Junk Thoughts

Greetings Yogis and Yoginis,

This week in class we are considering "junk thoughts."

Be vigilant; guard your mind against negative thoughts.

-Buddha

Today, many people are very well informed about nutrition. We worry about “junk food,” which is a legitimate concern, but shouldn’t we be just as worried by the low-grade food we sometimes feed our mind? There is junk food, yes. But there are also “junk thoughts.”

Take a close look at the entertainment pages of your newspaper, for example. We have become so used to this kind of fare that we seldom even question it. I can imagine what people who lived in the Dark Ages would say if they say today’s paper from the Bay area: “They think we lived in the Dark Ages! What about them?” Millions of people spend hours every day feeding their minds and the minds of their children with unadulterated junk.

It is not just a few nude scenes or explicit language, which are often more juvenile than alarming, but the terribly unkind attitudes people display toward each other on the screen, on stage, and on the printed page, which they vent in harsh words and harmful acts. All this goes into our minds and gets absorbed; it cannot help but resurface in our behavior. It is not that we want to live in a germ-free world, which is impossible, but we need to remember that mental states are affected by what we see, hear, and read every day.

Words to Live By: Inspiration for Every Day – Eknath Easwaran

The homework is to notice your thoughts more. Notice your negative thoughts and work to replace them with positive thoughts. Change negativity into love, anger into compassion. Remind yourself that negative behavior starts with negative thoughts.

Blessings,

paul cheek
Rushing Water Yoga
The BKS Iyengar Yoga School of Southwest Washington
417 NE Birch St., Camas, WA 98607
360.834.5994

www.rushingwateryoga.com
info@rushingwateryoga.com

Serving Yoga to Camas, Washougal, and Vancouver Washington since 2003