The Journal of Practical Yoga Science

American Meditation Institute * www.americanmeditation.org

January - February 2008  Vol. XI No. 2




Namaste.
I pray to the Divinity in you.

Do you sometimes wish you could switch channels from the show called "My Life Today" to some other program that would be more enjoyable? Do you sometimes feel depressed and powerless to effect positive change in a world that appears to be filled with pain and misery? The New Year is always a harbinger of change. It is a celebratory reminder that as one door closes, another immediately opens. What we will experience in 2008 can be beneficial and rewarding if we are willing to employ these simple and practical principles of Yoga Science. 1. Consciously weigh all our choices. 2. Evaluate which potential consequences will bring lasting happiness. 3. Be guided by the intuitive wisdom of the heart instead of habit or the suggestions of others. To inspire us in this noble effort, Transformation examines the Law of Karma. When we observe the habits of the mind and are willing to base all our outer actions on our own inner wisdom, our lives will become the change that we seek. Aristotle taught that, "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." If we learn to base our everyday actions on this kind of old fashion discrimination, 2008 will be a very rewarding year.In service--with love.

Leonard and Jenness Perlmutter




YOGA SCIENCE   IN BRIEF

Students Lower Stress
Dr. Yi-Yuan Tang from the University of Oregon reports in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that regular meditation can improve attention and lower stress. The study of 40 undergraduates found that participation in twenty-minute meditation sessions over five days showed greater improvement in attention and lower levels of anxiety, depression, anger and fatigue, as compared with students in a control group who participated in relaxation training.

 
Help for Arthritis
Reporting on an article in Arthritis Care & Research, CBS News announced that new research indicates meditation may help people cope with rheumatoid arthritis. In a new study, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients reported less psychological distress after practicing meditation for six months, compared with RA patients who did not receive meditation training. Meditation didn't cure RA or erase the physical symptoms, but it appeared to help the patients deal with those symptoms.
 
Yoga Injuries on the Rise
Time magazine recently reported that over the past three years, 13,000 Americans were treated in an emergency room or a doctor's office for yoga-related injuries. This statistic is interesting when you consider that the highest principle of Yoga Science is ahimsa (non-injury). In part, the cause lies in the fact that many people teach yoga as exercise--not as part of a complete meditation and mind-training program. Classical yoga teaches students to honor and gently explore the mental origin of physical limitations. It is just the opposite of the theory of "no pain--no gain."
The Yoga of Filmmaking (nair.JPG) and (warrior_2.JPG)
Internationally acclaimed filmmaker Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding, Namesake and Mississippi Masala) says her hatha yoga practice, especially the Warrior II posture, has made her a better director. "If you're leaning too far forward, it's like you're in the future," Nair says, "and if you lean too far back, it's like you're in the past. But if your trunk is solidly anchored in the center, you're right in the present moment. And that is a beautiful lesson for any art making or any life making."
 

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The mind can be your best friend or your worst enemy. If your mind lacks discrimination and will power it can operate like a fire-breathing dragon--polluting your consciousness with all sorts of unhealthy thoughts, desires and emotions that bring you unnecessary pain, misery and bondage. If you want to be free, you must take courageous, corrective action. The first step is understanding the Law of Karma.
 
The Sanskrit word karma means action, and the Law of Karma is simply the law of cause and effect. Karma is the unerring principle of the Universe that deftly apportions a consequence for every expenditure of energy. When applied to physics, the Law of Karma became the basis for Newton's Third Law of Motion: for every action there
is an equal and opposite reaction. On the human level, karma wisely and equitably manifests physical, mental and spiritual consequences that precisely fit every thought, word and deed. Eventually, every consequence comes back to its rightful owner--the thinker of the thought, speaker of the word or the performer of the action.

To understand the profound nature of karma, it's essential to first recognize the universe as one organic and seamless organism. It is a field of forces rather than the alluring or terrifying world of separate objects that appear to the senses. This supreme organism is composed of an infinite number of lesser organisms (like your own human body-mind-sense complex) that wittingly or unwittingly place limitations on the one, unifying consciousness that is common to them all. The various components of the universe could not act and react with each other as they do, without this shared consciousness.
 
This sublime idea is well illustrated by the human being, who is a universe in miniature. The existence of the body depends on a complex network of electrical and chemical forces--intimately and instantaneously connecting every organ, cell, and atom with every other. If a virus enters the body, an army of white blood cells is dispatched to counter the invading enemy. If the foot slips on an icy surface, counteracting muscles seek to restore balance. If a lash is swept into the eye, tear ducts irrigate the foreign object out of the body. The reaction is always appropriate because the entire body is one, unified organism.

Such interdependence is a fundamental principle throughout the universe. The atom, the human being, the earth, the solar system and the galaxy--in their structure and workings--proclaim the basic harmony and interdependence underlying and regulating the entire manifest world.
 
The all-inclusiveness of the Law of Karma is profound. Applied to human lives it means that every expenditure of energy--whether mental, verbal or physical--will, at some time, have an effect on the balance of the entire organism. As biologist and author Dr. Paul Erlich observed, "The fluttering of a butterfly's wings can effect climate changes on the other side of the planet." In the New Testament, the action of karma is described more personally in the well-known words of Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians: "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

The senses, however, belie this truth. "We tend to see our bodies as 'frozen sculptures,'" Dr. Deepak Chopra writes, "when in truth they are more like rivers; constantly changing, flowing patterns of intelligence." The Greek philosopher Heraclitus similarly observed, "You cannot step into the same river twice, for fresh waters are ever flowing in." Nothing in the universe is static. Every part of the whole is in a continuous state of change. In fact, every year 98 percent of the total number of atoms in the body are replaced. In that respect, we are forever new--regardless of our physical age or condition.

The implications of this phenomenon are truly astounding. It suggests that, as Swami Rama declared, "All the body is in the mind." The physical body is an ever-changing projection of the suggestions that appear in the mind. If we sow a specific thought, word or deed, we will inevitably reap its consequence. We are, unquestionably, the architects of our lives, and the basic building blocks we use are our thoughts. As the compassionate Buddha taught, "All that we are is the result of what we have thought, and what we think [speak and do] now will determine what we shall become."

The Law of Karma mandates that the fruits of our previous actions and the use or non-use of our will power create our personal human experiences. So, each life is the highest form of art, and all of us possess the potential to be magnificent artists! We already have the tools of destiny in our hands and are gifted by the Law of Karma every moment with endless opportunities to fashion our thoughts, words and deeds into a rewarding masterpiece.
 
On the occasion of my thirteenth birthday, a close family friend gave me a dictionary with an inscription that reflects the very same understanding: "To each is given a set of tools, a piece of wood, a book of rules, that each may carve, ere life has flown, a stumbling block or stepping stone."
 
You're free to say you do not believe in the Law of Gravity, but you cannot escape being constantly subject to its rule. Similarly, you may not believe in the Law of Karma, but cause and subsequent effect (action and resultant consequence) are as certain as the Law of Gravity that reliably pulls a ripened apple from its tree to the ground.
 
And yet, since the beginning of recorded history human beings have spent an inordinate amount of energy trying to circumvent the Law. But by forgetting our essential nature and true relationship with the universe we become confused and deluded by the powerful call of the senses, ego, unconscious habit and tide of our culture. When discrimination is absent, intelligent, educated and cultured people still bind and gag their will while throwing themselves into actions that inevitably harm themselves and others. In the ancient Bhagavad Gita it is written, "The demonic do things they should avoid and avoid things they should do. Such distorted views and scant discrimination cause suffering and destruction."

Today we are spending trillions of dollars on science, medicine and technology to discover new ways of postponing or avoiding the natural consequences of doing whatever we want. We over-medicate our children to avoid the consequences of our own choices that have manifested as their unwanted behavior, and we connect their minds to the insidious flow of false ideas disseminated through television. Since children have not yet developed the mature skill of discrimination, they depend on adult discrimination as their guide. The "adult" culture of television, however, teaches our children a basic lie--one that they are not prepared to question. If your desire is strong enough, the television culture says, there is always a way to circumvent the consequence of your action.

The next time you turn on the television, try to take a good, hard, objective look at the commercials. What are they really selling, and at what cost? In both commercials and programming, television is peddling happiness and claiming to supply it in the form of a fast, expensive automobile, a new house, a beautiful mate, sparkling jewelry, a bottle of beer, a gluttonous meal, flat abs, plastic surgery, another credit card, the latest technological gadgetry or the drug-induced extension of sexual prowess.  
 
Absent from our culture are the philosophers to explain what consequences and problems arise from this kind of unbridled, hedonistic philosophy. Once an individual accepts the delusion that life is only physical, there is an immediate  loss of discrimination and will power. Without discrimination and will, the mind is quickly hijacked by the forces of fear (that we won't get what we want or that we might lose what we have) and anger (brought about by thwarted desires). Every indiscriminate desire that conflicts with intuitive inner wisdom inevitably gives rise to the consequence of pain. And if we don't heed the lesson of pain at a low decibel level, the decibel level gets louder and louder until we finally understand the profound message of pain and begin to take the necessary steps toward the beneficial change we had previously avoided.
 
Karma can be a gentle teacher or a harsh disciplinarian--depending on how much attention we are paying. The sages of every spiritual tradition speak in unison on this important point. There is a season for childhood toys and a season for mature decision-making. Each time we take an action a consequence follows, and each consequence leads us closer to real happiness or farther away.
 
Once we appreciate and honor the mechanics of the Law of Karma (that thought precedes action and action precedes consequence), we can begin to make real progress on the spiritual path. As our meditation practice expands to encompass every relationship, our capacity to discriminate and to enjoy life is heightened. Then, as we employ our will power to choose the perennial joy of shreya over the passing pleasure of preya, inner conflicts begin to dissolve and the mind is transformed from the fire-breathing dragon of yesterday into a loyal and accomplished friend. When this occurs, we find ourselves creating the masterful and rewarding work of art we have always longed to experience.

 
The Three Arrows of Karma
 
A spiritual aspirant is often likened to an archer. His or her actions, described metaphorically as arrows, are of three distinct categories. Some arrows have already been shot in the past; one is in the bow now, in the present, and the remaining arrows are stored in the quiver for future use. In every moment we have control over two of the three types of karma, or arrows. The first arrow represents the actions we have already taken. Although we no longer have control over those arrows, we will still reap their consequences. The second arrow is the one presently positioned in our bow, ready to be shot. We do have control over this arrow. The arrows stored in our quiver represent the actions not yet taken. We have control over these arrows as well. The essential point to remember is that although we have no control over what comes to us (the results of past karma), we always have control over what we do with what comes to us. Knowing this, we are free to create a present that is without stress and a future that is bright.
Leonard is a philosopher, educator, author and founder of the American Meditation Institute.


 
If our actions today conflict with our own inner wisdom,
we are assuring ourselves a rendezvous in the future
with a challenging experience that will test anew our attachment to ignorance.
 
Leonard Perlmutter
 

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A person performs actions and is remunerated. The fruits of the actions motivate her to perform actions again, and then again she is rewarded. It becomes a cycle: the fruit arises out of the action, and the action out of the fruit. From time immemorial, life has proceeded in this manner. This is called the wheel of karma.
 
The Law of Karma is equally applicable to all. Our past habits (samskaras) are deeply rooted in the unconscious. These latent impressions, create various bubbles of thoughts that express themselves through our speech and actions.
 
It is possible for the aspirant to be free from these samskaras. Those who can burn them in the fire of nonattachment or knowledge are free from the bondage created by them. It is like a burnt rope that has lost its binding power, though it still looks like a rope.
 
When latent impressions, though still in the unconscious, are burned by the fire of knowledge, they lose the power of germination, and will never grow. They are like roasted coffee beans. You can use them to brew a cup of coffee, but they have no power to grow.
 
No one can live without performing actions. When you perform actions, you reap the fruits of your actions. "As you sow, so shall you reap." Nobody can escape from this law.

When you reap the fruits of actions, those actions inspire you to perform more actions. Seemingly, there is no end. This creates a sense of helplessness. You cannot live without doing your duty, but when you do your duty, you find yourself caught in a whirlpool. You are not happy because duty makes you a slave.
 
The first thing you should learn is how to perform your actions yet remain unaffected. Your duty should not lead to stress. It should not make you a slave.

You just need to change your attitude. Decide in the morning that you will do your duty lovingly, no matter what is expected.

If you think like that, you will find that you will not be tired at the end of the day as you usually are.

You have no alternative but to learn to love your duty. Then it becomes easy. If you do not love something, and yet you do it, it creates a division in your mind, and brings you stress or worse.
 
Grace dawns when you have learned to act skillfully. Therefore, do all your efforts with love. Learn to love.
 
It is possible to live perfectly on earth if one is able to work and to love--to work for what one loves, and to love what one is working at.
 
From "Sacred Journey," by Swami Rama. ©1996, Himalayan International Institute, India.

 

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The patient was threatening to sue. Her face was flushed, her hands were shaking, and her eyes flashed. "Tell Dr. Greene he'll hear from my lawyer! My cancer is back and he's going to pay! He's a quack! I'll finish him!"

Dr. Greene is a brilliant and deeply humanitarian oncologist at one of the nation's leading medical universities. When this woman was initially referred to him with a tumor in her lung, Dr. Greene waived most of her fees (she had no insurance) and treated her with chemotherapy. She was in remission for eight months; now the cancer had reappeared.

I was new on the ward and was shocked by this patient's ungrateful behavior. But Dr. Greene and his staff took her aggressive outburst in stride. "She's just found out the malignancy has returned and she's scared. She's lashing out because of fear," the oncology nurse told me calmly. Staff members rushed to reassure the woman and offer any help they could.

I'll never forget that day. I was a yoga student yet I reacted to the ungrateful patient with resentment. The medical staff however responded with compassion and genuine concern. Even her legal threats couldn't shake them from their commitment to serve her medical needs to the very best of their abilities. That day Dr. Greene and his nurses showed me how to remain centered and relaxed while responding to a mean-spirited verbal attack, to be sympathetic yet dispassionate. They were the real yogis.

But there was another lesson here. I was astonished the woman blamed Dr. Greene for the recurrence of her symptoms. Over the ensuing years of working in hospitals and medical centers, I discovered this attitude isn't rare. If a patient gets sick, the doctor is supposed to fix it. A lot of patients are intensely resistant to the idea that in many cases they bring their medical problems down on themselves through their own unhealthful lifestyles, and that nothing a physician can do will permanently remove the discomfort until patients change their ways. For example, the woman I just described adamantly refused to stop smoking. She expected Dr. Greene to make her tumors disappear even as she continued to suck carcinogens into her lungs.
 
Unfortunately, the pharmaceutical ads that permeate our media foster these illusions. If your blood pressure is high, don't worry, the doctor can give you something. If you're at risk for a heart attack or stroke due to elevated levels of cholesterol, relax, the doctor can manage this with medication. If your libido is slipping, no problem, your physician can even prescribe something to give you an erection. For that matter, why should you even suffer with a problem as minor as a cold sore on your lip when there's a topical ointment that will suppress it? Thank God our government requires pharmaceutical companies to list at least some of the serious potential side effects of these treatments in the ads!

But the damage has been done. Many Americans naively believe the answer to their problems lies in a pill. This was brought home forcefully to me when we began seeing patients who had recently contracted HIV. Incredibly, since new drugs to treat AIDS began appearing on the market, some of these individuals had abandoned safe-sex practices. They believed that if they became infected they could simply start taking these medications and they'd be fine. It was heartbreaking to have to explain to them that even the best drugs developed so far would not prevent them from dying; they would simply die more slowly. Some were shocked to learn their insurance companies would not pay for these exorbitantly expensive treatments; they would have to pay for their anti-HIV pills out-of-pocket. The choice to rely on modern medicine rather than on responsible behavior cost them dearly. I still cry when I remember them.


Taking Charge of Our Lives

Having worked in the medical field for many years, I'd be the last person to say medication isn't valuable. While I believe parents shouldn't be putting their hyperactive children on Ritalin till they've tried taking them off the enormous amounts of stimulants (caffeine, sugar, and chemical additives) in their diet, a small percentage of children suffer from serious neurological imbalances that can only be treated medically. While most people who're depressed can work through their despair with counseling and emotional support, some are experiencing genuine hormonal imbalances so severe that only medical intervention can help. In India physicians are called "God's other self" because doctors can give life and alleviate pain when patients are so physically sick they're unable to help themselves.
 
But often we can help ourselves if we only bother to do so. We can prevent many common ailments with common sense: eating right, exercising appropriately, resting when we're tired, practicing yoga and meditation. Our chromosomes may well be preparing to express serious disease potentials passed down through our family such as a predisposition to heart disease or diabetes. Yet even the inevitable onset of these genetic maladies can often be delayed by adopting a healthy lifestyle.
 
If there's one thing the yoga tradition teaches us, it's that we can and must take responsibility for our lives. We ourselves-not a priest-are responsible for our spiritual life, though a pastor, rabbi or guru can offer spiritual guidance. We-not a psychologist-are responsible for the content of our mind, though a counselor can help show us where self-defeating thought processes may be sabotaging our efforts to find fulfillment. Our physical body is our responsibility-not our doctor's-though we should be grateful the physician is available to aid us when the severity of a medical condition exceeds our innate ability to heal.
 
Having watched thousands of patients move through the bank-breakingly expensive American medical system, I can assure you that taking an easy-gentle yoga class and a meditation course are astoundingly cost effective ways to manage your physical and mental health. A Hatha practice not only strengthens, tones, and nourishes the
tissues of your body, it also teaches you internal awareness. As you become more awakened to the movement of energy in your body and to the day-to-day condition of your internal organs, you gain the ability to head off potentially serious medical problems by attending to imbalances as soon as you sense them arising. There's no way doctors can do this for you, even with their MRI and CAT scan equipment. Developing awareness of your inner physical state through yoga practice is your personal daily X-ray. It's not a substitute for a regular medical check-up, but it's an important adjunct.
 
If your eating habits are a mess, take responsibility for what you eat by signing up for a vegetarian or Ayurvedic cooking class at AMI, your local yoga center or community college. When the holistic health movement started gaining momentum in the late 1970s, most people groaned at the prospect of eating "health food." To them it meant eating lots of raw vegetables ("rabbit food" as my aunt, a nurse, characterized it), tasteless tofu dishes, and unsweetened treats. Thirty years later, many Americans have experienced how easy and delicious eating healthfully can be. If you haven't already learned how to prepare nutritious, all natural dishes, or which restaurants in your area serve health-promoting entrees, it's time to focus on this important aspect of your health regimen.


A Responsible Mind

But there's more to internal awareness than the condition of your muscles, glands and organs. There is also the issue of your mental and emotional health. Too often we hand over control of our mental state to friends and foes. "He makes me so happy!" "She makes me so angry!" Sometimes we turn it over to the television set, sitting passively before a box of glowing images that makes us laugh, lust, cheer or sneer. How often during the day are we really lucid, fully conscious of our own being, truly self-aware? Some people go through their entire lives with almost no self-reflection.

When we learn to meditate we spend at least a half hour each day (or however much time we designate for our practice) allowing the full wattage of our inner light to shine. We take responsibility for our thoughts and feelings, which we observe with lucid clarity, but we don't identify with them. They arise in consciousness but they are not consciousness itself, like images that pass over the surface of a mirror without ever actually affecting the mirror. As we learn to observe our thoughts dispassionately without judging them or reacting, as Dr. Greene and his staff calmly observed the hysterical cancer patient, we begin to control the contents of our mind rather than allowing them to control us. Gradually we learn to operate increasingly from this clearer, more enlightened perspective, just as the oncology nurse was able to serve her patient more effectively by not letting herself become upset by the patient's unjustified accusations.

One of the prime qualities that distinguishes a mature adult from a person who seems never to have grown up is that the mature person takes responsibility for his or her attitudes and actions rather than reflexively blaming others. Mature adults also recognize that developing the awareness and inner strength to prevent disease and injury makes far more sense than expecting a physician to simply write a prescription and make the problem disappear. It's not as simple as, "I don't need to worry if I party too much-I can always go to rehab," or "I'll start smoking now because my friends do-I can always wear a nicotine patch if I want to stop." Like the HIV positive patients who didn't think they needed to use sexual hygiene anymore, these foolish attitudes set us up for serious grief.

We can take responsibility for our health by living our lives with our inner light switched on. Practicing yoga and meditation give us more to do each day, but ultimately they'll give our doctor less to do. And most physicians would be much happier, I assure you, if their patients never needed to see them at all.

Linda Johnsen is a regular contributor to "Transformation" and author of eight books on spirituality including "Lost Masters: The Sages of Ancient Greece."

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Individual Counseling
Yoga Self-Therapy
Leonard Perlmutter
AMI Founder and Director
Member: International Association of Yoga Therapists

Yoga Self-Therapy is based on the perennial psychology of yoga science. Each individual counseling session will teach you how to free yourself from habits and expectations that cause stress and give rise to illness. By observing and training your internal processes, you can become creative in all relationships while establishing a state of personal contentment. By learning to rely on your own Divine inner wisdom you become free to make choices in life that continually improve your physical, mental and emotional wellbeing.

AMI Home Center, 60 Garner Road, Averill Park

By appointment only.

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Literally, the Sanskrit word karma means something that is done. Often it can be translated as 'deed' or 'action.' The law of karma states simply that every event is both a cause and an effect. Every act has consequences, which in turn have further consequences and so on; and every act, every karma, is also the consequence of some previous karma.
 
This will turn out to have the vastest possible implications. But let me begin with karma on the individual level, where it is simplest: the karma we sow and reap in our own little agricultural field of body and mind.
 
To most people who are familiar with the word, in India as well as in the West, karma refers to physical action. In this sense, the law of karma says that whatever you do will come back to you. If Joe hits John, and later Jack hits Joe, this is Joe's karma coming back to him. It sounds mysterious, even occult, because we do not see all the connections. But the connections are there, and the law of karma is no more occult than the law of gravitation.
 
Let me illustrate. In the example I just gave, where Joe hits John, the law of karma states that that blow has to have consequences. It cannot end with John getting a black eye. It makes an impression on John's consciousness. Predictably, he gets angry--and it makes an impression, probably subtler, on Joe's consciousness as well. Let us trace it first through John. He might take his anger out on Joe then and there, simply by hitting him back: that is what I call "cash karma," where you do something and are repaid immediately. But for many reasons, John might not act on his anger until later, quite possibly in unrelated ways: he might explode at his wife, for example, or throw the cat out of the house when it tangles with his legs.

Now, karma is rarely so simple; this is only for illustration. But what is clear is that John's anger will have repercussions throughout his relationships. Those repercussions will have repercussions--say, John's wife gets angry at Jack's, and she takes it out on Jack, who works with Joe; and the next time Joe irritates Jack, Jack lets him have it. Poor Joe, rubbing his chin, can't have the slightest idea that he is being repaid for hitting John. All he feels is anger at Jack: and so the chain of consequences continues, and Joe's karmic comeuppance becomes the seed of a new harvest.
 
We do not realize how far our lives reach, how many people are affected by our behavior and example. Once you begin to see this, you get some idea of how complex the web of karma actually is. No one has the omniscience to see this picture fully. But I hope you can see that the idea of a network of such connections is plausible and natural--so plausible, in fact, that even though we cannot see the connections, we can be sure that everything that happens to us, "good" and "bad," originated once in something we did to someone else.

The implications of this are terribly practical: we ourselves are responsible for what happens to us, whether or not we can understand how. Therefore-here is the wonderful part--we can change what happens to us by changing ourselves; we can take our destiny into our own hands.
 
As I said, all this is karma on the physical level, which is how most people think of it. The view is accurate, but not complete: in fact, the physical side of karma is only the tip of an iceberg. To get an inkling of how karma reaches, you have to look at the mind.

Let me go back for a moment to Joe and John. I said that when Joe hits John, there are several effects: one on John's face, one in John's consciousness, and one in the consciousness of Joe himself. To put it simply, by acting on his anger, Joe has made it easier to act on his anger again. He may think he has relieved some pressure, but he has actually made himself a little more angry than before, a little less patient, a little more likely to respond to problems with violence.

Everything we do, in other words, produces karma in the mind. This is not at all theoretical; it has very tangible consequences. For one, look at how Joe is changed by his actions--not from without, from within. Over the years, if he keeps giving in to anger, he will become more belligerent. He may find himself swinging his fists more and more often; and by some quirk of human nature, he will find himself more and more frequently in situations that prompt his anger. Sooner or later he will get into a fight where he is more than repaid in kind; that is one way in which his karma with John can come back to him.

Even more intriguing to me is the karma of our health. Again, let me illustrate one or two kinds of connection.

For one, the Buddha says that we are not punished for our anger; we are punished by our anger. In other words, anger is its own karma. Joe may think he feels better for having hit John, but a detached physician would not say so. He would observe all that happens in Joe's vital organs and nervous system while Joe is getting heated up--watch his blood pressure soar and his heart race, measure the adrenaline and other hormones dumped into his body, and so on--and conclude, "You're putting yourself under severe physiological stress!" To my eyes, a bout of anger is one thousandth of a heart attack. You pay for it on the spot; and if you go on getting angry, you go on paying for that too.

Suppose Joe's anger does become chronic. Even if Jack never gets back to hit him, Joe is hitting himself from inside. He comes to live in a world of constant stress, with his "fight or flight" mechanisms on duty around the clock. There is good evidence that this kind of stress can lead to heart disease, to psychosomatic ailments like migraine and ulcer, and even to cancer; these too are routes by which the karma of anger can be reaped.
 
Further, Joe's aggressiveness and irritability make him harder to live with. His relationships deteriorate. Perhaps his friends start to avoid him; perhaps his co-workers respond to him with increasing irritation and anger, all of which provokes him even more. Life in these circumstances can be miserable. Joe may punish himself further by drinking heavily or smoking more. He may look for relief in high-risk activities like skydiving, rock climbing, or stock car racing. All these provide more ways in which karma can be reaped, and there are many more ways also, which I do not want to go into here.
 
One more fascinating point about karma: you can see that even if Joe does not actually strike anybody, the karma of anger is still generated in the mind and body. To the extent he gets angry, his blood pressure will still shoot up, his stomach get tense, his heart race, and so on. Of course, the consequences are much more serious if you hit someone than if you do not! But the point is that thoughts have consequences too. They shape the way we see life, which in turn affects our health, our behavior, our choice of work and friends--in short, everything we do.

I hope you can see how logical the law of karma is, and why I say that karma in the mind is the most potent kind of all. It is more subtle than physical karma, but it is also much more powerful and longer-lived. That is why I like so much this figure of speech that the body and mind are like a field. A thought is like a seed: very tiny, but it can grow into a huge, powerful, wide-spreading tree. I have seen places where a tiny seed in a crack in a pavement grew into a tree that tore up the sidewalk; its roots spread beneath a house and threatened the concrete foundation. It is terribly difficult to remove such a tree. Similarly, it is terribly difficult to undo the effects of a lifetime of negative thinking, which can extend into many other people's lives.

I never like to talk about this without presenting the brighter side, which is very reassuring. You may have seen from all these examples how much in our karma depends on us: what we think, how we respond. The real source of karma is the mind, which means that all our unfavorable karma can be undone by changing the way we think. If someone gets angry with us and we respond with patience and compassion and the "soft reply that turneth away wrath," that too is karma--good karma. Everybody benefits. The karma of the person who got angry is mitigated, even physiologically: his nervous system is calmed, so his anger subsides; he will not go on to spread it to other people and create still more bad karma. And our own mind and body benefit too.

Even if we had to grit our teeth for a while to keep back angry words, afterwards we will feel good inside. All our vital organs can relax, put their feet up on the desk, and say, "Good job!" We know we have helped the other person, and we have the quiet thrill of self-mastery too. In St. Francis's words, which appeal to me very deeply, we know we have been an instrument of peace.
 
From Dialogue with Death by Eknath Easwaran, founder of the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation, © 1981; reprinted by permission of Nilgiri Press, P. O. Box 256, Tomales, CA 94971, www.easwaran.org.

 

 

 

The Heart and Science of Yoga:
A Blueprint for Peace, Happiness and Freedom from Fear


Review by Gregg St. Clair, Healing Springs Journal

We live in glorious times don't we? We have information available to us today that we never transferred to only an inner circle of top students. This usually involved years of dedication proving your desire to learn, followed by years of practice in the more external realms of knowledge, and only then would a master be willing to share the deepest levels of their art, most highly guarded secrets. But today every esoteric subject matter is available through books or just a quick click away on the world wide web.

Everything has pluses and minuses and this is no exception. Yes, it is all right there for us, but so is fast food. So how do we discriminate what is valuable or not for our total well being? Trial and error is, of course, an option, and something most people have to go through on their path--be it with diet, exercise or meditation. But when you find the right thing you know it. This is how I felt when I read The Heart and Science of Yoga: A Blueprint for Peace, Happiness and Freedom from Fear by Leonard Perlmutter. I keep wanting to call it the "Art" instead of the "Heart," probably from being conditioned by other book titles, but "Heart" definitely works better. Why? Because you can tell that that is where the book comes from and that is where it is aimed.

The Heart and Science of Yoga is a manual showing how ancient wisdom can help us with life today in an increasingly chaotic world. No longer does one need to travel to India to learn the deepest secrets of yoga for it is all contained in this one book. Some might claim that there is too much information (and at 538 pages they may be right), but not me. It is written in a style so easy to read and so relevant to spiritual development today that its information will be beneficial, almost crucial, for everyone, not just yoga practitioners.

Leonard Perlmutter has something rare among yoga practitioners and meditation instructors today, not only a blessing from his famous teacher Swami Rama, but a direct request to pass on the knowledge he transferred to him and to become a full time teacher. Leonard and his wife Jenness have founded and operate the American Meditation Institute in Averill Park, New York--a short drive from the capital city of Albany. A tranquil oasis, the Perlmutters are dedicating their lives to creating positive change in the world based on the teachings of yoga with meditation as the key.

The book covers in detail the eight limbs of yoga is of course more than different contortionist postures and includes a blueprint for spiritual growth including, proper disciplines, proper conduct, proper exercise, proper breathing, proper control of the senses, proper concentration, proper meditation and finally self realization. I particularly like how they use quotations and references from all of the worlds religions, including literature and even current sources (did you know Elvis was a guru?), making the book very accessible if not down right enjoyable to read.

With the invention of the airplane, the telephone and now the world wide web, it has become obvious that it is one world and we must act together if there is going to be hope for the future. Unfortunately people become so caught up in their own realities that they fail to see the bigger picture. But we are spiritual beings, and as we busy ourselves with the illusions of the world it separates us from our spirit, creating a source of suffering that is only going to continue. I take comfort in the fact that yoga has an 8000 year old history and though I am a scientist, I don't need another double blind study to know that it works. The key is, we have to practice something to take control of our mind & lives, or they will take control of us. If you are looking for a tried and true system that has helped millions of people, then The Heart and Science of Yoga is the perfect companion. I recommend it for everybody.

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CALENDAR OF EVENTS
All events are held at the AMI Home Center in Averill Park unless otherwise indicated.

Every Sunday Meditation & Satsang is FREE
Every Sunday 9:30-11:00 AM. Love donations accepted.


JANUARY 2008

JAN 7 - FEB 18: BHAGAVAD GITA Study
Monday Nights, 6:30 - 8:30 PM, Ch. 1 (6 weeks)

JAN 9
- FEB 13: MORNING-GENTLE YOGA
Wednesday Mornings, Kathleen Fisk, 9:30 - 11:00 AM

JAN 10: INTRO MEDITATION LECTURE
Thurs. Night, 6:30 - 7:30 PM, Mary Holloway & Doreen Howe

JAN 15 - FEB 26: AMI MEDITATION
Thurs. Nights: The Heart and Science of Yoga
6:30 - 8:30 PM with AMI founder Leonard Perlmutter (6 weeks)

JAN 18
: DINNER & MOVIE
Fri. Night, "Wondrous Oblivion", 5:30 - 10 PM, RSVP

JAN 21
- FEB 25: EVENING-GENTLE YOGA
Monday Nights, Kathleen Fisk, 6:30 - 8:00PM

JAN 23: COMPLEMENTARY CANCER CARE
Wednesday Night, Leonard Perlmutter, 6:30 - 8:30 PM (1 night)


FEBRUARY 2008


FEB 20 - MAR 26:
MORNING-GENTLE YOGA
Wednesday Mornings, Kathleen Fisk, 9:30 - 11:00 AM

FEB 20: HEAL YOUR HEART
Wednesday Night, Leonard Perlmutter, 6:30 - 8:30 PM, (1night)

FEB 21: INTRO MEDITATION LECTURE
AMI Meditation: The Heart and Science of Yoga
Thurs. Night, 6:30 - 7:30 PM, Mary Holloway & Doreen Howe

FEB 22: DINNER & MOVIE
Fri. Night, "The Namesake", 5:30 - 10 PM , RSVP

MARCH 2008

MAR 3 - APR 7: EVENING-GENTLE YOGA
Monday Nights, Kathleen Fisk, 6:30 - 8:00PM

MAR 3 - APR 7: BHAGAVAD GITA Study
Monday Nights, 6:30 - 8:30 PM, Ch. 1 (6 weeks)

MAR 4 - APR 8: AMI MEDITATION
Thurs. Nights: The Heart and Science of Yoga
6:30 - 8:30 PM with AMI founder Leonard Perlmutter (6 weeks)

 

Tell a Friend about AMI

If you know someone who might benefit from our American Meditation class, let them know about the AMI program or call us with their name and address and we'll send them a brochure with our current class schedule.

Karma Yoga --- the practice of selfless and skillful action

If, as part of your practice, you have a few extra hours during the week and are interested in helping grow the American Meditation Institute, we need your dedicated, volunteer energy. As a student of yoga science, you are already familiar with the kinds of practical services the Institute provides. Each month we write, edit and publish this newsletter, teach an average of thirty new meditation students and present stress-reduction seminars to various businesses and organizations. We also invite visiting speakers of interest to our area, organize seminars on yoga science and do continuing personal counseling.

Our immediate needs include press relations, seminar management, clerical assistance and general delivery work. Remember, whatever time or talents you possess will be put to meaningful, productive use.

If you have the time, please call the Institute at (518) 674-8714.

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Address: 60 Garner Road, Averill Park, NY 12018
Tel: (518) 674-8714
E-mail address:
ami@americanmeditation.org
 

 

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