It is quite unfortunate that OP is getting upvoted. He has hijacked the discussion by completely redefining yoga. Yoga might have meant all those spiritual aspects you've outlined, but as practised here in the USA and even in India, none of those aspects are even remotely brought to bear. I have been taught yoga formally in India both as a kid ( in most CBSE middle schools, you are auto-enrolled in 1 hour of yoga per week ) and as an adult. Swami Vivekananda was mentioned not even in passing.
> To understand Yoga in its essence I would advice you to read Swami Vivekananda's complete works.
Yeah and likewise to understand Computer Scienmce in its essence I would advice you to read D.E. Knuth's complete works and not profess to know any CS until you memorize each and every algorithm in TAOCP! You see how ridiculous that sounds ? That's the whole problem. Yoga a few centuries ago might have meant what you said, but as practised today, in the here and now, simply means acrobatic gym sessions with contortions paid for by your montly paycheck. Its unfortunate, but that's what it is.
Bringing in Kipling into this discussion is hugely ironic considering how much of a royal prick he was in his attitude towards Indians ( Kipling's transparently racist portrayals of Indian characters in Kim and Gunga Din, among others )
The Times article is about genuine medical risks posed by spinal twists and headstands, which are, unfortunately becoming more and more commonplace as sedentary officegoers frequent yoga studios to add some yoga to their fitness regimen. None of those people are remotely interested in karmayoga or nyanayoga - they just want to learn the asanas.
Asanas minus Yoga is not yoga.
But that's the reality of today. Learning shirasasana without learning its spiritual yogic root is akin to calling yourself a programmer and not knowing what a red-black tree is. But guess what, most programmers today don't know what a red-black tree is. That's sad, but its also a reality and we have to deal with reality as it exists, not based on Kipling's delusional rants. There are hundreds of actual people with actual broken ribs who desperately want to learn matsyasana and don't give a flying f--- who gautama buddha or ramakrishna paramahamsa or swami vivekananda was. That's just the way it is.
>Bringing in Kipling into this discussion is hugely ironic >considering how much of a royal prick he was in his attitude towards Indians ( Kipling's transparently racist portrayals of Indian characters in Kim and Gunga Din, among others )
If you consider Rudyard Kipling's characterization as racist then perhaps you are missing a few subtleties and humanizing nature of such character portrayals. I am from India and I do not consider Kipling's characterization as racist but rather a dig at the ills of society that existed during the British rule similar to Mark Twain's characterization of Native Americans and African Americans in the pre-civil war American south.
Well, he's clearing up a semantic point. As he said - Yoga has many branches - many different meanings. He's not taking the bullshit route of "Yoga is good, I practice Yoga, people who hurt themselves aren't really doing Yoga". He's said that there's different meanings, not one true Yoga, and admits what some people call Yoga may be a bad idea.
You are taking it to extreme. One cannot claim to be a computer engineer by learning to edit web page, same way doing few postures is not learning Yoga. Many people are following types of Yoga not associated with Asanas so you cannot put all in one category.
Here are two interesting statements from A Perfect Man, a biography of Eugen Sandow. Unfortunately, the author does not cite a source for these statements and doesn't appear to be familiar with yoga himself. (Also, the author strikes me as a little too eager to establish Sandow's influence on the modern world.) With those caveats in mind:
Sandow's ideas were taken up enthusiastically [in India after Sandow's visit there.] There were many who saw physical fitness as the first step on the road to independence and political power. These included Swami Vivekenanda, the Hindu nationalist leader (and exponent of the three Bs: beef, biceps, and the Bhagavad-Gita.)
Later, speaking about the physical practice of yoga that became popular in the west:
According to some historians, this modern posture-based yoga owes more to Western physical culture (including Sandow's) than it does to Indian tradition.
Sandow himself made many grandiose statements about the power of his physical exercise program to cure almost any bodily ailment. No one takes his claims seriously nowadays because he presented them as material facts, but if he had cloaked them in a bunch of mystical bullshit and attributed his ideas to an exotic ancient tradition, he might still have followers today instead of being a mostly forgotten Victorian curiosity.
As Pierre Bernard, one of the first of many indefatigable charlatans who popularized yoga, or at least its physical-training aspect, hatha yoga, in the United States, put it, “The purpose of yoga is to prepare us from getting cheated; to enable us to make better bargains, and to get what we go after!” Fabulous sex was high on Bernard’s menu even in the strait-laced 1910s. Robert Love’s entertaining biography, “The Great Oom,” depicts a bold and successful liar who could tell his gullible disciples with a straight face that oral sex, punishable in 1915 by up to 20 years in prison, was a sacred practice in India and produced orgasms 10 times longer than ordinary intercourse.
> To understand Yoga in its essence I would advice you to read Swami Vivekananda's complete works.
Yeah and likewise to understand Computer Scienmce in its essence I would advice you to read D.E. Knuth's complete works and not profess to know any CS until you memorize each and every algorithm in TAOCP! You see how ridiculous that sounds ? That's the whole problem. Yoga a few centuries ago might have meant what you said, but as practised today, in the here and now, simply means acrobatic gym sessions with contortions paid for by your montly paycheck. Its unfortunate, but that's what it is.
Bringing in Kipling into this discussion is hugely ironic considering how much of a royal prick he was in his attitude towards Indians ( Kipling's transparently racist portrayals of Indian characters in Kim and Gunga Din, among others )
The Times article is about genuine medical risks posed by spinal twists and headstands, which are, unfortunately becoming more and more commonplace as sedentary officegoers frequent yoga studios to add some yoga to their fitness regimen. None of those people are remotely interested in karmayoga or nyanayoga - they just want to learn the asanas.
Asanas minus Yoga is not yoga.
But that's the reality of today. Learning shirasasana without learning its spiritual yogic root is akin to calling yourself a programmer and not knowing what a red-black tree is. But guess what, most programmers today don't know what a red-black tree is. That's sad, but its also a reality and we have to deal with reality as it exists, not based on Kipling's delusional rants. There are hundreds of actual people with actual broken ribs who desperately want to learn matsyasana and don't give a flying f--- who gautama buddha or ramakrishna paramahamsa or swami vivekananda was. That's just the way it is.