Yoga in the Modern World: Contemporary Perspectives (Routledge Hindu Studies Series) by

Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Humanities
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2008-06-27T04:00:00+00:00

Syncretic Dialectics in Classical Yoga

Even before the "medieval" period during which tantrism held sway, the yoga of the first millennium exchanged a great deal of perspective with the Buddhism of that period. The "pacification" referred to by the Buddha in his basic sutras refers to the cessation of the endlessly proliferating engagements of mental activity, a reference to the citta that Patañjali critiques in the second sloka of his Yogasutra, and in both discussions the same Sanskrit terms are employed. The aforementioned Yoga , which is attributed to Valmiki, reads very much like Madhayamaka Buddhist philosophy with only a few transformations, and is considered to have emerged out of a period of scholarship when the Madhayamaka perspective held sway in the classical Indian monastic universities. , the great exponent of Advaita, engaged in so many debates with Madhayamaka Buddhists that it is difficult to sort out what in his thinking came from Buddhist and what from Hindu sources. It is the nature of any dialectics14 that one's opponent comes to unwittingly adopt the perspective being opposed even as she or he puts forward arguments against it. As Derrida (1994:156) has described, the proponent in an argument inevitably operates with a "countersophistics that at every moment runs the risk of replicating the reply: reproducing in a mirror the logic of the adversary at the moment of the retort." Surely, the endless public philosophical debates that took place in classical times between Advaitins and Madhayamaka scholars had the result that they shared the same discursive practices, if not similar epistemologies. Hence, we can conclude that the yoga of classical times was not entirely free from Buddhist influences either. Of course, the ontological debates between the and Buddhists were real ones, but many of the most important epistemological insights were developed together; that is, they participated in the same philosophical culture. Neither thought nor Buddhist thought would be thinkable without the other.

The yoga of Patañjali, now considered "Classical,"15 offers an epistemology that is basically and includes features that are compatible with Indian Brahminical culture. The basic practices outlined there are theoretical or "purely psychological" (Dasgupta 1962:244) and involve refined contemplative disciplines and emotional asceticism that offer considerable scope for spiritual inspiration, but they refer more to controlling sexual energies than to techniques for actively using sexuality to animate and energize spiritual evolution. It was the yogin who developed this within the context of yoga. As mentioned, these yogin opposed the caste system and attracted most of their followers from the sudra caste, whereas the philosophical orientation of the was shepherded by priests from the brahmin caste, who act as custodians for the Vedas and the principal . Because of these differences about caste, brahmins have always had contentious relations with the . On the days of worship of the anola tree, which was once associated with Buddhism and is now connected with Siva, offerings are made to yogis; whereas the offerings are welcomed by yogis, they are refused by brahmins (Briggs 1938:131).

The "Classical"

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