The third Yama: Asteya - Non-covetousness
This is the third instalment of my modern take on Patanjali's yoga sutras, looking at real-world applications of the Yamas and Niyamas, the 'ten commandments' of yoga.
I first experienced covetousness when I was 4 years old. My next door neighbour, also 4, had a toy record player that played nursery rhymes when you inserted a bright plastic disc. I wanted that toy so much it hurt. I begged and pleaded for one. I even tried to steal it, hiding it at the bottom of the garden with the intention of going back for it when nobody was looking. I’d always played nicely with the girl next door until she got that record player. After that, I hated her.
A few years later, my brother got a cassette player for his birthday. I desperately wanted to possess his (rather crappy and second hand as I now recall) tape player and I used to take it when he wasn’t looking (and sometimes when he was, just to annoy him). When it came to that tape player, I felt pretty much the same way about my brother as I did about the girl with the toy record player.
Non-covetousness is the third Yama, and a very good one it is too. Keeping up with the Jones’s, or the little girl next door, is exhausting. All that energy used up in the longing for something that isn’t yours. Not to mention the damage it does to relationships – it’s very hard to be happy for somebody while you’re secretly desperate to possess their success or happiness for yourself.
Asteya is often translated as ‘non-stealing’, but I like TKV Desikachar’s translation: “Noncovetousness or the ability to resist a desire for that which does not belong to us.” Stealing is something that we’d NEVER do, oh no. Everybody knows that’s wrong. And while it’s pretty obvious if you steal something from a shop or fail to return something you borrowed from a friend, it’s much easier to conceal the desire for something that isn’t rightfully yours. A little bit of envy when your best friend lands the job you’ve been dreaming of isn’t going to ruin your life, but habitually longing for things that aren’t yours can have a serious impact on your levels happiness. Covetousness is more common and insidious than plain old stealing.
There’s another, very subtle way of stealing and that’s when you take away somebody’s self esteem, confidence or inner peace. If your envy of your friend’s great new job leads to snippy comments, even in jest, you’re taking some of her joy away. Saying or doing anything that undermines another person’s joy, trust or wellbeing is stealing. I should know, I did it recently and it makes me wince just to think about it.
My six year old daughter, Ruby, desperately wanted to go on the ghost tour at the Manly Quarantine Station. Due to recent, erm, challenging behaviour, I decided to use the situation as an incentive to make some positive changes at home.
Together we devised a wall chart that had ten squares in it. Every time I noticed her doing something lovely (which could be as simple as NOT tormenting her brother over dinner), she could draw a ghost in one of the squares. The idea was that once all ten squares contained a ghost, I’d take her on the ghost tour.
It worked a treat. The challenging behaviour disappeared overnight and my grumpy, fractious daughter turned in to a helpful and genuinely cheerful little trooper for two whole weeks. We made plans to go to the Quarantine Station and spent several days talking excitedly about it. But two days before the outing, I watched her extract a horrible revenge on her little brother, who had committed the unspeakable crime of removing the book mark from her book. I lost my temper and flew at her, shouting that she was a mean bully and that there would be no ghost tour after what I’d seen.
When all the wailing and screaming (including mine) had abated, I realised what I had done. In my anger, I hadn’t been able to resist the desire to take something that didn’t belong to me – Ruby’s confidence in me to treat her in a fair and consistent way. Who’d trust a parent who gave with one hand, took with the other and shouted in your face while they did it?
With a little bit of mindfulness, I could have handled the situation with greater skill, disciplining my daughter in a way that renewed her confidence in me rather than taking it away. Now she was giving me the cold shoulder with a degree of sophistication that made me fear for the teenage years. It was time to go back to Patanjali for inspiration on how to get myself out of yet another pickle of my own making.
He starts by offering a great incentive to practice Asteya:
“One who is trustworthy, because he does not covet what belongs to others, naturally has everyone’s confidence and everything is shared with him, however precious it might be.” Sutra 2.37
If you can be trusted with other people’s feelings and confidences, they are going to share their lives, thoughts and experiences with you. There’s no greater privilege than that. I reckon a 6 yr olds trust is pretty precious and if I wanted Ruby to share it with me, I had to demonstrate that I was trustworthy enough to deserve it.
So, how do we go about cultivating Astyea? Barring kleptomania, making up you mind not to steal material things is easy. It’s a lot harder to change the subtle behaviours that lead to the theft of other people’s joy, confidence or self esteem.
Bringing other people down is a habit. The easiest way to kick this kind of habit is to create new habits that gradually take over from the old ones. And the best way to create a new habit is practise. Patanjali provides a simple exercise to help us to practise Asteya:
“If we can be pleased with others who are happier than ourselves, compassionate towards those who are unhappy, joyful with those doing praiseworthy things, and remain undisturbed by the errors of others, our mind will be very tranquil.” Sutra 1:33
If we can cultivate the positive, compassionate feelings that Patanjali recommends, we will no longer feel the compulsion to chip away at other people’s wellbeing.
I decided to meditate on this sutra as part of my morning yoga practise, considering what it meant and how I could apply it. After a couple of days, my contemplation of the sutra started to seep into my every day interactions. I remembered to practice compassion rather than impatience when the kids were tired and whingy (mostly). And just reminding myself to ‘remain undisturbed’ when the challenging behaviour set it gave me enough breathing space to step back and think before saying or doing anything I would regret. Contemplating sutra 1:33 didn’t fix all my problems over night, but sustained practise made it a lot easier for me to make better choices.
I think that’s the real power of yoga. A few minutes of concentrated mindfulness can have a positive effect on the way you think, feel and behave, long after you’ve finished your formal practice.
The changes in my behaviour had a huge impact on Ruby’s behaviour. She became more contented and cooperative as my parenting became more consistent and compassionate. I was reminded of the saying “The definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.” Output is directly related to input. I became acutely aware of this as I realised that the way Ruby treated her little brother was (usually) a direct reflection of how I was treating her.
We did go to on the Ghost Tour, we just postponed it for a week to give everyone time to settle down. I reckon Patanjali would have made a pretty good parent.
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