Guest guest Posted January 26, 2003 Report Share Posted January 26, 2003 ... OM namashchaNDikAyai .. In the 2/2003 Yoga Journal, Douglas Brooks discusses Classical, Advaita Vedanta, and Tantric approaches to Yoga. Following are some of his words, directly on-point with recent "debates" on this message board: "In the Tantra-based yoga...philosophers such as the great Abhinavagupta and those practitioners of the goddess-centered Srividya traditions maintained that al of reality is the Divine expressing itself. This Divinity includes all temporal and material realities, including anything we experience as negative. Yoga, according to the Tantric philosophers, empowers us to experience every facet of ourselves as a manifestation of the Divine. Our recognition that the self of ordinary experience is none other than the same true Self that is present as the infinite forms of the universe occurs at every level of our experience, from logic to emotion. This One Self appearing as the Many does not diminish the value of the material world nor does it make our emotional or intellectual experience irrelevant by dissolving it into pure Oneness, as Classical Yoga or Advaita Vedanta can seem to do. Rather, the Tantric position maintains that yoga means we are free to experience everything as Divine because we are free from the misconception that our mortal experience is a barrier to the immortal. Thus for the Tantric tradtion, we are not so much bound by our limited experience as we are simply informed by it; this is a gift of experience as well as the insight that yoga provides. ... >From its origins, yogis have debated rationally and with deep emotion what yoga's purpose truly is and how we might best go about reaching our goals. But no matter what goals we set for ourselves or what understanding we create from our human experiences, yoga asks us to bring all of ourselves--our body, emotions, and thoughts--to its practice. In this sense, yoga truly lives up to its literal meaning, "union." ...." ... OM namashchaNDikAyai .. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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