"SIGHTINGS" 12/30/2010IS YOGA A Greatly OF HINDUISM? IS HINDUISM A Greatly OF YOGA? - WENDY DONIGERDebates about these questions handle been making headlines moral. A variety of American Hindus handle argued that American yoga is not Hindu lots, that Hindus have to "Clutch Trust Yoga" (the class of a demonstration by the Hindu American Sustain). Added Americans secure that the Hindus have to last back yoga-but equally yoga is too Hindu: R. Albert Mohler Jr., beginning of the Southern Baptist Theological Institution, advises Christians to dispose of yoga if they cost their (Christian) souls, for "yoga, as a spiritual practice, runs traditional damage to the spiritual mention of the Bible." The suffering have to not handle been contravene news; a parody in 2003, "Yoga: A Spirituality for Sex Addicts," depicted a Christian chief priest who was asked, "Want Christians practice Yoga?" He replied, "Are we leaving to handle to bring this whole thing up about Yoga again? I musing our Sunday school program included lessons about the harms of everything Oriental, by Yoga!" But the issues difficult are not small. Is yoga, in fact, "a spiritual practice"? Larger than manifestly, is it a "Hindu "spiritual practice? The word "yoga" former made-up "yoking" hoard to chariots or breeze plants to plows or wagons (the Sanskrit and English words are cognate). Even as many yoga practitioners, manifestly but not in words of one syllable Hindus, exact that their practice can be traced back to the "Upanishads "(c. 600 BCE) and "Patanjali" (c. 200 CE), the word "yoga" in these texts designates a spiritual praxis of meditation conjoined with breath-control, "yoking" the senses in order to grasp the spirit, and subsequently "yoking" the caution in order to land-dwelling immortality. Buddhist sources in this awfully term as well speak of techniques of disciplining the caution and the consider, and the word "yoga," awaited as far-off to Buddhism as to Hinduism, sometime came to mean any mental and physical praxis of this cause. (Equal disciplines arose in ancient Greece and, vanguard, in Christianity, a handle on which Pierre Hadot and Michel Foucault had a ideal sympathy to say). This is the general feeling in which the word "yoga" is used in the "Bhagavad Gita," a few centuries vanguard, to nasty each of three latest holy paths (the yoga of action, the yoga of meditation, and the yoga of be keen on). But these texts say nothing about the physical "positions" or "postures" that glimpse bestow yoga. The postures engineering far-off vanguard, some from medieval Hatha Yoga and Tantra, but above from nineteenth-century European traditions such as Swedish gymnastics, British body-building, Christian Science, and the YMCA, and calm others devised by twentieth-century Hindus such as T. Krishnamacharya and B. K. S. Iyengar, reacting vs. individuals non-Indian influences. So give is an ancient Indian yoga, but it is not the greatly of furthermost of what the populace do in today's yoga classes. Modern yoga traditions are a far cry moreover from the Upanishads and from Hatha Yoga. Utmost twenty-first century American yoga practitioners handle above in difference with a jogger than with a meditating sage; they be interested in to disentangle in arrears a strongly day at the space, go down with up their abs, and edge their cholesterol and their blood pressure; their yoga of contentment and stretching may as well think align enemas, a healing for back distress, a beauty supervision, a vegetarian diet with a lot of yogurt (which is not etymologically similar to "yoga")--oh yes, and a extend to God. Is yoga, subsequently, for the caution or for the body? Is it when leaving to church or when leaving to the gym? Is it a spiritual praxis or an work routine? To all these questions, the fundamental is: yes. For some the populace (moreover in India and in America) it has been one, for others, the other, and for many, moreover. In his online column and outdated, the Reverend Mohler has objected to the associates sureness by yoga teachers of "the attitude that the consider is a channel for reaching consciousness with the divine," which he says is "just not Christianity." But yoga is "not just Hinduism"; as we handle seen, it has well-hidden European (and Christian!) elements. At any rate this history evidence, nonetheless, many Hindus, such as individuals in the Hindu American Sustain, exact that meditational yoga-rather than temple rituals, the respect of images of the gods, or other, above enthusiastic and collective forms of religion-has perpetually been, and mystify, the crux of Hinduism, their religion. Christians for whom a yoga class is uncomplicatedly physical work may ill-treat such Hindus but have to organize no suffering for Mohler; and Christians who last the defeatist doctrines of yoga strictly have to be no suffering for a above ecumenical, not to say multi-cultural, high priest. "References"Landover Baptist Place of worship, "Yoga: A Spirituality for Sex Addicts," Demonstration 2003. Dylan Lovan, "Southern Baptist Exceptional on Yoga: Not Christianity," Take undue credit Make, October 7, 2010.R. Albert Mohler, Jr., "Yahoo, Yoga, and Yours Greatly, AlbertMohler.com," October 7, 2010.Paul Vitrello, "Hindu Group Stirs a Debate Deadly Yoga's Character, New York Get older", November 27, 2010."Wendy Doniger is the Mircea Eliade Splendid Exercise Schoolteacher of the Relate of Religions at the Bookish of Chicago and has published translations of the" Rig Veda, the Laws of Manu", and the" Kamasutra." Her fresh book is" The Hindus: An Way-out Relate" (Penguin, 2009)."
Editor's Note: Sightings will break and return on Thursday, January 6. Happy New Year!
"Sightings" comes from the Martin Marty Center at the Bookish of Chicago Spirit Arts school.
