Yoga to Engage with the World : How to Become a Buddha Warrior

Some days are just so wonderful to wake up to. Aaron woke up to the sound of the rains. He got up exclaiming- ‘it is a wonderful day.’ He was thankful and decided it was the perfect time to start meditating. Being a regular practitioner, his mind merged with nature’s sounds, and in his trance, he perhaps went beyond mind. In no time when he came out, he realised forty minutes had gone by! He would have to rush through his morning routine, but he felt so one with the world and its energy. His ‘things to do’ poured out from him in vivid detail, and he quickly made a long list of it. He had a busy day ahead. He was confident of cruising through smoothly. Rains had disrupted traffic, and increased the demand for Uber. Prices surged unreasonably and pinched Aaron’s pocket. He sighed, if this continues a couple of more days, I am done with this months budget. The office elevator had a long queue, argh! Aaron rushed up the stairs and went out of breath in climbing up six floors. He was cold in the cab, and now hot in his seat. ‘Been waiting for you’ his boss texted! Oh yes, the 10 am special call with Sterling this morning; top on the list and I forgot. No time for my morning coffee? He gestured to Aakash and pleaded with his eyes. The call had begun, Jasmine his boss, had a frowned look. Aaron butted into the conversation to handle the matter. The customer got annoyed and reprimanded. He was forced to stay quiet through the call. Jasmine was livid, by the end of the call. Aaron rushed to the creative team to push for the immediate deliverable. He was in the middle of his sensitive briefing, when his phone beeps, ‘Instagram notifications!’ He cusses, puts his phone on a silent mode and tries to get back to brief. Aakash emerges suddenly ‘coffee for you.’ Aaron turns to bump into Aakash, and the coffee spills over him. ‘What’s wrong with you’? he screams, pouring out his frustration. Sounds familiar? So many times, we wake up expecting the world to be a happy and welcoming place. We start off peacefully, but as we progress through the day, we are only bombarded by inconveniences and our sense of well-being keeps slipping away from us. We realise that the world is anything but a friendly place, and only seems to provoke the worst out of us.

It appears foolish to wake up every morning and expect the world to be logical, peaceful and amiable. On the contrary, it seems more practical to expect the world to be a hostile battleground for us to get our warrior mode out, and combat everything that comes along the way, so that we end up as a winner at the end of the day. Do we? If all you have is a hammer, everything appears as a nail. We become a warrior, and in turn the world becomes a battlefront. As we start getting reactive, the whole vicious cycle of reactivity starts controlling us. Then, how does one engage with the world? You can’t be a saint; the world will quickly gobble you up. Can you be a Buddha internally and yet externally engage with the world, the way it needs to be dealt with’ Ever wondered why we have a difficulty sustaining the inner Buddha state that many of us begin the mornings with’ So, how is that we could keep the peace within, while engaging with the fierce combative world’ Yoga! Yoga is about stretching various parts of the body, to attain beneficial poses of different asanas. When Yoga is regularly practiced, the practitioner learns to balance and attain different poses and asanas, which seem impossible or stringent to attain. An adept yogi learns that when she is centered, it is possible to attain any pose. Yoga is about arriving at your center, recognising it and becoming steadfast in it. When you are centered, it is possible to stretch out every muscle and organ in the body, to attain the required pose and leverage its potential.

When we practice Yoga regularly, we become adept at this practice, and our mind also starts learning to become adept at staying centred. We realise that it is centering of the mind, which makes us feel centered to reaching out to extremes and still be in balance. From there on, it’s a matter of training the mind to be centered whether you are doing yoga or not, and cultivating the habit of staying centered in all actions. When we learn to do this on a consistent basis, our peace doesn’t have to be disturbed, howsoever, we may deal with an action presented by the world. We will learn to act appropriately from our inner peace, and move back to our center, so that the remainder of actions do not get carried forward to the next action. With Yoga, I align with the world, and not battle with it. I learn to be aligned in spheres, physical, mental and spiritual. Yoga helps you become a manifesting Buddha warrior, and thus Make You Happen.