Dear Yoga Friends,

Like you, I often wonder why there is this amazing universe with such abundant complexity, beauty, and life on a blue, green, and white ball zipping around a star. Life that has evolved to a point where beings live in community and conflict, with most of them connecting with the complexity and beauty, and some of them practicing yoga. Why this, instead of a bunch of rocks sitting around?

One evening I was driving in heavy city traffic. I was in the left lane, and to my right, a car in the right lane was signaling to move into my lane, presumably to make a left turn. Letting the car in could potentially slow me down if I got stuck behind it. This car happened to be a driverless Waymo vehicle with no one in it. I pondered the moral question: "Should I be kind to this robotic entity and let it in?" To me this felt like one of those "big questions". Do the basic moral principles of kindness, embodied in so many human traditions including yoga, extend to this scenario? While pondering this I let the vehicle in and laughed at the situation.

What does Patanjali, author of the Yoga Sutras, have to say about this? The often-quoted Sutra I.33 comes to mind (translation from B.K.S. Iyengar's Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali):

Through cultivation of friendliness, compassion, joy, and indifference to pleasure and pain, virtue and vice respectively, the consciousness becomes favorably disposed, serene, and benevolent.

My first takeaway is that the Waymo being robotic and not flesh and blood doesn't matter. It's my own cultivation of the favorable qualities that matters, hence Patanjali would advise me to let the Waymo in. My second takeaway is that perhaps the consciousness that becomes favorably disposed is part of a cosmic consciousness that becomes better aligned as a result of each small positive contribution.

In any case, I highly recommend that the hi-tech folks behind these autonomous creatures add a feature to thank me like a human driver would. I missed that. Your observations and comments welcome as always!

Namaste,

Chad

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