Essentially, the word ‘discipline’ means ‘a learning’ or ‘to learn’. When you say, “I am disciplined”, it means you are always willing to learn. You are not stuck in some mode. Discipline is not just doing something in a particular way. If you constantly strive and are willing to learn how to do everything better, you are disciplined.
You cannot impose learning, but you can force people to do certain things. You can, however, only force people for a short time. Over a longer period, your life will go in trying to enforce it and their life will go in trying to dodge it.
In my childhood, whatever my family tried to impose, never worked. But what was brought in as a culture in the family did work, and benefited me immensely in many ways. It was just simple things; for example, wherever we were, we always went back home for lunch and dinner.
It wasn’t possible for breakfast because people were leaving at different times, but for lunch and dinner, the whole family always ate together. If one person didn’t come, the whole family would be waiting, so you could not ‘not go’ on time. This was not an imposition. An atmosphere was created where you had to be a part of it.
In the house, it didn’t matter what, my mother would sweep the house twice, in the morning and evening, and swab the house once, even if the househelp did not come. She would neither have her bath nor eat unless the house was swept and swabbed. How can you let your mother do the whole thing by herself? You can’t, so everybody pitched in to whatever extent they could.
If only the househelp was doing it and when the househelp was not there, my mother did not do it, we would have never thought of doing it because it would have been the househelp’s work. But whenever she was not there, my mother was doing it without hesitation, so there was no question of not doing it. Everybody had to do it.
It was these little things that made all the difference. Simple things like the way you leave your bed when you get up in the morning and where you leave your coffee cup. No one ever yelled at us if we didn’t do these things, but my mother would sit and do it, and when you saw her doing it, you had to pitch in and do
it yourself.
Civilisation has been disseminated not through textbooks or preachers. It is essentially the way a family lives. Everything, from how you leave a bathroom to how you leave a dining table, was set and it had to happen that way. Whether you participate or not, no one questioned you, but how long can you just simply be non-participatory? You cannot be. When everyone is doing it, you also become a part of it and do it.
If you bring yogic practices into a child’s life, there is no way they cannot be disciplined. Practising yoga brings discipline into life because you have to do certain things in a particular way, otherwise it does not work. The way yoga is taught is so meticulous that once you start doing it with that sense of meticulousness, there is no way you cannot be disciplined.
Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and bestselling author. He was conferred the Padma Vibhushan in 2017. Isha.sadhguru.org