On the Householder Path
by Shobhan Richard Faulds*
In a series of discourses delivered in America, Swami Kripalu described yoga as the search for happiness. This stood out from the majority of his Indian teachings, where yoga was viewed as the practice of austerities performed to transcend the limits of body and mind, bringing religious revelation and bestowing extraordinary powers. Reading these American discourses carefully, I could see that he was characterizing yoga as a pathway to a rich and rewarding life. Instead of adopting an ascetic mindset, its practices could be done to nurture the body, fine tune the mind, and bring high levels of human development into reach. Looking back, I can say that I’d found a basic tenet of the householder path, and a view of yoga that would have currency with today’s practitioners. At the time, I only knew that Swami Kripalu was intellectually rigorous and this new depiction of yoga no casual mistake.
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The nature of the human mind is to roam everywhere in search of happiness. As long as our search is focused externally, the mind will be unduly influenced by circumstances and experiences outside of its control. Growing more and more agitated, such a mind tends to become miserable, and it can seem that one’s hope for happiness is in vain. Yet this great ocean of unhappiness can be crossed. First become a philosopher by sitting calmly and thinking clearly about the path before you in life. Next become a scientist by testing your ideas. Adjust your habits to foster the health of the body. Attend to your duties with enthusiasm and concentration. Watch to see if your maturing practice pacifies the mind, bringing it more under your control and making your actions effective. Then one day become a yogi by entering the root of your being and discovering the complete knowledge and peace that lies unsuspected there. Everything entailed in this process of harmonizing the body and mind and eventually going beyond the limitations of both is yoga, the trustworthy means of attaining a lasting happiness.
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I was certain that Swami Kripalu knew Western thinking was rooted in the philosophy of the ancient Greeks, who believed that all human beings strive for eudemonia, a state of well-being and flourishing. This motivated me to revisit their writings, where I found a few ideas common to eastern and western classical thought that patched the holes in my understanding of householder yoga. It’s easy for anyone exposed to renunciate ideals to imagine that a yoga practitioner’s search for mundane happiness simply gets replaced by a quest for an other-worldly enlightenment. On the path Swami Kripalu walked and taught, the search for worldly happiness grows into a passion for growth that brings self-actualization and outer success. Then, by enabling deep interior practice, it culminates in Self-Actualization.
*Reprinted, with permission, from Swami Kripalu's Yoga of Success and Self Realization by Richard Faulds (26-27).
