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DIFFERENT BUT EQUAL FUNCTIONS
Ted Czukor (Srinathadas)
December 27, 2004

It was Saint Paul who likened people’s varying gifts to the many organs necessary in a healthy body. Society needs each one of us, and each one of our different jobs, to enable it to function smoothly.

Thank goodness for the paramedics and EMT's who attend the victims of car crashes, and for the surgeons and nurses waiting in the hospital to put those victims back together again. Thank goodness, too, for the car manufacturers who strive each year to add more safety features to their vehicles, in an attempt to protect us against our own mistakes. And thank goodness for the insurance companies, in business to reimburse us for our financial losses. Also thank goodness for attorneys - for it is their job to help us when those other systems fail to function in a just or equitable manner. 

And where would we be without our spiritual and psychological counselors, who help us to weather the cruel storms of life – such as losing someone we love in a car accident?

Some of these professions may seem to exist in contradiction to their opposites - but in fact they all depend on one another. In a society where one exists, the others arise of necessity.

So, in the same spirit, let us thank goodness for the young, super-model Yoga teachers who emphasize Tapas – discipline – and who drive their students like martial artists, to develop their bodies to perfection. And let us also thank goodness for the older, more mellow Yoga teachers who focus on gentleness, compassion, and the mature tranquility that comes from Jnana – philosophy. Our jobs are different, but they are equally important and necessary. They complement each other, in a society of many different people who have many different needs. 

It is inadvisable, therefore, to criticize other teachers for not doing what you do. And it is equally pointless to denigrate yourself because you cannot match the abilities of another teacher, or live up to the disciplinary or philosophical standards of a lineage different from your own. 

What each one of us represents is valuable. What each one of us teaches is important and necessary. There are people who need what each one of us has been placed here to give. 

Just as with the different organs of the body, the living and growing tradition that is Yoga would be incomplete if any one of us were missing.

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OM SHANTI, SHANTI, SHANTI
[Peace, Peace, Peace]