What is devotion?
Is it love?
Is it adoration?
Is it commitment?
Is it loyalty?
What or who are you devoted to?
How can you decide?
You might say ‘I am devoted to my partner and you can tell by the way we build our life together.’ Or, maybe, ‘I am devoted to my children/grandchildren, you can tell by how much I do for them.’
Perhaps, what or who we are devoted to can be determined by flow of our mind. Where does your mind always go? Which thoughts circle through your mind over and over again throughout the day.
Sharath spoke about the concept of devotion during conference recently, shining light on his devotion to his students. Reminding us of how he has dedicated his life to us, his students. He goes to bed very early day so he can get up early to do his practice and teach us. He has passed up once in a lifetime opportunities to be in the shala for us in the morning for practice. His students are always on his mind, always a consideration.
He is devoted to us, students of yoga. He is devoted to his teachers, the ones who illuminated the way for him and shared their knowledge with him. He fills his mind always with how to support his students, how to care for the community and how to structure his life so he can serve his students as best as he can.
What occupies your mind most regularly? Where does your mind continually flow? Is this truly what you are devoted to?
Ultimately, yoga is a practice of getting to know ourselves and trying to gain agency over our mind. So, we can direct the mind to focus where we want it to focus. So, we can have control over the flow of thoughts in the mind (at least sometimes anyway). So, we can direct our devotion toward more meaningful and beneficial thought forms and patterns.
Changing the mind is hard and can take years or even lifetimes to accomplish. However, every step we take toward observing ourselves, our thoughts and our responses gives us knowledge about ourselves and helps to keep us continuing along the path of yoga.
Yoga can help us to build the life we choose through training our mind and cultivating attitudes that support the spiritual path of yoga.