Inside Yoga 42 (11/9/11)

During the summer in the UK some of our cities experienced riots and looting. The debates ever since have focussed on why this happened, and to some extent, many voices highlighted that many of the rioters were simply looters driven by greed and the desire to have certain goods.

I have toyed with the idea of writing about this topic for weeks, which explains why I am writing this so long after the heat of the battle. The question for me was how does this relate to yoga or rather how do I explain the link, as I did see the connection the day these riots happened? And now I have decided to write.

In the spiritual traditions – and this goes for all of them – a sense of connection (note that the word “yoga” means union) is what the individual seeks in their practice. When we feel bad, angry, upset, and other such emotions, we feel separate and disconnected – whether to our body, our family, our community around us.

This is what many people, from the media to government bodies, said about the rioters and looters; that these people, many of them young, do not feel a part of our society. I am not expecting the government to sentence those found guilty to yoga, though perhaps that is not such a bad idea. In some prisons, meditation teachers and yoga teachers do visit prisons and teach prisoners.

The root of this problem – the rioting and in particular the looting – also lies in the way we have developed as a society. I do feel that we can a trace a change in attitude back to the years of Margaret Thatcher, who was Prime Minister in the 1980s. She famously said: “There is no society”. Her type of political economy drove the mentality that the individual is most important and critically, that greed is OK. She perhaps worded this differently, but in essence she encouraged greed and making as much money as possible. In the Eighties the Yuppie was born and given freedom to do what they could to make money – and they did, and they kept running riot.

So instead of putting community and a sense of collective responsibility first, the principles of selfishness and greed took root in our society, and by the 1990s it had become normal, and acceptable. There were, of course, many who objected to this, but it continued. And carried on until 2008, when suddenly we woke up to the bank crisis and then it all changed. It was as if we came out of a party, hung-over and suddenly thought “what did we do last night?” and surveyed the mess that had been caused.

So even though we realised the greed of bankers had caused the problems we now face, and changes have been made, the negative products from decades of selfish greed were still here, and are still here. We have spent decades surrounded and immersed in a consumerist society, driven by our greed and the need to have whatever we want – hence the looters irrational choices of items, from TVs to a bottle of wine. We have built up debts to buy those things we want, we feel it is our right to own whatever we want and certainly whatever the “others” have.

It has become so widespread that most of us don’t even suspect that might be anything wrong with the way we need to so many things in our lives, and must drive up debts to get them, or in the case of the riots, steal to get them.

Everywhere we turn there are teasers and things to tempt us, inviting us to own this and that, from the advertising to the magazines about how the rich and celebs live these days. No wonder so many of us feel we must have all these objects to make our lives feel complete.

That’s the mess we are in as a society, but the question you might be asking is “what has this to do with yoga?” and to put it simply, “everything”. To expand upon this one word answer there are many ways in which yoga and also the Buddha’s teachings deal with this topic.

Underlying all of this is our human need to feel happy and good about ourselves. Our modern society has gone so far down the path of rampant consumerism that we tend to think having as many things as possible will make us happy, or as much money as possible will bring us contentment. So many people in our modern society have spent themselves into debt while others simply looted shops – both driven by the desire to “have”.

Contentment, happiness, a sense of peace – whatever we want to call it – is found within, without conditions (ie not dependent upon anyone or anything). It might sound like a cliché, as it’s often said, and many of us will have heard this message before many times, but the truth is (as many a wise person has taught, and some of us have found the hard way) that it does lie within. Whatever we do to obtain “happiness” from outside the solution is not only inside but simple.

There is a simple proverb: “the more we have, the more we worry”.

But before you think this is saying we must not have anything, then read on. One of the principle teachings of the Buddha is about attachment, or rather learning detachment as a path to happiness and enlightenment. So this means we learn not to grasp and cling onto things and people. It does mean we can be wealthy and own many possessions, but we learn to own without attachment, and still be happy; and also, we might have very little, but equally we learn to not be attached to our worldly possessions, however few they might be.

Our happiness does not lie in the goods we own.

The teaching about desire is also a key element in this topic. We are driven by our desires, and there are times when we are not in control of this urge; from a desire for a person or an attractive object in a shop. The polar opposite of this emotion is aversion and hatred. You could say that the rioters were driven by anger and hatred (of society/police etc) at the outset, and then when the shops came into view, desire for this and that took over.

The solution is cultivating an awareness of how desire/aversion drives us in our lives. This is a meditational practice, where we look inside to see how we are and then turn it into a living practice when we go out into the world.

This is a hard nut to crack, especially if we are addicted to our consumerist society, but not an impossible nut to crack. We learn to appreciate what we have in our lives and what we do not have. We learn to drop our desires, and control them – especially if this means tightening our consumerist belt to an affordable limit. And yes, it’s hard not to desire all these nice things that our society presents to us as objects to want.

Learning to be aware of our desires and to control them is the key to living a life that is balanced and happy.

So this is where I believe yoga philosophy and the Buddha’s teachings understand our problems, and point a way out: learning that happiness is within, learning about our attachment and cultivating detachment, and learning to control the emotions of desire and aversion.

And one last thing to add to the debate; an important teaching within yoga and Buddhism is simplicity.  Over the last few decades we have lost sight of this, we appear to need so many gadgets and objects in our lives. No wonder many of feel we have no time. We have crammed so much into our lives no wonder it feels hard. And we now believe we must have it all. Why? Do we really need all of this in our lives? I think not.