Thanks to Dee Dussault of Follow Your Bliss Yoga Studio, you and I have the opportunity to consider taking this Santosha Pledge... http://yogafestivaltoronto.wufoo.com/forms/the-santosha-pledge/
In our spiritual lives, we train in patience and compassion, to cast a gentle gaze upon others and the world, to wrestle kindly with our weaknesses, and to see the arc of our journey unfolding in good time... This is all appropriate and useful - it makes us more loving, keeps us sane, and connects us ever more deeply to the source of life.
But in our era, the long-distance race of spiritual awakening is being run on an ever-shortening material pathway... There is a grave disjunction between the time it takes to nurture stable self-reflection, and the pace at which we are destroying the mirror...
Santosha is one of the attitudinal obligations of the yoga practitioner. The common translation is "contentment", but the ancient commentaries suggest something deeper, defining it as "not coveting more than what is at hand". It is the voluntary sacrifice of those things that awareness does not require and that things which death will snatch from us anyway. It is a key sentiment to ground our ecological awareness, because our present disaster is the reflection of our past discontent.
We now know that we must solve our crisis not by dressing up the corpse in smarter consumerism, but through the abolition of consumerist discontent. ...There is great pleasure to be had in the abundance of not needing much. This pleasure of life shines ever more brightly through the thinning veil of what we thought we needed.
The pledges for you to choose from on our pledge engine are invitations to the pleasures of simple spiritual life. Some of the pledges we suggest may be beyond your capacity at this time. They are listed not to elicit guilt, but to provoke your imagination.... It's a journey we have no choice but to start upon, and no choice but to finish.
When you commit to the various pledges below, your choices (and, optionally, your name) will become public record. In your heart you'll be accountable to your community, and thus become a source of inspiration to others. Twice a year we'll e-mail you to comment anonymously on how the pledge has gone for you, and we'll assemble that data into display of our communal commitment.
Finally - a word about how to take this pledge: this is not an online survey or an ephemeral checklist of temporary altruism. It is a paperless, travel-free rite of initiation into the oldest lineage of Yoga and life itself: the lineage of the Earth. The strength of the action will be a reflection of the intention, so, we encourage you to meditate as you consider the options, and to pray for guidance and strength as you choose amongst them. Know that you're not alone in your concern or your devotion.
Please Click Here To Go To The Santosha Pledge http://yogafestivaltoronto.wufoo.com/forms/the-santosha-pledge/