Santosha Quotes

When I learned about santosha, yoga's version of contentment, it seemed right up there with enlightenment in terms of what I could accomplish in this lifetime. Cultivate a sense of being all right with who I was and what I had? Impossible. To me, contentment was fleeting and based on whether I'd gotten what I wanted, usually from some outside source. But santosha proposed a contentment that could be intentionally cultivated, independent of the external sources of happiness and value we usually count on and measure ourselves by. Santosha is being okay with what we have and who we are, right now.

a farmer in his field cannot force the nutrients of water or earth into the roots of his grain. What does he do, then? He removes the obstructing weeds. With these gone, the nutrients enter, of themselves, the roots of the grain.” In the same way, when negative karmas, habits, deeds, thoughts, influences, associations, and situations are uprooted from our minds and lives, the higher consciousness and states of evolution will occur naturally. This is exceedingly important for us to keep in mind. For it is purity (shaucha) in this form that enables the divine light to reach us. Santosha: contentment, peacefulness Santosha consists of the passive aspect of contentment and peacefulness and the more positive aspect of joy and happiness. Santosha is a fundamentally cheerful attitude based on a harmonious interior condition and an intellectually spiritual outlook. This is possible only through meditation, and is one of the signs of progress in meditation. This must not be equated with mere intellectual “positive thinking” or a forced external “happiness” which is a camouflage, not a real state. Santosha is an inner-based quality that occurs spontaneously. It need not be cultivated or “acted out” any more than

Without a larger purpose, we are just stretching our hamstrings. But in the context of the eight limbs of Ashtanga Yoga, this simple action can serve the purpose of steadying the mind (dharana, the seventh limb) and developing acceptance for where we are (santosha, one of the ethical precepts, the first two limbs of the yamas and niyamas). We can be testing our honesty (satya): Are we willing to work with clear alignment and integrity even if it takes a little longer, or do we just want to get our head down on our leg so we can look good? We can be noticing all the thoughts and distractions that percolate up as we’re holding the posture and patiently bring the mind back to our breath and the immediate content of the moment (pratyahara, the fifth limb). Or we can just stretch our hamstrings. There’s nothing wrong, of course, with just stretching our hamstrings, but if we are really interested in practicing Yoga, we can give our actions an umbrella of intention and achieve so much more with the same basic materials.

Santosha CONTENTMENT MEANING Santosha, defined as “contentment,” is the second niyama in the Yoga Sutras. SIGNIFICANCE Yoga and santosha can be synonymous, because when you are content, you do not desire anything more or less. Ahh.

Ragupathi yogi told me: how she keeps herself happy, makes everyone feeling welcome, keep your heart like that for paramashiva. Always make sure you are the second wife for him, waiting for him to come to your heart; never ever any complaining or ill feeling can enter your heart. Since that time I kept a beautiful space in my heart. I am in absolute peace, joy, just to make paramashiva feel welcome in my heart. I keep the saucha - hygiene, cleanliness of the body, and the santosha - happiness of the heart - just to invite paramashiva and for him to feel happy, welcome, blissful. That’s it.