Every Saturday morning at 8:15 a.m. at the yoga studio in Chennai, we are invited to attend a 45 minute lecture delivered by TKV Desikachar, the founder of the studio and son of Krishnamacharya, who is basically the father of modern yoga. Krishnamarcharya is credited with inventing the physical practice of yoga that is the model for how asana is taught in Western yoga studios. He died in 1989 at the age of 101. His son Desikachar founded the Krishnamarcharya Yoga Mandiram, where I am taking a month long course. The course is highly theoretical while at the same time very practical.
Last Saturday was my first opportunity to attend one of Desikachar's lectures, and the topic was meditation. His approach was very utilitarian. He basically said that meditation -- particularly for the beginner -- must be adapted to the individual and it is essential to find what works for that individual. Everyone is different, and yogic teaching should reflect this (the school often emphasizes one-on-one teaching, for this reason). Which I took as an endorsement of doom metal as a vehicle for meditation. Whatever works.
Last night Desikachar's son spoke on the topic of "Is Yoga Religious?" The answer surprised me-- not only did he conclude that Yoga is not a religion, he stated quite emphatically that yogic philosophy has nothing to do with Hinduism. By yogic philosophy, he is referring to the Yoga Sutras of Patañjali, the seminal yogic text (I'm not sure how the Bhagavad Gita figures into this debate). He distinguised Yoga from Vedanta, the latter which is a religion that came into being around the same time as yoga.
These conclusions floored me, because they explained why I've responded to emphatically to yoga but have no interest in the appurtenant hippie spiritual stuff that tends to surround the practice of yoga. I have no interest in becoming a swami or practicing in front of a statute of Ganesh. But because yoga has nothing to do with Hinduism, it has nothing to do with Ganesh or religion or vegetarianism (I now have the perfect answer to all the annoying questions I've gotten over the years about how I can practice yoga and continue to eat meat).
The lecture was rapid fire and quite detailed. He told us that yoga was devised as a means to relieve suffering (duhkham). Yogic philosophy states that the reason we suffer is because our mind incorrectly perceives things. Clarity of mind results in better decisions and less suffering. (In contrast, Vedanta says that we are not happy because we do not understand God.) Yoga concerns the human mind. Patañjali discusses ways that we can discipline our mind. One method is meditating on something called Isvarah (īśvaraḥ). Patañjali defines Isvarah as someone who is not affected by 'klesas' (that which hurts). Normally, some knowledge creates a desire, which leads to an action and then a consequence, and ultimately a feeling remains, i.e., the feeling that we have about the consequences of our desire. For instance, I heard about a band I might like, I went to the concert and I loved it, and when I think about that concert, I am happy. If the desire originated from Viveka, a mind filled with clarity, the action and the consequence are fine. But usually knowledge comes from the klesas and we will suffer as a result.
Isvarah is someone who is not affected by klesas. Isvarah is also defined as the source or seed of all knowledge. Isvarah is not bound by time and is a teacher for all generations. Patañjali presents Isvarah as something connected with knowledge. The first reason why Vedanta rejects Isvarah as God is because is God is a creator, whereas Patañjali only describes Isvarah as the source of knowledge.
According to the Sutras, yoga is meant to remove life's obstacles. You will find yourself and remove life's obstacles with yoga. Isvarah is something that gives us light-- light represents clarity. This light is consciousness, it is internal, not external. If our mind is agitated, we connect with the gross and not the subtle aspects of existence. Meditation is a means to quiet the mind. By meditating, the qualities of the focus of the meditation (for instance, the sun) will be transferred to the meditator. The wisdom or clarity that results from meditation is not intellectual knowledge but is something deeper, a more experiental knowledge or wisdom.
Isvarah is something that we meditate on as a model, a manifest form of knowledge that we can link with. Isvarah is a tool that we can use to make our minds clear. Yoga/asana and pranayama are called "practices" for this reason. Once our mind is calm, Isvarah is in a way disposable.
Perhaps most germane to the debate of "Is Yoga Religious?" is the fact that Patañjali presents Isvarah as a choice. Patañjali never presents Isvarah as the Creator or suggests that the goal of yoga is to become Isvarah. This is interesting because a quick google search revealed that not only is Isvarah often translated as God, lots of sites on the web (including Wikipedia) state that yoga originated from Hinduism. Desikachar's son told us that this confusion probably results from the fact that many yoga masters were also practicing Hindus, but he likened this to a math professor who happens to be Christian. Yogis are not monks or swamis, that's Vedanta philosophy.
So there you have it-- Yoga is not a religion.
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