Ahimsa

Sounds like a sneeze, doesn't it?

It's Sanskrit (I believe).

In any event, it means "do no harm" and it's the guiding principle of yoga.

Sounds simple, but you can really build a pretty good life around trying to live it.

You can spend all day, every day doing it.

And you'll always have to realize that all you can do is strive for it, but never totally attain it.

And that's okay. 'Cause life is messy.  And life is a process - there's no place to get to, only a path.

I started studying yoga last year. I'm not talking about doing yoga, you know, the yoga everyone thinks of when they think of yoga (the poses). I'm talking about yoga philosopy. Which is way cool.

So, Leonard, my teacher right off suggests we practice ahimsa, it not being a sneeze, but like I said, yoga's guiding principle (kind of like the one commandment). This was in the spring and I was all fired up to build a wonderful, lush, colorful flower garden (how do I know that spring is the season of hope? Because for each of the eighteen springs I've lived in this house I've been fired up to build a wonderful, lush, colorful flower garden and each year my garden is.....a dud). So, gardening seems like a good way to practice "do no harm". Because growing things, nurturing life is the opposite of harm, right? However, I start coming out in the morning to watch my fledgling plants grow and instead of thin, bright green shoots and tiny buds, I'm finding big, fat, juicy slugs, lots and lots of big, fat, juicy slugs all over the place. On the grass, on the walkway, on the driveway, in the flower beds! AARRGGHH!!!!!  And if it isn't enough that they're eating my garden before it even has a chance to grow, they're leaving trails of slime all over in their wake!

In my pre-yoga days, I'd put out small plastic containers filled with beer, the slugs would crawl into them and drink themselves to death - or drown, I never knew for sure. I used to tell Kit that the slugs just liked to drink the beer and went to sleep from it, because she was a baby yogi and always hated the idea of any creature, no matter how grotesque, being killed. I felt fairly much the same - except for slugs, which I figured didn't count because of their really gross slime, ugly otherworldliness, and that they ate what little bit of garden I managed to coax out of my Rensselaer county clay.  But, now...hmm, killing slugs....do no harm....what would the slugs have to say about that? Clearly that I was harming them.

So, I grabbed a shovel, each and every morning, I picked up dozens of slugs, carried them into the woods and knew the next morning that I was carrying the same ones back to the woods again. And their skinny, slimy babies. And that if slugs could, in between bites of tender leaves, they were laughing at me.

So, the next week, I went back to Leonard's for another lesson, very bummed and confused and asked how was I supposed to proceed, after all, the slugs were harming the garden. So, who's rights should prevail here. And Leonard said, as any great teacher would, you figure it out.

Which brings me, finally to my point, when figuring out how to "do no harm" we each have to figure it out for ourselves each and every day, each and every moment. And the same goes for the rest of life: we each have to figure it out for ourselves. The only expert for your life is you. The only expert for my life is me.

After a while, I stopped trying to move all the slugs - I just moved a token few each morning. Then, I stopped bothering with even those few. Sometime later, I realized the slugs had moved on, or passed on or whatever. They weren't in my garden anymore. They came back later in the summer and I realized that I wasn't bothered by them anymore. Now, I wasn't going to pick one up and kiss it on its gooshy lips or anything, but I did realize they're a part of the world, a part of my garden and I no longer felt they stood between me and my potentially beautiful flowers, nor did I feel like serving them any free beer.