Hi Andrew
I have been struggling with this one myself recently. Dave(riptiz) spoke about this yesterday as follows:
http://www.aypsite.com/plus-forum/index.php?topic=4639#43666Hi,
I personally feel that no practices are enough on their own without embracing the yamas and niyamas.Interaction with others will govern your progress and test you constantly.When we find purification symptoms affecting our moods we have to be on guard how we treat others and try to ignore their negative interactions with us.It's not easy but in my experience it gives you progress.
Treat others how we wish to be treated and try to ignore their weaknesses when they don't treat you in the same way.Even when one fails to observe these principles, realising that we have slipped will still give you progress.It's when we don't realise we have slipped that we aren't making progress.
L&L
DaveFor me its been a process of unlearning the Catholic conditioning imposed on me by my surroundings to date. So I have a natural aversion to rules like the yamas and niyamas. In Buddhism there are the 5 precepts and in the Thich Nhat Hanh tradition he calls them the 5 mindfulness trainings, he also developed the 14 mindfulness trainings as a further step.
The idea being that in taking on these trainings one reads them at least once every two weeks along with the practice of meditation and mindfulness. So it becomes like samyama, the more inner silence that is developed the more the trainings penetrate in a real way. It is like the old conditioned habits that even the very advanced practitioner may have, are constantly getting looked at and challenged by contemplating the mindfulness trainings or whatever guidlines one wishes to embrace.
Being awakened to non-duality is just another stepping stone, it then has to be taken into society and we still have all our conditioning to work through, it may be from a different perspective but nevertheless the work and integration still has to be done.
Personally I like the 14 mindfulness trainings, they don't say you should do anything, they say "be aware of the suffering caused by..."
to give you a flavour the first one is:
"Aware of the suffering created by fanaticism and intolerance, I am determined not to be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory or ideology, even Buddhist ones. Buddhist teachings are guiding means to help me learn to look deeply and to develop my understanding and compassion. They are not doctrines to fight, kill or die for."
Of course the whole problem is - who do you believe when it comes to rules for ourselves. In contemplating these things I suppose one always has to look deeply and not accept anything on face value. Perhaps make our own rules when we are in a particularly balanced state and see how they compare to the yamas and niyamas for instance.
In fact that's a good idea[
]- I think I will have a go at that myself.
I think also that NVC (non-violent communication) offers a good way of working with it. One advantage of this system is that Mitchell came at this approach purely from his observations and with no spiritual background or baggage in that regard. It was developed simply from what worked and what didn't work - very scientific.
enough rambling[
]