Fundamentalism

[Guest guest]

You've probably all read this but I thought it

might make interesting reading for reflection

anyway.<br><br>"Rather than a direct experience of reality, an

unconditional love and freedom, Fundamentalism often causes us

to mistake the processes and symbols of yoga for the

actual thing. This separates us from immediate

experience of the openness of being and our yoga ironically

becomes an escape from life, an avoidance of the present

moment. Many have even adopted yoga as an obligatory set

of self punishments, dutifully done in order to

achieve a picture of virtue laid out in our or somebody

else’s mind. Other have made it a self indulgence used

to conceal a lack of love and relationship, a badge

of difference, for an isolated, insecure ego.

Sometimes yoga creates competition, envy, loneliness and

self righteous feelings. Many of us have found in yoga

an exotic religion, a Shangri-la in which to escape

unaware. Others still have used hard practice in an

attempt to create the physiology of ecstatic trance, to

bypass the heart of insight and love where the real

ecstacy is. In the social realm differences of technique

between schools can bring out anger, fear and competition

between yogins. Even within the same school, slight

differences in technique and interpretation between

practitioners brings on painful jealousy and conflict. This not

to say that all our yoga world is so bleak. But when

we find suffering, clinging, closing of the mind and

heart, we must ask, “why”? "<br><br>Rest of article to

be found

at:<br><a href=http://www.yogaworkshop.com/philosophy_middle_path.htm

target=new>http://www.yogaworkshop.com/philosophy_middle_path.htm</a><br><br>MrM

[Guest guest]

re your reference to this article -

<a href=http://www.yogaworkshop.com/philosophy_middle_path.htm

target=new>http://www.yogaworkshop.com/philosophy_middle_path.htm</a><br><br>I

enjoyed re-reading this article.<br>I have never

seen a negative comment come from guruji re other yoga

ways - he seems detached. I HAVE heard that he has

indicated that other styles of yoga should not be taught in

the same studio as astanga yoga, though.