A Culture of Waste and Exploitation | Big Think

A Culture of Waste and Exploitation

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Perfecting one’s relationship to all things.

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Sharon Gannon:

Gannon is a renowned yoga master, instructor and animal rights activist. In 1984, she and her partner David Life created the Jivamukti Yoga Method, which is a path to enlightenment through compassion for all beings. They are pioneers in teaching yoga as spiritual activism/activation. The JY Method emphasizes vinyasa, scriptural study, devotion, prayer, music, chanting and meditation as well as animal rights, veganism, environmentalism and political activism.

Jivamukti's passionate focus on the original meaning of the Sanskrit word "asana" as seat, connection, relationship to the earth is as practical as it is radical at this time of global and consciousness shift. The Jivamukti Yoga Method is taught worldwide at Jivamukti Yoga Schools in NYC, Detroit, Toronto, London, Berlin and Munich. The Jivamukti practice is also available on DVDs Yoga Journal has recognized Gannon and Life, as innovators in Yoga and "The New York Times" says, "Without Jivamukti, yoga in the U.S. would still be the obscure practice of a few."

"Time Magazine" recognized Jivamukti Yoga as one of the nine methods of Hatha Yoga taught in the world today. JY is featured in the acclaimed documentary film: What is Yoga? Sharon is a featured yogini in various books: "Yoga" by Linda Sparrowe, "American Yoga" by Carrie Schneider, "Yogini" by Janice Gates and "Women to Women" by Christina Lessa.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Topic: A Culture of Waste of Exploitation

Sharon Gannon: This culture that I’m speaking of started roughly about 10,000 years ago. And it started with two major occurrences. The first one, the domestication of animals – which domestication, of course, is a very soft and acceptable way of describing slavery – enslaving other beings.

Of course the second occurrence was intensive agriculture, which happened basically after the domestication of animals as sort of part and parcel of that. Well what happens to anybody when you enslave another is a hardening. You have to harden your heart in order to do such a horrible thing.

It involves confining them. It involves taking away their freedom. It involves exploiting them without any thought of how your action might impact upon their happiness or their well being. It’s very selfish. It’s very self-centered. It’s all about “me”.

What is that animal going to provide me? And because that’s first and foremost in a person’s mind, then it’s easy to do exploitive things to another being because you’ve convinced yourself that you’re benefiting. Generation after generation we’ve been brought up with this conditioning that if it benefits human beings, then it’s okay. Even if it benefits human beings in the immediate, like right now – immediate gratification. And so we see the repercussions of that kind of mindset in our disposable culture.

In our use of toxic chemicals or nuclear power, if it’s going to provide me with energy now, who cares about how it might impact upon future generations, or the environment? Heaven forbid if we even think about the birds; or the other various wildlife that might be impacted by the nuclear power plant; or the fish or the other sea creatures that live in the sea when we have to get rid of our toxic nuclear waste. This is just one example, and we see it played out in so, so many ways. We eat meat. We drink milk as a culture, and we think this is okay. We don’t even question it for the most part. Some of us are questioning it now. But it really just began 10,000 years ago.

I feel that we’re a very ingenious species, and that this cultural conditioning is not really our true nature; that our true nature lies in the joy and the happiness that is felt when you feel yourself as connected to the whole, to all of life. In fact I think everyone really knows in our hearts the secret to happiness for ourselves; and that we know that the best way to uplift our own life is to do all we can to uplift the lives of others.

These kinds of ideas in ________ yoga sutra, we find asana. The word “asana”, which of course in our modern times, contemporary times, many people think asana, “Oh that means the physical exercise part of yoga,” implying that that’s something separate from the spiritual.

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