# The Last Maple-Covered Donut **1) Name the five negative thoughts, or kleshas, which Master Patanjali lists in the beginning of the second chapter of the Yoga Sutra. Then say a bit about how they represent a flow or process by which our pain is created and sustained.** The five negative thoughts that Master Patanjali lists are misunderstanding, selfness, liking, disliking, and grasping. Misunderstanding is our general tendency to misunderstand the world which comes with us from our past lives: the seed for thinking that things have some nature from their own side, when in fact they are coming from us. This seed then creates selfness, the first moments in the womb that our misunderstanding starts again in this life: specifically separating “me” from other things, in the sense of believing that we come from different places, and are not both created by my own past deeds. Because we then relate to objects wrongly, we begin to have ignorant liking and disliking. It is not wrong to like nice things and dislike painful things, but in this case we are actively misunderstanding where good things and bad things come from: from how we treat others. “Grasping” here refers to misunderstanding things in the moment of liking or disliking, say for example when we are standing in front of the last maple-covered donut in a shop and have a chance either to eat it ourselves or to give it to someone else who wants it. We take it for ourselves, and thereby wear out our seeds—which we could have perpetuated if we had given the donut away. We thus begin another downward cycle of pain. **2) Explain—with reference to a pastry shop—what happens just after the mind has gone through the first five steps in the chain of suffering.** The fifth link in the chain of pain had brought us up to misunderstanding, in a very specific moment of our life, the very nature of a maple-covered donut in a shop. And let’s say that it happens to be the last maple-covered donut in the shop. We believe that it will come to us if we reach out and take it; if we pay money for it; and because someone somewhere has baked it. In reality though the donut exists only because we have served just such a donut to someone else, in the past. Now there’s nothing wrong with taking the last donut; but let’s say that we have just overheard an elderly lady in line behind us mention to her husband that maple-covered donuts are her favorite. The next step then in the wheel of pain would be if we take the last donut for ourselves. This is the sixth step: committing a seed, or ignorant action, due to ignorant liking or disliking. **4) How does an action leave an imprint or seed in our mind, and what decides how strong the seed will be?** We plant a seed simply by being aware that we are doing something, saying something, or thinking something. In this sense the mind is like an extremely sensitive video camera which is recording every event of our life, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for the length of our entire lives. Factors such as our intention, the strength of our emotions, our awareness of what we are doing, the amount of premeditation or preparation we have gone through, the types of people or other creatures we affect, how far we go in completing a deed, and how we feel about the deed afterwards all contribute to how strong the seed will be, and how soon it ripens. **5) Very basically, there are three choices about where the pain of life comes from. Discuss them.** The first choice is that our life is just a huge coincidence of random atomic particles bumping into each other ever since a Big Bang, or first event of the universe. This is the viewpoint of science. It certainly doesn’t feel right that the unique personality and face of each person we ever meet in life is just some incredible accident, and of course the whole idea of a “first” event with no cause itself contradicts the most fundamental laws of science. The second choice is that some higher and infinitely compassionate intelligence has created everything and everybody, and created it in such a way that we always lose everything to the agonies of old age, cancer, war, death. (It’s important to say though that there are beings who know all things, and who are hovering around us constantly, waiting to guide us perfect happiness; just that they are unable to do this unless we collect the necessary seeds by taking care of others.) The third choice is that things come from seeds: that there is an absolute justice to the universe, and that we get back exactly what we do to other people, good or bad. **6) Why do relationships go bad?** We meet somebody, somebody exciting, and the feeling is mutual. In six months we can’t stand each other. What went wrong? We tend to look in the wrong place when we’re trying to figure out why a relationship has gone bad. It’s not either person’s fault, and it’s not that you haven’t done one thing or another to try to fix things. We meet a person that we like because a seed ripens within our mind, and creates them. The power of this seed wears out naturally and automatically simply as it produces this person, from hour to hour, day to day. As the power of the seed reaches its end, so does the relationship. Unless we know how to plant a new seed, or perpetuate the original seed, then all such relationships must end, no matter what we do. This is the second type of suffering, the suffering of change, and it also causes our body and mind to age, decay, and die. **7) Why do good people suffer?** As Master Patanjali says, “The pain that we are ridding ourselves of is future pain.” We can think of the events in our lives as being like cement. The things that are happening to us right now are like dried cement: once pain is actually occurring to us, the mental seed for that pain has already broken open, and there is very little that we can usually do. We can though affect pain that will be coming to us in the future, even this evening, if we understand clearly how to work with mental seeds. These coming events are like wet cement, and we can still affect them or even transform them completely. This gives us an immediate insight into the age-old question of why good people suffer; and why people for example who cheat others get wealthy. All suffering can only come from having hurt someone in the past; people who have lived well in this present life will still undergo the effects of deeds that have done before this life, especially if they have not been trained in managing seeds within the mind. When people like this seem to suffer from doing good, this is only an illusion caused by the two events happening one after another: the events are not in any way thought actually connected. The same is the case for bad people who seem to prosper. This fact is very important for us to keep in mind, since otherwise we might become discouraged in our practice. There is always a time lag between doing good deeds and experiencing the effects of it: even mental seeds need time to ripen and mature. **8) Name the eight limbs of the yogic path, in both English and Sanskrit.** The eight limbs are self-control (yama), commitments (niyama), the physical poses (asana), control of the breath (pranayama), withdrawal of the senses (pratyahara), focus (dharana), fixation (dhyana), and perfect meditation (samadhi). **9) Give the five forms of self-control, and state why they and the five commitments make up the first two of the eight limbs.** The five forms of self-control are avoiding harm to anyone, always telling the truth, never stealing from another, keeping sexual purity, and overcoming possessiveness. These two limbs come first in the yoga path because we need to avoid bad seeds, and collect good seeds, in order to succeed at the other limbs. **10) Name the five commitments that form the second limb.** The five commitments are to be clean; to be contented with whatever we have; to embrace hardships for higher goals; to engage in regular study; and to seek our Master’s blessings.