First, Do No Harm

There are some things I just don't talk about much. Religion and spirituality fall into that category. I write about some of my beliefs here, where I am an anonymous author with an anonymous audience, but with friends and family, I don't bring it up much. I have a variety of reasons for that: I think it's personal; having grown up in Bible-belt Christianity, I am protective of my own brand of spirituality, and not interested in a battle over belief; I also believe that it is important to be respectful of other beliefs, so I keep mine to myself where I think it belongs.

At the same time, I struggle with that line of respect, both in the realm of religion and in all those other delicate human matters. Yoga is part of my spirituality; the moral and ethical tenets are part of my practice. I've spoken of many of them here in this blog, but never of ahimsa, non-harming. Ahimsa is the first of the yamas, the ethical constraints. It feels like an easy one to get a handle on, so it's often used as an example, and I have heard it so frequently that I remember it easily, where sometimes I have to struggle to come up with the others on the list. By drawing a line of respect, I am trying not to do harm to others. It makes sense to me to do this. But is there a point where I draw that line in too close, boxing myself in so that I am doing harm to myself by denying myself? Or allowing others to do harm to me by not speaking up? There is no tradition in yoga of turning the other cheek, so there is no reason for me to expose myself to harm from others as I quietly respect them. I also wonder whether by drawing that line I am in fact separating myself from them, creating an us and a them, out of fear of what their response might be. Am I fooling myself thinking that I am respecting "them", protecting "them" from harm done by me, when in fact I am making a little safe space for me, so as not to be harmed myself? How often have we said, "Well, I didn't want to tell you, because I knew you'd be upset." Who is being protected there?

And how do we define harm anyway? Where and when do we begin to do harm? Does it only count if it's intentional? Can it be balanced out by good acts? I had a friend in college with a melodramatic turn of mind (or, I don't know, maybe we all had that back then). She believed that by our very existence we were doing harm, and that we were morally obligated to remove ourselves from life. We had this conversation over iced coffee in her dorm room and I never had the sense that she planned to follow through on this noble goal. But she's right in a sense; we all do harm in all kinds of ways, large and small, recognized and unrecognized. If we see that in ourselves there is every possibility that we will live in a kind of paralysis, unable to take a step for fear of the harm we might do.

For me, there is no easy way to wrap this up and answer my own questions, but I have a few thoughts that help to show me the way. In yoga there is a concept of samskara, or mental grooves, ruts that have been worn in our thinking and in our doing. Yesterday, I boiled some eggs. One cracked and spilled out some of the white; the water boiled over and left a huge mess on the stove and the burner. I cleaned up what I could at the time, but the burner was hot so I left that for later. Later, I had forgotten about it so I put some water on to boil. The nasty smell in the house reminded me of the mess, and now the burner's hot again so I still can't clean it. Still later, my partner and I had a whole discussion about it as we were putting water on to boil again. I told her what I had done, we talked about avoiding that burner, I moved another pot out of the way so I could use a different burner, she walked out of the room and I stopped paying attention. In that moment, I slid into habit, putting the kettle back on that same nasty burner. It only took a split second of inattention for me to lose my focus and my intention.

I think the tenets of yoga are really about helping us keep the focus, to stay attentive, and not about right and wrong answers. If we accept that we are equally so small a part of the whole as to be insignificant, and at the same time so expansive that we contain everything there is, then we have both no power at all to do harm or to be harmed and at the same time all the power there is.

I have a tattoo on my shoulder of a fan with butterflies and a lacewing flying out. I rarely talk about the symbolism of the design and what it means to me; to most people, it's just a pretty thing. When I was a child, I felt a connection bordering on the absurd with people, with objects, with animals, and particularly with insects. I had a hard time separating myself. I would rage and cry when my friends killed ants, I created little bug hospitals with sugar water for bees who had strayed too far and bits of cloth for dying moths, and no insect could be killed in the house if I had anything to say about it. I felt a particular connection with lacewings. Gradually, I learned to separate myself, to harden myself, but as an adult I look back with nostalgia for my better impulses. My tattoo is a reminder to me to care, to keep caring. I can't know what my life or my actions will mean to anyone. All I can do is live the life, send out my actions into the unknown, but with care. T.S. Eliot wrote, "For us there is only the trying. The rest is not our business." The trying is where we have to live.

copyright 2009 J. Autumn Needles