining yamas and niyamas rest. from the book:

Ahimsa is non-harming, non-violence, non-killing. It is gentleness, compassion and love for all living beings. Ahimsa teaches us to refrain from harming any being including ourselves. It teaches us to love unconditionally. Every word, thought or action that involves judgement, anger, greed, lust or attachment is a form of violence to be avoided.

i first learned of the yamas/niyamas a few years ago. while they seemed beautiful and enligtened to me then, i feel i'm just now beginning to grasp their deeper significance and giving them the space and time in my life to resonate. understanding how anger is violent isn't difficult. the products of anger, yelling and fighting for instance, are obviously violent. but lust is another story. it's taken all my faculties to grasp how lust, which since puberty i've confused with love and intimacy, is violent. growing up gay, white, upper-middle class and american in the 1970s, the birth decade of the modern gay movement, i came to believe that lust, lusting, talking about lust and acting on it was part of the freedom of being openly and joyously gay. not only that, it was expected. being gay and unsexual is practically taboo. i was once asked to leave a bar because it seemed to those in charge that i was suspiciously unlustful. in years since then i've proved to myself that i can be as lustful as the next gay guy, visiting bathhouses, going home with strangers, sleeping with lots of guys in a single night.

it took a wrenching relationship steeped in lust and attachment to bring the pitfalls of disregarding ahimsa to light, to open my eyes to the snare trap that lust and attachment are. it's taken me a couple years to right myself after that entanglement and, thankfully, compassion and unconditional love won over bitterness, resentment and hurt. the pain of that relationship has been my greatest teacher, my guru. the moment i stopped judging, condemning and rejecting—the moment i stopped being violent to both myself and my lover—the hurt began to dissipate as if, quite literally, i stopped beating myself (this happened unexpectedly and very quickly about four in the morning after weeks of sleepless agonizing). it wasn't until i recognized the violence of my insatiable lust for him—and all the pain it wrought—that i was able to find my way to a deep and sustaining love for myself and for him.