Tuesday, June 19, 2001


it's interesting isn't it that when you talk about yoga with people, many still associate it with some kind of religious situation. which is funny to me because it seems to me that yoga shares something with zen buddhism in this regard -- at its core it is empty of faith-based content.

it is entirely experiential. . .you don't believe anything. you just do the poses, just do the meditation, and see what, if anything, happens. this is not to say that yoga is not without a philosophy. this is recorded in the terse yoga sutras by patanjali. patanjali rejects a purely materialistic view of the universe; he believes that natural reason and personal experience will reveal to all that humans are spiritual beings, part of the infinite mind that is the foundation of the material universe.

whether you agree or disagree with this proposition of course is up to you and your personal beliefs, or based on your advanced degree in philosophy. but you don't have to agree or disagree with patanjali to do yoga. it's almost not even necessary to know about patanjali in some sense.

i guess what i find most interesting about the sutras is its concept of human consciousness -- patanjali makes some interesting separations between states of consciousness. for example, he appears not to believe that what we call "human consciousness" is a real thing unto itself. thoughts, feelings, emotions, knowing, ignorance, etc. are all just "vritti" -- waves of energy across a more basic surface. it seems that he understands sleep as simply a state when the thought-waves wash over you without you being interested in their content. that is, you are "caught up in their movement." like many other philosophers, he takes care to distinguish between reason and imagination, right knowledge and wrong knowledge, truth and untruth; where he differs from many philosophers, is that these categories are not of themselves of much interest to him.

he passes quickly over them and moves on. he also notes a quick list of ethical behavior, and then glides over that as well. the sutras mention what you might call god or the demi-urge (ishwara) once or twice, but patanjali is not much interested in deities, either. not once in the sutras does patanjali seem to use the word "faith" or "belief," as far as i can tell.

this is why it seems to me that patanjali, and yoga, are without religious content. you can pour whatever you want into your yoga. or better yet, take it as comes to you in your downward dog. . .so if you are interested in yoga, but worried about the tshirts of ganesh's happy elephant head or the "eastern philosophy," don't be. just try it out. see if it makes you feel a little better. there's nothing more to it.


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