Joseph S. Alter, Yoga in Modern India: The Body Between Science and Philosophy (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2004) ("On the one hand, [Yoga] is one of the six main schools of classical South Asian philosophy, most explicitly articulated in Patanjali's Yoga Sutra. In this regard it is central to the history of thought in South Asian as is the philosophy of Aristotle to the intellectual history of Europe. One the other hand, Yoga is a modern form of alternative medicine and physical fitness training, This book is concerned with the way Yoga can be these two things at once in modern India, and with the historical transmutation of philosophy into physical education, public health, and institutional medical practice." Id. at 3-4.).
Swami Hariharananda Aranya, Yoga Philosophy of Patanjali: Containing his yoga aphorisms with Vyasa's commentary in Sanskrit and a a translation with annotations including many suggestions for the practice of yoga by Samkhya-yogacharya Swami Hariharananda Aranya, rendered into English by P. N. Mukerji (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003) ("Apart from its spiritual aspects, the philosophy of Yoga has a moral value and is of no small practical utility in our everyday life. The sages of old, in India, codified the rules for disciplining the mind so that better human relations could develop which are bound ultimately to bring about collective peace. It is a common error to assume that too philosophical an attitude of mind is antagonistic to social progress, but a careful perusal of the Yoga Philosophy would show that it is not tainted by sectarianism, its principles are of universal application, and that its doctrines are in harmony with human advancement all round. If the cardinal principles of human conduct enunciated in this philosophy are followed in practice, a better man will be built up, human relationship will be sweetened, a better society will come into being, and thus a better world. (Id. at ix-x, from Murkerji's "Preface to the First Edition".).
Stephen Cope, ed., Will Yoga and Meditation Really Change My Life?: Personal Stories from 25 of North America's Leading teachers (North Adams, MA: A Kripalu Book/Storey Publishing, 2003).
Stephen Cope, Yoga and the Quest for the True Self (New York: Bantam Books, 1999) ("[T]he problem is that we've forgotten who we are; the solution is to remember who we are, to reidentify with the entire reality of atman." Id. at 65. "It was frightening to see the kind of hold this stuff had on my mind. In some way, as I began to see that day, my stuff was me." Id. at 76. "The ideas we have in our minds about who we should be are out of touch with reality. They may be unrealistically grandiose and inflated. They may be unrealistically devalued and deflated. Either way, we suffer. In Western psychological language, we call this the suffering of the 'false self,' a term coined by D. W. Winnicott." Id. at 90. "Over time, the ego becomes so invested in the false self that it begins to believe in its reality. Any threat to the false self, then, or any obstacle to the manifestation of its demands, becomes a threat to life itself. We will defend, to the death, whatever we consider to be 'me'," Id, at 95-96. "Our true affliction is not our inability to get what we want, or our inability to get rid of what we don't want.... The true nature of our affliction is that we are unable and unwilling to come into our inheritance as fully alive human beings." "Life's disappointments coupled with a naturing self-observational capacity will eventually fore us to release our attachment to the false self." Id. at 98. "We are driven to manipulate people, places, and things in the external world in order to feel alright." Id. at 95. ""'All spiritual journeys have a destination of which the traveller is unaware,' said the theologian Martin Buber. Most of us who start on the yoga mat do not realize that, if we dedicate ourselves to practice, it is only a matter of time until the mat becomes an altar." Id. at 269. But what does it mean to dedicate oneself to practice? Is it simply going to yoga practice on a regular basis? I think not. One can do yoga's asanas every day simply as physical exercise. One may be dedicated to do the asanas, but there need not be anything "spiritual" about it. The mat becomes a habit, not an altar. Similarly, one can go to yoga class everyday because it is your "social life." Again, yoga becomes a social habit not a spiritual altar. So, having a dedicated yoga practice is something more than regularity. Or, perhaps there is spirituality in these; but. if so, it is rather shallow. One is not, say, a Roman Catholic simply by going to mass on a regular basis. One is not spiritually a Roman Catholic even if one beliefs all the doctrines of the Church--which is, I think hard to do, since many are contradictory, but that another issue. To be a true and practicing Roman Catholic one would have to live one life, with some lapses due to being human, according to the core tenets of Roman Catholicism. How many so-called Roman Catholics do that? How may yoga students are striving to be true yogis?).
B. K. S. Iyengar, with John J. Evans & Douglas Abrams, Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom (New York: Rodale, 2005) ("Yoga is not meant to be a religion or a dogma for any one culture. [I]t is meant as a universal path, a way open to all regardless of their birth and background..... We are all human beings, but we have been taught to think of ourselves a Westerners, or Easterners. If we were left to ourselves, we would simply be individual human beings.... There is no difference in the soul--what I call the 'Seer.' The difference comes only between the 'garments' of the seer--the ideas about ourselves--our cultures and classes. There are no divisions, and we talk mind to mind, soul to soul. We are no different in our deepest needs. We are all human." Id. at xiv-xv. "Very few people begin yoga because they believe it will be a way to achieve spiritual enlightenment, and indeed a good number may be quite skeptical about the whole idea of spiritual self-realization. Actually, this is not a bad thing because it means most of the people who come to yoga are practical people who have practical problems and aims--people who are grounded in the ways and means of life, people who are sensible." Id. at xvi. Hmm! I question whether most of the people I see at yoga class are grounded, practical, sensible people. However, I get his point. "Yoga sees the body quite differently than Western sports, which treats the body like a racehorse, trying to push it faster and faster and competing with all other bodies in speed and strength. .. [T]he essence of yoga is not about external display but internal cultivation. Yoga is beautiful as well as Divine. Ultimately, the yogi searches for the inner light as well as inner beauty infinity, and liberation." Id. at 26-27. "The challenge of yoga is to go beyond our limits--within reason. We continually expand the frame of the mind by using the canvas of the body...." "Yoga is meant for the purification of body and its exploration as well as for the refinement of the mind. This demands strength of will to observe and the same time to bear the physical pain without aggravating it. Without certain stress, the true asana is not experienced, and the mind will remain in its limitations and will not move beyond its existing frontiers. This limited state of mind can be described as the petty, small mind." "I remember two students who were top ballet dancers. They could achieve every position without encountering resistance or stress, so the journey to the final posture could teach them nothing. It was my job to take them back into the positions and show them how to create mobility with resistance in themselves so that they could work at the point of balance between the known and unknown. When we extend and expand our body consciousness beyond its present limitations, we are working on the frontier of the known toward the unknown by an intelligent expansion of our awareness. Ballet dancers have the opposite problem to most people in that, because of their excessive flexibility, their physical capacity outstrips their intellectual consciousness." Id. at 50-51. "When many of us think of freedom, we believe that it means the pursuit of happiness. Certainly political freedom ... is essential, as the ability to direct our lives is essential for our ability to reach our full potential. Economic freedom is also important, for grinding poverty makes it difficult to think of the life of the spirit. But equally important to political and economic freedom is spiritual freedom. Spiritual freedom actually requires greater self-control and the ability to direct our lives in the right direction. This is the Ultimate Freedom, which is the fusion of our individual soul with the Universal Soul, as we release our own wants and wishes for a higher purpose and a higher knowledge of the will of the Absolute in our lives." Id. at 227.).
B. K. S. Iyengar, Light on the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, with a foreword by Yehudi Menuhin (New York: HarperCollins, 1993) (From the Introduction: "After explaining the function of nature and of the seer, Patanjali speaks of the seven states of understanding or wisdom (pragna) that emerge from release of nature's contact with the seer. First let us identify the seven corresponding states of ignorance, or avidya: (1) smallness, feebleness, insignificance, inferiority, meanness; (2) unsteadiness, fickleness, mutability; (3) living with pains, afflictions, misery, agony; (4) living with the association of pain; (5) mistaking the perishable body for the Self; (6) creating conditions for undergoing sorrow (7) believing that union with the soul (yoga) is impossible, and acting as though that were so. The seven states of wisdom are: (1) knowing that which has to be known; (2) discarding that which is to be discarded; (3) attaining that which has to be attained; (4) doing that which has to be done; (5) winning the goal that is to be won; (6) freeing the intelligence from the pull of the three gunas of nature; (7) achieving emancipation of the soul so that it shines in its own light. These seven states of wisdom are interpreted as right desire, right reflection, disappearance of memory and mind, experiencing pure sattva or the truth (reality), indifference to praise and blame, reabsorption of phenomenal creation, and living in the vision of the soul. They may be further simplified as: (1) understanding the body within and without; (2) understanding energy and its uses; (3) understanding the mind; (4) consistency of will; (5) awareness of experience; (6) awareness of pure quintessence, sentiment and beauty; (7) understanding that the individual soul, jivatman, is a particle of the Universal Spirit, Paramatman. Id. at 25.).
Barbara Stoler Miller, Yoga: Discipline of Freedom: The Yoga Sutra Attributed to Patanjali: A translation of the text, with commentary, introduction, and glossary of keywords (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1995) ("Yoga entered the public imagination in America a century ago in the person of an Indian yogi, Swami Vivekananda [Note: see below]. The highly educated scion of a distinguished Bengali family, in is youth Vivekananda became a disciple of the Hindu mystic Ramakrishna, acknowledged throughout India as a saintly yogi. Before he died in 1886, Ramakrishna instructed his young disciple to carry his teachings into the world. In 1893 Vivekananda electrified the World Parliament of Religions at its meeting in Chicago with his speech on what he called raja-yoga, the 'royal yoga.' It was based on Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, as interpreted by Ramakrishna." Id. at x-xi. "The practice of postures, known as hatha-yoga, was given minimal attention by Vivekananda as the least important component of yogic practice. Even so, this physical dimension has been extremely popular in the West and is widely practiced as a way to promote health and mental tranquility. Although few practitioners venture into the philosophical landscape of Patanjali, his analysis of human thought processes underlies the teachings of most of the gurus of yoga who have come from India." Id. at xi-xii. "The essential assumption underlying yogic practice is that the true state of the human spirit is freedom, which has been lost through misidentification of one's place in a phenomenal world of ceaseless change. This is the root of human suffering. Paradoxically, in yoga the freedom of spiritual integrity occurs in the act of discipline itself, which is ultimately rendered superfluous by the reality its practice discloses." Id. at 7. "The goal of yogic transformation is realized in contemplative practice. The path to freedom consists of a gradual unwinding of misconceptions that allow for fresh perceptions. It is as if one were walking attentively through a forest in which one could not precisely identify every animal, bird, flower, and tree. Even so, the sounds of the various creatures, the smells of flowers and ferns, and the shapes of trees move one toward a more acute awareness of the environment, and in this process of reorientation the contours of the landscape change. The way of yoga is not a simple, linear path. Rather, it is a complex method involving a radical change in the way we experience the world and conceive the process of knowing ourselves. It gives us techniques with which to analyze our own thought processes and finally to lay bare our true human identity." Id. at 25.).
Barbara Stoler Miller, Yoga: Discipline of Freedom: The Yoga Sutra Attributed to Patanjali: A translation of the text, with commentary, introduction, and glossary of keywords (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1995) ("Yoga entered the public imagination in America a century ago in the person of an Indian yogi, Swami Vivekananda [Note: see below]. The highly educated scion of a distinguished Bengali family, in is youth Vivekananda became a disciple of the Hindu mystic Ramakrishna, acknowledged throughout India as a saintly yogi. Before he died in 1886, Ramakrishna instructed his young disciple to carry his teachings into the world. In 1893 Vivekananda electrified the World Parliament of Religions at its meeting in Chicago with his speech on what he called raja-yoga, the 'royal yoga.' It was based on Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, as interpreted by Ramakrishna." Id. at x-xi. "The practice of postures, known as hatha-yoga, was given minimal attention by Vivekananda as the least important component of yogic practice. Even so, this physical dimension has been extremely popular in the West and is widely practiced as a way to promote health and mental tranquility. Although few practitioners venture into the philosophical landscape of Patanjali, his analysis of human thought processes underlies the teachings of most of the gurus of yoga who have come from India." Id. at xi-xii. "The essential assumption underlying yogic practice is that the true state of the human spirit is freedom, which has been lost through misidentification of one's place in a phenomenal world of ceaseless change. This is the root of human suffering. Paradoxically, in yoga the freedom of spiritual integrity occurs in the act of discipline itself, which is ultimately rendered superfluous by the reality its practice discloses." Id. at 7. "The goal of yogic transformation is realized in contemplative practice. The path to freedom consists of a gradual unwinding of misconceptions that allow for fresh perceptions. It is as if one were walking attentively through a forest in which one could not precisely identify every animal, bird, flower, and tree. Even so, the sounds of the various creatures, the smells of flowers and ferns, and the shapes of trees move one toward a more acute awareness of the environment, and in this process of reorientation the contours of the landscape change. The way of yoga is not a simple, linear path. Rather, it is a complex method involving a radical change in the way we experience the world and conceive the process of knowing ourselves. It gives us techniques with which to analyze our own thought processes and finally to lay bare our true human identity." Id. at 25.).
Sarah Powers, Insight Yoga, with a foreword by Paul Grilley (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2008).
Michael Roach, How Yoga Works: Healing Yourself and Others with the Yoga Sutra (Wayne, NJ: Diamond Cutter Press, 2004).
Swami Vivekananda, The Concise Yoga Vasistha, with an Introduction and Bibliography by Christopher Chapple (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984) (From Swami Muktananda's "Preface": The Yoga Vasistha "contains true understandings about the creation of the world. The philosophy of the Yoga Vasistha is very similar to that of Kashmir Shaivism. Its main teaching is that everything is Consciousness, including the material world., and that the world is as you see it. This is absolutely true, The world is nothing but the play of Consciousness." Id. at v. "All beings in this world are tainted with evil; all relationships are bondage; all enjoyments are great diseases; and desire for happiness is only a mirage. One's own senses are one's enemies; the reality has become unreal (unknown); one's own mind has become one's worst enemy. Egotism is the foremost cause of evil; wisdom is weak; all actions lead to unpleasantness; and pleasure is sexually oriented. One's intelligence is governed by egotism, instead of being the other way round. Hence there is no peace or happiness in one's mind. Youth is fading. Company of holy ones is rare. There is no way out of this suffering. The realization of truth is not to be seen in anyone. No one is happy at the prosperity and happiness of others; compassion is not be found in anyone's heart. People are getting baser and baser by the day. Weakness has overcome strength, cowardice has overpowered courage. Evil company is easily had, good company is hard to come by. I wonder where Time is driving humanity." Id. at 17-18. "Pray tell me: how do you people who are enlightened live in this world? How can the mind be freed from lust and made to view the world both as one's own self and also no more valuable than a blade of grass? The biography of which great one shall we study in order to learn the path of wisdom? How should one live in this world? Holy sir, instruct me in the wisdom which will enable my otherwise restless mind to be steady like a mountain. You are an enlightened being: instruct me so that I may never again be sunk in grief." Id. at 20. "If one is able to wean the mind away from craving for sense-pleasure by whatever means, one is saved from being drowned in the ocean of delusion. He who has realized his oneness with the entire universe, and who has thus risen above both desire 'for' and desire 'against', is never deluded. Id. at 147. "They call it yoga, which is the method by which this cycle of birth and death ceases. It is the utter transcendence of the mind and is of two types. Self-knowledge is one type, and restraint of the life-force is another. However, yoga has come to mean only the latter, yet both the methods lead to the same result. To some, self-knowledge through inquiry is difficult; to others yoga is difficult. But my conviction is that the path of inquiry is easy for all, because self-knowledge is the ever-present truth...." Id. at 275. "When one realizes that death is inevitable to all, why will he grieve over the death of relatives or the approach of one's own end? When one realizes that everyone is sometimes prosperous and otherwise at other times, why will he be elated or depressed? When one sees that living being appear and disappear like ripples on the surface of consciousness, where is the cause for sorrow? What is true is always true (what exists always exists) and what is unreal is ever unreal; where is the cause for sorrow?" Id. at 288. "Woe unto him who does not tread this path to self-knowledge, which is within reach if he directs his intelligence properly. The means for crossing this ocean of samsara (world-appearance or cycle of birth and death) and for the attainment of supreme peace, are inquiry into the nature of the self (Who am I?) and of the world (What is this world?) and of the truth (What is truth?)." Id. at 411. "Non-thinking is known as yoga. Remaining in that state, perform appropriate actions or do nothing! As long as thoughts of 'I' and 'mine' persist, sorrow does not cease. When such thoughts cease, sorrow ceases. Knowing this, do as you please." Id. at 417.).
Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, rev'd ed. (New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1955, 1982) ("Truth does not pay homage to any society, ancient or modern. Society has to pay homage to truth or die. Societies should be moulded upon truth; truth has not to adjust to society. If such a noble truth as unselfishness cannot be practised in society, it is better for a man to give up society and go into the forest. That is the daring man." Id. at 18-19. "The yoga which we are now considering consists chiefly in controlling the senses. When the senses are held as slaves by the human soul, when they can no longer disturb the mind, then the yogi has reached the goal. 'When all vain desires of the heart have been given up, then this very mortal becomes immortal, then he becomes one with God even here. When all the knots of the heart are cut asunder, then the mortal becomes immortal and he enjoys Brahman here.' Here on this earth--nowhere else." Id. at 100 "Be free. Hope for nothing from anyone." Id. at 247.).
Swami Vivekananda, Karma-Yoga and Bhaki-Yoga, rev'd ed. (New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1955, 1982) ("The goal of man is knowledge. That is the one great ideal placed before us by Eastern philosophy. Not pleasure, but knowledge, is the goal of man. Pleasure and happiness come to an end. It is a mistake to suppose that pleasure is the goal; the cause of all the miseries we have in the world is that men foolishly think pleasure to be the ideal to strive for. After a time a man finds that it is not happiness, but knowledge, towards which his is going, and that both pleasure and pain are great teachers, and that he learns as much from pain as from pleasure. As pleasure and pain pass before his soul, they leave upon it different pictures, and the result of these combined impressions is what is called a man's 'character.' If you take the character of any man, it really is but the aggregate of tendencies, the sum total of the inclinations of his mind; you will find that misery and happiness are equal factors in the formation of that character. Happiness and misery have an equal share in moulding character, and in some instances misery is a better teacher than happiness. Were one to study the great characters the world has produced, I dare say it would be found, in the vast majority of cases, that misery taught them more than happiness, poverty taught them more than wealth, blows brought out their inner fire more than praise." Id. at 3-4. "The ideal man is he who in the midst of the greatest silence and solitude finds the intensest activity, and in the midst of the intensest activity, the silence and solitude of the desert. He has learnt the secret of restraint; he has controlled himself. He goes through the streets of a big city with all its traffic, and his mind is calm as if he were in a cave where not a sound could reach him; but he is intensely working all the time. That is the ideal of karma-yoga; and if you have attained to that you have really learned the secret of work." Id. at 11-12. "The gift of knowledge is a far greater gift than that of food and clothes; it is even higher than giving life to a man, because the real life of man consists in knowledge. Ignorance is death; knowledge is life. Life is of very little value if it is a life in the dark, groping through ignorance and misery." Id. at 32-33. "Just as every action that emanates from us comes back to us as reaction, even so our actions may act on other people and theirs on us. Perhaps all of you have observed that when persons do evil work they become more and more evil, and that when they begin to do good they become better and better and learn to do good at all times." Id. at 67. Or, as a person does asshole-ish things the greater asshole he or she becomes. "The explanation of everything is after all in yourself. No one is ever really taught by another; each of us has to teach himself. The external teacher offers only the suggestion, which arouses the internal teacher, who helps us to understand things." Id. at 81. "There are still greater dangers in regard to the transmitter, the guru. There are many who, though immersed in ignorance, yet, in the pride of their hearts, fancy they know everything and not only do not stop there, but offer to take others on their shoulders; and thus, the blind leading the blind, both fall into the ditch....The world is full of these. Everyone want to be a teacher; every beggar wants to make a gift of a million dollars! Just as such beggars are ridiculous, so are such teachers." Id. at 137-138. I have found that we encounter numerous "smart" and "talented" people every day throughout the usual course of interactions. What is rare, extremely rare, is to encounter some one who is "wise." I think development of wisdom requires the ability to reflect. And, especially in these modern times where "time is of the essence," very few persons take the time to reflect or reflect deeply. You see this a lot among lawyers and law professor, as a whole a smart and talented group but individually and collectively weak on wisdom. Thus, it should be of little surprise that our legal system is unwise, flawed and unjust. "[O]ne idea that deserves special notice is ahimsa, non-injury to others. This duty on non-injury is, so to say, obligatory on us in relation to all beings. It does not simply mean, as with some, the non-injuring of human beings and mercilessness towards the lower animals; nor does it mean, as with some others, the protecting of cats and dogs and the feeding of ants with sugar, with liberty to injure brother man in every possible way. It is remarkable that almost every good idea in this world can be carried to an extreme and worked out according to the letter of the law becomes a positive evil." Id. at 165-166. "The test of ahimsa is absence of jealousy....The man whose heart never cherishes even the thought of injury to anyone, who rejoices at the prosperity of even his greatest enemy--that man is a bhakta, he is a yogi, he is the guru of all, even though he lives everyday of his life on the flesh of swine." Id. at 166-167. "I have collected this knowledge: that for all the devilry that religion is blamed for, religion is not at all at fault. No religion ever persecuted men, no religion ever burnt witches, no religion ever did any of these things. What then incited people to do these things? Politics, but never religion; and if such politics takes the name of religion, whose fault is that?" "So when a man stands up and says, 'My Prophet is the only true Prophet,' he is not right; he knows not the A B C of religion. Religion is neither talk nor theory nor intellectual consent. It is realization in our heart of hearts; it is touching God; it is feeling, realizing that I am a spirit related to the Universal Spirit and all Its great manifestations...." Id. at 245-246. "We human beings are very slow to recognize our own weakness, our own faults, so long as we can lay all the blame upon somebody else. Men in general lay all the blame on their fellow men, or, failing that, on God; or thy conjure up a ghost called fate." "Where is fate and what is fate? We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate. None else has the blame, none else the praise." Id. at 149. "Blame neither man nor God nor anyone in the world. When you find yourselves suffering, blame yourselves and try to do better. This is the only solution of the problem." Id. at 150.).
Swami Vivekananda, Karma-Yoga and Bhaki-Yoga, rev'd ed. (New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1955, 1982) ("The goal of man is knowledge. That is the one great ideal placed before us by Eastern philosophy. Not pleasure, but knowledge, is the goal of man. Pleasure and happiness come to an end. It is a mistake to suppose that pleasure is the goal; the cause of all the miseries we have in the world is that men foolishly think pleasure to be the ideal to strive for. After a time a man finds that it is not happiness, but knowledge, towards which his is going, and that both pleasure and pain are great teachers, and that he learns as much from pain as from pleasure. As pleasure and pain pass before his soul, they leave upon it different pictures, and the result of these combined impressions is what is called a man's 'character.' If you take the character of any man, it really is but the aggregate of tendencies, the sum total of the inclinations of his mind; you will find that misery and happiness are equal factors in the formation of that character. Happiness and misery have an equal share in moulding character, and in some instances misery is a better teacher than happiness. Were one to study the great characters the world has produced, I dare say it would be found, in the vast majority of cases, that misery taught them more than happiness, poverty taught them more than wealth, blows brought out their inner fire more than praise." Id. at 3-4. "The ideal man is he who in the midst of the greatest silence and solitude finds the intensest activity, and in the midst of the intensest activity, the silence and solitude of the desert. He has learnt the secret of restraint; he has controlled himself. He goes through the streets of a big city with all its traffic, and his mind is calm as if he were in a cave where not a sound could reach him; but he is intensely working all the time. That is the ideal of karma-yoga; and if you have attained to that you have really learned the secret of work." Id. at 11-12. "The gift of knowledge is a far greater gift than that of food and clothes; it is even higher than giving life to a man, because the real life of man consists in knowledge. Ignorance is death; knowledge is life. Life is of very little value if it is a life in the dark, groping through ignorance and misery." Id. at 32-33. "Just as every action that emanates from us comes back to us as reaction, even so our actions may act on other people and theirs on us. Perhaps all of you have observed that when persons do evil work they become more and more evil, and that when they begin to do good they become better and better and learn to do good at all times." Id. at 67. Or, as a person does asshole-ish things the greater asshole he or she becomes. "The explanation of everything is after all in yourself. No one is ever really taught by another; each of us has to teach himself. The external teacher offers only the suggestion, which arouses the internal teacher, who helps us to understand things." Id. at 81. "There are still greater dangers in regard to the transmitter, the guru. There are many who, though immersed in ignorance, yet, in the pride of their hearts, fancy they know everything and not only do not stop there, but offer to take others on their shoulders; and thus, the blind leading the blind, both fall into the ditch....The world is full of these. Everyone want to be a teacher; every beggar wants to make a gift of a million dollars! Just as such beggars are ridiculous, so are such teachers." Id. at 137-138. I have found that we encounter numerous "smart" and "talented" people every day throughout the usual course of interactions. What is rare, extremely rare, is to encounter some one who is "wise." I think development of wisdom requires the ability to reflect. And, especially in these modern times where "time is of the essence," very few persons take the time to reflect or reflect deeply. You see this a lot among lawyers and law professor, as a whole a smart and talented group but individually and collectively weak on wisdom. Thus, it should be of little surprise that our legal system is unwise, flawed and unjust. "[O]ne idea that deserves special notice is ahimsa, non-injury to others. This duty on non-injury is, so to say, obligatory on us in relation to all beings. It does not simply mean, as with some, the non-injuring of human beings and mercilessness towards the lower animals; nor does it mean, as with some others, the protecting of cats and dogs and the feeding of ants with sugar, with liberty to injure brother man in every possible way. It is remarkable that almost every good idea in this world can be carried to an extreme and worked out according to the letter of the law becomes a positive evil." Id. at 165-166. "The test of ahimsa is absence of jealousy....The man whose heart never cherishes even the thought of injury to anyone, who rejoices at the prosperity of even his greatest enemy--that man is a bhakta, he is a yogi, he is the guru of all, even though he lives everyday of his life on the flesh of swine." Id. at 166-167. "I have collected this knowledge: that for all the devilry that religion is blamed for, religion is not at all at fault. No religion ever persecuted men, no religion ever burnt witches, no religion ever did any of these things. What then incited people to do these things? Politics, but never religion; and if such politics takes the name of religion, whose fault is that?" "So when a man stands up and says, 'My Prophet is the only true Prophet,' he is not right; he knows not the A B C of religion. Religion is neither talk nor theory nor intellectual consent. It is realization in our heart of hearts; it is touching God; it is feeling, realizing that I am a spirit related to the Universal Spirit and all Its great manifestations...." Id. at 245-246. "We human beings are very slow to recognize our own weakness, our own faults, so long as we can lay all the blame upon somebody else. Men in general lay all the blame on their fellow men, or, failing that, on God; or thy conjure up a ghost called fate." "Where is fate and what is fate? We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate. None else has the blame, none else the praise." Id. at 149. "Blame neither man nor God nor anyone in the world. When you find yourselves suffering, blame yourselves and try to do better. This is the only solution of the problem." Id. at 150.).
Swami Vivekananda, Raja-Yoga, rev'd ed. (New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1956, 1982) ("All the orthodox systems of Indian philosophy have one goal in view: the liberation of the soul through perfection. The method is yoga. The word yoga covers an immense ground.... The subject of the present book is that form of yoga known as Raja-yoga." Id. at 4-5 "We know that there is a power of the mind called reflection.... You work and think at the same time, while a portion of your mind stands by and sees what you are thinking. The powers of the mind should be concentrated and turned back upon it; and as the darkest places reveal their secrets before the penetrating rays of the sun, so will the concentrated mind penetrate into its own innermost secrets. Thus we shall come to the basis of belief, to the real religion. We shall perceive ourselves whether or not we have souls, whether or not life last for five minutes or for eternity, whether or not there is a God. All of this will be revealed to us." "This is what Raja-yoga proposes to teach" Id. at 14. "Those who really want to be yogis must give up, once and for all, this nibbling at things. Take up one idea; make that one idea your life. Think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave all other ideas alone. This is the way to success and this is the way great spiritual giants are produced. Others are mere talking-machines. If we really want to be blessed and make other blessed, we must go deeper." Id. at 73. Am I a nibbler? "[P]rana is not the breath; but that which causes the motion of the breath, that which is the vitality of the breath, is prana. [T]he word prana is used for all the senses; they are all called pranas; the mind is called prana. We have also seen that prana is force. And yet we cannot call it force, because force is only the manifestation of it. It is that which manifests itself as force and everything else in the shape of motion. The chitta, the mind-stuff, is the engine which draws in prana from its surroundings and manufactures out of prana the various vital forces--those that keep the body in preservation--and thought, will, and all other powers. By the above-mentioned process of breathing we can control all the various motions in the body, and the various nerve currents that are flowing through the body. First we begin to recognize them, and then we slowly get control over them." Id. at 129-130. "According to the Yoga philosophy, it is through ignorance that the soul has been joined with nature. The aim is to get rid of nature's control over us. That is the goal of all religions. Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity within by controlling nature: external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic control, or philosophy--by one, or more, or all of these--and be free. This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or temples, or forms, are but secondary details." "The yogi tries to reach this goal through psychic control." Id. at 169. "When the yogi has attained perfection, his actions, and the results produced by those actions, do not bind him, because he is free from desire. He just works on. He works to do good, and he does good; but he does not care for the results, and they will not come to him. But for ordinary men, who have not attained to that highest state, works are of three kinds: black, or evil, white, or good, and mixed." Id. at 210-211.).
Swami Venkatesananda, Vasistha's Yoga, with a foreword by Swami Rangamathananda (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993) ("One gets only what he deserves, when he deserves it. Even if the celestial jewel stands in front of him the fool ignores it! The jewel, thus ignored, disappeared. [] On account of his foolishness he suffered there. Great calamities, old age ad death re nothing in comparison to the suffering caused by foolishness. In fact, foolishness adorns the head of all suffering and calamities!" Id. at 441-442.).
Jennifer Schwamm Willis, ed., The Joy of Yoga: How Yoga Can Revitalize Your Body and Spirit and Change the Way You Live (New York: Marlowe & Company, 2002) (This anthology contains pieces by Erich Schiffmann, Judith H. Lasater, T.K.V. Desikachar, Jon Kabat-Zinn, B. K. S. Iyengar, Stephen Cope, Rum, Donna Farhi, James Hewitt, Lao-tzu, Swami Vivekandanda, Philip Self, Coleman Barks. Adrian M.S Piper, Rainer Maria Rilke, and others.).
Though only one year into my yoga practice, I am beginning to see the extent to which Americans --or New Age philosophies-- have bastardize and corrupted yoga. Life is change, but not all change is good and an improvement.
And be careful not to idolize one's yoga instructor(s). Often what she (they) say in class, how she (they) are in class, is disconnected or divorced from who she (they) is (are) outside of class in the real, everyday world of living. Remember, even if they are truly in the process of self-discovering of their true self through yoga, few have actually yet to attain the discovery of that true self (and many may simply be using yoga to reinforced a false narrative of who they are). The worthy yoga instructor is still on the road to enlightenment, and has not yet arrived. Be careful of the self-proclaimed guru, who believes her own marketing strategy. Learn what you may from your yoga teacher, then move on and away. Her road is not your road. As the lyrics of a song go, you've got to walk that lonesome valley by yourself.
On another note. At yoga, quite a few women have tattoos, and some of those tattoos are quite elaborate. I am intrigued as to these phenomenon because, in part, it something that did not occur in my generation (back then, only sailor and criminals had tattoos). Of course, many of the middle-aged women have tattoos now, but I suspect most of the tattoos were acquired relatively late in life. An effort to be young, contemporary, and to gain some sense of reclaiming ownership of their bodies. I am reminded of Donald Richie's work on the Japanese tattoo. "A man who elected to have himself tattooed is, whether he realizes it or not, making himself attractive to himself alone (plus a number of other men, usually others who have tattoos) and forfeiting the larger amount of social approval. My argument would be that it is precisely in these limitations that he feels a virtue. He is defined by his art." "Thus there is something after all in the popular idea that all tattooed men are renegades and do not belong in polite society. They do not because they have elected not to. It does not follow, however, that they are therefore wild, rough, and dangerous. Usually ... precisely the opposite is true." David Richie (text) & Ian Burman, (photos), The Japanese Tattoo (New York & Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1980), at 78. Might that passage, if "woman," "women" and "she" were substituted for "man," "men," and "he," at least begin to capture the social psychology of women in the West getting tattoos? Each tattooed woman, each in her own way, does primarily seem to be trying to convince herself of something. That she is free, that she is independent, that she is strong, that she is not a victim, that she is loved, that she is angry, that she is not afraid, that she is beautiful, that she does not want the attention that beauty brings, that she is still young, that she is radical, that she exist. Just a thought.
Swami Venkatesananda, Vasistha's Yoga, with a foreword by Swami Rangamathananda (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993) ("One gets only what he deserves, when he deserves it. Even if the celestial jewel stands in front of him the fool ignores it! The jewel, thus ignored, disappeared. [] On account of his foolishness he suffered there. Great calamities, old age ad death re nothing in comparison to the suffering caused by foolishness. In fact, foolishness adorns the head of all suffering and calamities!" Id. at 441-442.).
Jennifer Schwamm Willis, ed., The Joy of Yoga: How Yoga Can Revitalize Your Body and Spirit and Change the Way You Live (New York: Marlowe & Company, 2002) (This anthology contains pieces by Erich Schiffmann, Judith H. Lasater, T.K.V. Desikachar, Jon Kabat-Zinn, B. K. S. Iyengar, Stephen Cope, Rum, Donna Farhi, James Hewitt, Lao-tzu, Swami Vivekandanda, Philip Self, Coleman Barks. Adrian M.S Piper, Rainer Maria Rilke, and others.).
Though only one year into my yoga practice, I am beginning to see the extent to which Americans --or New Age philosophies-- have bastardize and corrupted yoga. Life is change, but not all change is good and an improvement.
And be careful not to idolize one's yoga instructor(s). Often what she (they) say in class, how she (they) are in class, is disconnected or divorced from who she (they) is (are) outside of class in the real, everyday world of living. Remember, even if they are truly in the process of self-discovering of their true self through yoga, few have actually yet to attain the discovery of that true self (and many may simply be using yoga to reinforced a false narrative of who they are). The worthy yoga instructor is still on the road to enlightenment, and has not yet arrived. Be careful of the self-proclaimed guru, who believes her own marketing strategy. Learn what you may from your yoga teacher, then move on and away. Her road is not your road. As the lyrics of a song go, you've got to walk that lonesome valley by yourself.
On another note. At yoga, quite a few women have tattoos, and some of those tattoos are quite elaborate. I am intrigued as to these phenomenon because, in part, it something that did not occur in my generation (back then, only sailor and criminals had tattoos). Of course, many of the middle-aged women have tattoos now, but I suspect most of the tattoos were acquired relatively late in life. An effort to be young, contemporary, and to gain some sense of reclaiming ownership of their bodies. I am reminded of Donald Richie's work on the Japanese tattoo. "A man who elected to have himself tattooed is, whether he realizes it or not, making himself attractive to himself alone (plus a number of other men, usually others who have tattoos) and forfeiting the larger amount of social approval. My argument would be that it is precisely in these limitations that he feels a virtue. He is defined by his art." "Thus there is something after all in the popular idea that all tattooed men are renegades and do not belong in polite society. They do not because they have elected not to. It does not follow, however, that they are therefore wild, rough, and dangerous. Usually ... precisely the opposite is true." David Richie (text) & Ian Burman, (photos), The Japanese Tattoo (New York & Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1980), at 78. Might that passage, if "woman," "women" and "she" were substituted for "man," "men," and "he," at least begin to capture the social psychology of women in the West getting tattoos? Each tattooed woman, each in her own way, does primarily seem to be trying to convince herself of something. That she is free, that she is independent, that she is strong, that she is not a victim, that she is loved, that she is angry, that she is not afraid, that she is beautiful, that she does not want the attention that beauty brings, that she is still young, that she is radical, that she exist. Just a thought.
