The yamas have snuck up on me
One of the things I set out with the intention of writing about on this blog was the yamas, the yoga code of social ethics. I couldn’t really get round to it though as, to be honest, it seemed a little bit dull. I didn’t have much to say and it seemed much more interesting writing about the crazy characters and mind-bending ideas of zen. It also helped that I’ve read a few books about zen so I can pretend to know more about zen than I can about the yoga yamas. This feeling was compounded by the fact that I can’t in any way claim to have lived or to be living a particularly virtuous life. In my defense, I guess I could say that it’s something I’m working on … 
Looking back though, it turns out that I have actually been writing about the yamas all along, all be it in a practical, applied ethics kind of way. So, by way of a summary, here is how I looked at the five yoga yamas:
- Ahimsa अहिंसा Non-violence = don’t eat meat
- Satya सत्य Truthfulness = don’t say anything
- Asteya अस्तेय Nonstealing = don’t eat fish from the sea
- Brahmacharya ब्रह्मचर्य Nonexcess = don’t eat too much
- Aparigrahaअपरिग्रह Nonpossessiveness = don’t own so much
These definitions for the yamas come from the great book, The Yamas and Niyamas, written by Deborah Adele. You may want to check out her blog.
