Sharon (continued): Through making compassionate food choices, you will begin to experience a diminishing of selfishness and low self-esteem. You will feel more self-confident, as all the disease associated with harming others is lifted from your daily life. What we do to others will come back to us. If we want to be happy, then we should not cause others unhappiness. If we ourselves want to be free, then it seems to be we would not make a slave of anyone else.
Fundamental to the teachings of yoga are the teachings of karma. Karma means action. The yogi begins to realize through the practice how significant each thought, word and action really is, and how it affects the whole community of life. How we treat others will determine our reality. A yogi practices yoga to purify their karmas.
When we practice asanas, we come face-to-face with all of our past relationships in the form of unresolved karmic residue, which is actually what our bodies are made of. When you feel this through yoga practice, you tend not to want to increase the karmic burden you are trying to unload. You don’t want to continue to cause harm to others, so you stop eating them and causing their enslavement and exploitation. You literally want to become lighter -- more enlightened.
You begin to understand Patanjali’s sutra, Sthira Sukham Asana, which means that our connection (relationship) to the earth and all other beings (what the word asana means) should be mutually beneficial, should be coming from a consistent (Sthira) place of joy (Sukham).
Being a joyous vegan makes your life happier because you get to participate in increasing the happiness and well beings of others, rather than their suffering and death.
A vegan diet is not one of deprivation, it is really the only option available to those who want to be happy themselves and who want to contribute to the happiness of others and the future life of this planet. I consider myself a joyous vegan because I get to contribute to the enrichment of this planet instead of its demise. Not only am I not causing the degradation and death of farm animals, but I’m not causing so much water pollution, deforestation, wildlife habitant destruction, the sickness and death of wild animals, air pollution, or global warming.
The United Nations has issued a report stating that the waste emissions from animals raised for food contributes more to global warming than all the car and truck emissions in the world. That’s the real inconvenient truth.
Sharon Gannon and David Life’s first widely available DVD, Transform Yourself with Jivamukti Yoga is now for sale. More information available at www.AcaciaLifestyle.com.
