Our study group session fell at the end of Harmony week/day and i would like to include a description of the origins of this day.

It was written by Tarang Chawla, a writer and activist.

“ Today is what we in Australia call Harmony Day. Except that’s not really what it is, is it?

Elsewhere, today is the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. In Australia it was re-branded to Harmony Day by John Howard but the origins of the day matter.

This day is held annually on March 21 because in 1960, police in Sharpeville, South Africa, shot and killed 250 Black people who were peacefully protesting against apartheid.

As a grandchild of refugees, i think of stories of how on 13 April 1919 at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar a crowd had peacefully gathered in protest and were fired upon by the British Army. Over 1,000 people were killed. The bullet holes are still there in the brick walls.

Rabindranath Tagor, the first asian Nobel Laureate renounced his knighthood in response to the shootings.Meanwhile, the man responsible for killing innocent people initially received accolades for his acts instead of condemnation!

History is littered with such examples, across continents and generations but let’s not pretend that racism is somehow fixed because of promoting “harmony”.

Right now children in Gaza are being killed at an alarming rate.

Israeli hostages are being held and the humanitarian crisis is more heartbreaking and concerning with each passing moment.

In Australia we live on land where sovereignty was never ceded.The doctrine of terra nullius was used to take land away from the original inhabitants. The descendants of those Aboriginal people continue to persevere and survive. Their very existence is a political act of resistance.

Let’s remember what today is really about. This is a day to recognize racial discrimination.Prejudice. Bigotry. And these have no place here or anywhere.

The way this day was changed isn’t about true harmony. Don’t let nice sentiments cloud reality. At its core, today is a day to acknowledge that racism is alive and well and that we all have a duty to end it”

Context and relevance matters a lot in Yoga.

We talked about the quite common misconception that yoga is not ancient and in one case the idea that it originated in New York in the 1980s and was created by Bikram Choudhury!!

This is a common argument made by those considering Asana based physical practice as “Yoga” Neither yoga nor asana practice is 100 years old and there is plenty of evidence(engravings and writing over 1000 years old) to prove it.Many seem to have misinterpreted recent scholarly works on modern yoga and exaggerated this point.

For some, Yoga has been dumbed down to “a gentle way of stretching” since the arrival of faster, dynamic ways of doing asana from the 60’s through the 90’s.This is one way that culture is sacrificed for consumerism

No one is perfect but be curious, explore, learn from a proper source and keep growing as a sincere practitioner.

We also talked of how BKS Iyengar began his practice and his Institute. He was born in 1918, in 1910 Yoga was declared illegal and punishable by death.

During Iyengar’s lifetime Indians were forbidden to travel overseas. But he still did it.

A simple yet poignant reminder from the Bhagavad Gita.

Be your own friend.

In Chapter 6, Verse 5, Bhagavad Gita asks us to transform ourselves by becoming our own friend. It says “ raise yourself by yourself, for the self can be the friend and also the enemy.”

If you help yourself grow, you are your own friend, if you subjugate yourself and deny yourself the glory and abundance of true self , then you are your own enemy.

Friendship is an attitude, a commitment. Let that attitude and commitment be diverted inwardly to allow you to bring you closer to yourself.

Nadine x

Darryl introduced our discussion with the introduction of a book called Why Bharat(India) Matters by S.Jaishankar.

Jaishankar is the External Affairs Minister for the current Indian government.

I’ve included two links one is a book review and the other is a discussion piece on what using the name Bharat instead of the name India means or implies.

Both articles contain very differing view points, as in all things there is always more than just one “view”

https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/book-review-jaishankars-why-bharat-matters-unveils-indias-foreign-policy-renaissance-13690772.html

https://theconversation.com/bharat-why-the-recent-push-to-change-indias-name-has-a-hidden-agenda-213105

Viveka - discernment

By practicing with discernment we can remove those things that are stopping us from perceiving our own true nature.

Yoga is a practice of observation and reflection.

We establish a path of tapas and through this we continually observe the aspects of oneself being reflected.

How do you practice discernment?

The Vrittis and Klesas

What are the Klesas?

In his commentary on the Yoga Sutras BKS Iyengar writes:

‘The five afflictions which disturb the equilibrium of consciousness are: ignorance or lack of wisdom, ego, pride of the ego or the sense of ‘I’, attachment to pleasure, aversion to pain, fear of death and clinging to life’.[1] ‘The first two are intellectual defects, the next two emotional, and the last instinctual. They may be hidden, latent, attenuated or highly active’.[2] ‘The root causes of these five afflictions are the behavioural functions and thoughts of the various spheres of the brain’. ‘The sadhaka must learn to locate the sources of the afflictions, in order to be able to nip them in the bud through his yogic principles and disciplines’.

How do we use Vrittis in our practice?

Yoga is a process of inner self transformation and this journey starts by deeply