A (somewhat) yogic approach to modern technophilia

Stop buying unnecessary things.
Toss half your stuff, learn contentedness.
Reduce half again.

List 4 essential things in your life,
stop doing non-essential things.
Do these essentials first each day, clear distractions
focus on each moment.

Let go of attachment to doing, having more.
Fall in love with less.

“Be Content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” ~ Lao Tzu

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” - Albert Einstein

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say let your affairs be as one, two, three and to a hundred or a thousand. We are happy in proportion to the things we can do without.” - Henry David Thoreau

“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” - William Morris

“Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.” - Will Rogers

“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.” - Hans Hofmann

Yoga for Dummies, p. 277

Yoga encourages you to cultivate the virtue of greedlessness in all matters.  The Sanskrit word for this is aparigraha, whcih means literally “not grasping all round.”  The yoga practitioner who is well-trained in the art of greedlessness is said to understand the deeper reason for his or her life.  Behind this traditional wisdom lies a profound experience:  As you loosen your grip on material possessions, you also let go of the ego, which is doing the gripping or grasping.  As the ego-contraction relaxes, you increasingly become in touch with the abiding happiness of your true self.  Then you realize that you need nothing at all to be happy.  You are unconcerned about the future and live fully in the present.  You are not afraid to give freely to others and also share with them your inner abundance.

Lately I’ve felt a strong desire to simplify and reduce the number of needless possessions I’ve accumulated over years of mindless consumption.  It’s shocking to step back and take a no-holds-barred inventory of all the junk filling up space in every corner of my house.  Over the Christmas holiday I got the organizing bug and decided it was time to purge the bookcases in my home office, which I had jokingly nicknamed the “Harry Potter room” because there was no telling which piece of paper stuffed into the shelves was magically holding everything together.  Unfortunately, even after buying three new bookcases, the purging turned out to be more of a paper shuffle, and now a month later I’m still feeling a bit overwhelmed by crap on the shelves. That’s just one room in the house. Obviously, more bookshelves wasn’t the correct answer.

I now realize I didn’t need to be better organized (although organizing the stuff you truly need isn’t a bad thing), I needed to get rid of stuff and stop buying things I don’t need.  Of course, deep down I think I knew that answer all along, but that’s a tough pill to swallow.  It’s hard to explain the mind-shift that I’m having right now about consumerism, but it’s almost as if  someone grabbed me about the shoulders and shook me back to reality.  It’s about time to start living more simply.

Of course, renouncing all possessions simply does not present a realistic approach to minimalism and simplicity.  Most of us have families, jobs, lives, and unless we’re willing to give up those lives, our approach won’t be so drastic.

What we need is a realistic approach to change.  Slow change is best for most people.

Here are 10 steps to minimalism as adapted from one of my favorite blogs, mnmlist, that I intend to implement over the next month:

1. Stop buying unnecessary things.  Only buy the necessities, and always ask yourself: is this truly necessary?

2. Get rid of the obvious things. Stuff that’s getting in your way, that you rarely ever use. You can often fill up a few boxes immediately, put them in your car, and donate them to a thrift shop or to friends and family the next day.

3. Get rid of more obvious things. Now that you’ve cleared up some of the clutter, you can take a look around and start seeing other things you rarely use. Box these up as well.

4. Clear the clutter on your floors. If your floors are barely visible because you have clothes and boxes and different items all over the place, start clearing your floors.

5. Clear other flat surfaces. Shelves, table tops, counter tops. They don’t have to be completely clear, but should only have a few essential objects.

6. Start going into closets and drawers. One place at a time, start clearing out clutter.

7. Cut back another third. At this point, you should have simplified drastically, but you can revisit what you still own and see things you don’t really use that often.

8. Start letting go, emotionally. For emotional reasons, there will be things that you “just can’t part” with — clothes or shoes or books or mementoes or gifts, childhood items. This is difficult, but given time, you’ll learn that such attachments aren’t necessary.

9. Get rid of another third. At this point, you’re pretty minimalist, but you can cut back more.

10. Et cetera. The process will never end, until you actually give up everything.

I intend to blog about my de-junkification project over the next month and would love to hear  any experiences or insights you might have on the process of creating a more simple, minimalist life.

Apparently advertising works because after months of seeing Sigg water bottle ads in Yoga Journal I found myself a few days ago at the Whole Foods Market in Charlottesville, VA, dropping over $20 for a .6 L Sigg.  It wasn’t exactly an impulse purchase since I was shopping specifically for a water bottle, just not one quite that expensive.  After two days at a legal conference of buying multiple flavored beverages throughout the day, I realized that bringing my own water bottle might save me a little money (and use a lot less plastic).  So, once I came across the Sigg, it didn’t take much rationalization to convince myself that we were MFEO.

Here’s one reason why the Sigg rocks:

Many people think that they are helping the environment by refilling their plastic PET water bottles. But are you helping yourself?

“Disposable PET bottles are designed for one time use,” states Simran Sethi of The Discovery Channel. “Refilling them can release harmful toxins from the packaging – especially when it gets heated. If you’re tasting plastic, you’re ingesting plastic.”

In 2008, many major North American retailers discontinued selling reusable plastic bottles made from polycarbonate #7 (brands such as Nalgene) due to concerns that these bottles were leaching Bisphynol-A. A report by Health Canada called this chemical (BPA) “dangerous.”

And not all metal water bottles are alike. Very recently there have been major recalls of Chinese-made aluminium water bottles for lead in the paint. Tests have shown that Chinese-made aluminium water bottles, like many polycarbonate #7 plastic bottles, also leach the chemical BPA.

A SIGG Bottle is your healthy and safe choice for your body. The baked-on, crack resistant bottle liner makes sure that you drink what you want to drink – and not unwanted chemicals. The SIGG bottle liner is leach-proof and resistant even to energy drinks, fruit acids and carbonation.

SIGG bottles are manufactured in Switzerland with no BPA, no lead, no phthalates – in other word, no risk to you!

So far, I think my favorite part about the Sigg is that water actually tastes like water.  No more plastic taste, no more leftover flavors like in a plastic water bottle.  It’s really nice and I’m very happy with it.  Highly recommended!

Found an interesting article at HowStuffWorks about the introduction of yoga to the West.  The following is an excerpt from:  “Did the Beatles introduce yoga to the Western World?”

Yoga actually made its first appearance in the West in the early 19th century. It was studied as an Eastern philosophy in the early 20th century and gained popularity as a part of the health and vegetarian movement of the 1930s. But it wasn’t until the 1960s that yoga really began to take off. Prominent Indian yogis began moving to Western countries to extend their teachings.

It was around this time that the Beatles were first exposed to yoga. While the group was filming “Help!” in the Bahamas in 1965, they met Swami Vishnu-Devananda, the founder of Sivandana Yoga. He presented them with signed copies of his work, “The Illustrated Book of Yoga.” George Harrison was fascinated by the book and began studying yoga and Eastern religion. His wife, Pattie Boyd, encouraged him to study Eastern mysticism, Indian philosophy and become a vegetarian. By 1966, Harrison journeyed to India to study sitar, a type of stringed instrument, under the master Ravi Shankar.

While Harrison studied in Bombay, Boyd heard of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of Transcendental Meditation (TM). The Maharishi, born Mahesh Prasad Varma, wanted to make meditation easy to understand and practical. In 1955, he wrote his first book, “The Science of Being and the Art of Living,” and began teaching TM in 1958.

Harrison and Boyd were struck by the Maharishi’s teachings and bought tickets for the Beatles to see him in London. The group followed the Maharishi to Bangor, Wales to learn more about meditation. They eventually traveled to his ashram, or religious retreat, in Rishikesh in the Himalayas where they were joined by other celebrities like Mia Farrow, Donovan and Mike Love of the Beach Boys. The Beatles studied as a group until certain members of the band began to lose interest in TM.

But after John Lennon accused the Maharishi of molesting Mia Farrow, the Beatles fell out with their former master. The allegations were unproven and no charges were ever filed, but the damage was done. Proponents of the Maharishi suggested the split was not the fault of the yogi, but was instead caused by the Beatles’ use of LSD and other drugs in the ashram. George Harrison was the only member of the Beatles to later make amends with the Maharishi.

However, the Beatles had been profoundly influenced by their time with the Maharishi. Much of the music on the White Album was inspired by the yogi’s words and their experience with TM. The Maharishi also profited from the connection. By the 1970s, more than five million people practiced TM [source: Times Online]. Because the Beatles had helped popularize the yogi’s teachings, they were partly responsible for popularizing yoga in the West.

[Chatraw, Janel. "Did the Beatles introduce yoga to the Western world?." 08 February 2008. HowStuffWorks.com. 28 October 2008.]

Check out the article to delve deeper.  There’s some links to other interesting articles.