Misuse Is Not Meaning

Ahimsa, accountability, and the question of who defines yoga

Every few months, someone says that yoga’s ethics are too thin for the world we live in. The latest version of that claim landed in my feed this week. I read a recent post from influencer, titled “Ambedkar and the Critical Hermeneutics of Ahimsa.” This is how I understand its central claim:

“In violent, turbulent times, many people turn to yoga for grounding. Ethics like ahimsa, the yamas/niyamas, and sometimes verses from the Gita get shared as moral guidance. But when these teachings are offered as rules without depth, they can turn into spiritual bypassing - a way, often unintentionally, to avoid accountability and to gloss over harm, especially harm carried by marginalized people.”

That concern isn’t imaginary. I’ve seen the bypassing too.

But I want to challenge one move in the argument because it quietly shifts the blame from how we use yoga to what yoga is.

When yoga gets reduced into slogans, that is not the tradition exposing its limits. That is us exposing ours.

The texts aren’t shallow. Our use of them often is.

In a lot of modern yoga spaces, ethics get turned into manners:

• “Ahimsa” becomes “never raise your voice.”

• “Compassion” becomes “don’t confront.”

• “Peace” becomes “keep it comfortable.”

Those moves can silence people, protect the feelings of the powerful, and punish the honest person for being “too intense.” But we should not pin that on the Yoga Sūtras or the Bhagavad Gītā.

If someone skims a text, pulls a line, and uses it as a social tool, that tells you nothing about the text’s depth. It tells you what the person needed that line to do for them.

The Bhagavad Gītā doesn’t start in a studio. It opens on a battlefield, in the middle of a crisis where every choice has consequences.

So when someone says these teachings are shared “with very little context or depth,” my response is: Yes people do that. But that is a modern habit, not a traditional weakness.

Spiritual bypassing is real and very ordinary.

Spiritual bypassing is not complicated. It sounds like this:

• “Don’t be angry. That’s not yogic.”

• “Violence is never the answer,” said in a way that really means “stay quiet.”

• “Practice ahimsa,” used to avoid naming harm, conflict, or repair.

The harm here isn’t the word ahimsa. The harm is a person using a respected word to manage a situation usually to protect their image, their comfort, or their sense of moral superiority. That’s not yoga speaking. That’s ego speaking in yoga vocabulary.

Yoga already has a path to accountability

The post suggests that decontextualized ethics can leave no tangible pathway to accountability. But yoga’s ethical spine is accountability when it’s practiced as discipline rather than performed as identity.

For example:

• Satya is not “my truth.” It’s truth, when it costs you, in speech and action.

• Tapas is not aesthetic struggle. It’s the willingness to do the hard thing.

• Svādhyāya is not “I read a quote.” It’s real self-examination.

• Ahimsa is not “avoid conflict.” It’s reducing harm in speech, action, and motive, including naming and resisting injustice when needed with equanimity.

If someone quotes ahimsa while refusing truth, refusing repair, refusing responsibility then don’t say, “Yoga ethics failed.”

Say what’s accurate:

They’re quoting yoga. They’re not living it.

Yoga should not become anybody’s political instrument

I want to be clear about what I’m not doing here. I’m not arguing for yoga as a political weapon not for the right, not for the left, not for any “side.” But I’m also not interested in yoga as a moral sedative, pretty ethics that keep everyone soft and silent while harm continues.

Both are distortions.

Yoga is not meant to be a badge that proves you’re righteous. It’s meant to be a discipline that changes how you see, speak, and act with integrity.

About bringing Ambedkar into “what ahimsa means”

Ambedkar was a modern political leader whose critique of social hierarchy and injustice continues to matter important. I’m not dismissing that.

But there’s a quiet question that has to be asked when modern political thought is placed on top of yoga texts:

Are we reading yoga through yoga first or are we using yoga as raw material for a modern framework we already prefer? Those aren’t the same thing.

Modern critique can add insight. But it can also become a shortcut: a way to claim interpretive authority without doing the slower work of engaging śāstra and lineage commentary. And when that happens, “context” becomes a kind of takeover: the text is allowed to speak only if it agrees with today’s categories. That’s not interpretation. That’s refitting.

What I actually want

If yoga teachers are oversimplifying ethics into slogans, I agree, call it out. But don’t blame the tradition for what we did to it.

Misuse is not meaning. And the answer isn’t “more quote cards, but with better politics.” The answer is:

• deeper reading

• cleaner practice

• less moral performance

• more truth, repair, and responsibility

Because yoga doesn’t need to be recruited into our ideologies to be ethical. It needs to be practiced.

One question to sit with -

If ahimsa or in general - the yamas/niyamas are being used badly today, is that because the tradition lacks depth or because we’ve stopped wanting the depth that the tradition demands?

That, to me, is the harder question for all of us who invoke “yoga ethics” today. What’s your take?

If you have thoughts, I’d genuinely like to hear them. Please, share below.

If this kind of inquiry resonates with you, consider subscribing. And starting next week, I’ll be opening a weekly discussion inside the Substack chat - a quieter space for those who want to think through these questions more deliberately. It’s open to all subscribers.

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