By God’s grace one is
born as a human being. Try to make the best of this opportunity.
~ Sri Anandamayi Ma
There is a story I heard
somewhere of a spiritual hermit who lived in the woods far from the mental
contagion of human society. He lived out
in a forest and even went so far as to build a shelter in a tree where he could
meditate without being interrupted.
Nonetheless local people discovered him, learned of his wisdom and would
come out from time to time to ask him questions about life. Eventually the local governor heard of his
existence and decided that he needed to impress his subjects by going through
the motions of consulting this crazy person.
He arrived on site
accompanied by his retinue and proceeded to address the holy hermit. He called up, “I have heard of your great
wisdom and have come to seek your guidance.”
After a pause the hermit
answered, “What is your question?”
The governor was
nonplussed. He was used receiving
information without questioning, following the rules as modeled by his peers
and most basically, never questioning anything.
He had to think for a minute.
Finally he replied, “How can I find enlightenment?”
The hermit replied, “Be kind
and do no harm.”
The governor replied,
“That’s it? That is the extent of your
wisdom? I was taught that as a child.”
“Easy to say,” replied the
hermit, “but hard to practice.”
Yoga is essentially a
spiritual discipline. It is not a
religious discipline although it can be incorporated to the benefit of any
religious tradition. It is a holistic
and integrative discipline, something hard to grasp with our fragmented modern/post-modern
minds. It is a discipline to help us
disconnect from the false conditioning of our lives and to reconnect with our
authentic being. Religion is basically a
form of conditioning. Yoga is about
spiritual practice and spiritual evolution.
It is experiential rather than dogmatic.
Having said this, it is
somewhat disheartening to look around at the state of yoga education which is
currently popular in the West. A recent
article in Elephant Journal article addresses the fact that many so-called yoga
instructors do not meditate. (http://www.elephantjournal.com/2011/03/why-yogis-dont-meditate/) From my understanding of the yoga tradition
as I have studied and practiced it both at home and in India, the idea of a “yogi”
who does not meditate is an oxymoron. An
instructor who is not personally familiar with some form of meditation practice
is not a yoga instructor. He or she
might be a teacher of calisthenics but not yoga.
The physical practices of
yoga, i.e. asana, are a small subset of what is all about. There are various definitions of yoga
throughout the literature. For example
Patanjali states, “Yoga means bringing the patterns of mind into a state of
stillness.” In a similar vein, Krishna,
in the Bhagavad Gita states, “Yoga means complete mental equanimity.” Another definition found throughout the
traditional literature is that yoga means the union of the individual self and
the Universal Self. All three
definitions point to the same thing: a transcendence of the conceptual ego and
the realization of a deeper dimension of being; or more simply put “inner
peace.”
This may or may not bring us
to the peculiar case of Mr. Choudhury. To
be honest I have never been a fan of his style of yoga. I have had friends who tried out or were even
fond of his “hot Yoga.” From my training
at the Bihar School of Yoga, it seemed to make no sense. It seemed to be about a particular sequence
of asanas (postures) without any regard to individual needs, superficial in
that in only focuses on the body and perhaps, um “stinky.” My greatest reservation was that it did not
seem to be connected to the greater, spiritual dimension of yoga (in which
case, as noted above, it is not yoga.)
My concerns have been
recently confirmed by a series of lawsuits brought against Bikram Choudhury. (http://blogs.yogajournal.com/yogabuzz/2013/07/will-bikram-yoga-survive.html) Overall it appears that his yoga concession
is a travesty of the yoga tradition. If
the charges are true, he is guilty of sexual harassment and rape. Beyond the criminal scope the reports are
that he is racist, misogynistic and homophopic.
He definitely does not seem to exemplify the loving openness and
self-discipline that is the heart of yoga.
Of course it is easy to
judge and judgment is a characteristic of limited ego-identification. On the other hand we need to use discernment
and discrimination in a wise way to avoid the snake oil sellers on the
path. The Universal Being uses us all at
times as teachers and as students. An
errant guru may impart as much wisdom as a “good” one. The teaching is always relevant to where we
are in terms of our own psycho-spiritual development.
