Prof. P. Muller-Ortega's response to Time mag's cover story on Yoga

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>"Ashok Chowgule"

>"Ashok Chowgule"

>

>Fw: Prof. Paul Muller-Ortega's response to Time magazine's cover story on Yoga

>Thu, 3 May 2001 21:26:14 +0530

>

>

>A letter to Time magazine.

>

>

>Paul E. Muller-Ortega [bhairava (AT) rochester (DOT) rr.com]

>Sunday, April 29, 2001 12:02 PM

>Letters (AT) time (DOT) com

>YOUR RECENT COVER ARTICLE ENTITLED "THE POWER OF YOGA"

>

>

>Dear TIME,

>

> As a University Professor and a scholar of Indian Religions, I was

>initially delighted to find that the topic of Yoga had somehow found its

>way

>to the prestigious front page of TIME magazine. This semester, I have

>been

>teaching an advanced undergraduate seminar at the University of

>Rochester on

>precisely the theme of Yoga. So, I excitedly looked forward to bringing

>the

>magazine to the classroom to discuss with my students.

>

> However, my initial delight soon turned to dismay when I realized

>that

>the

>article itself further perpetuated and enshrined many common western

>misunderstandings of the complex phenomenon of Yoga. For more than

>twenty

>years, whenever I introduce my university students to the topic of Yoga,

>I

>have to begin by dispelling their superficial understanding that Yoga is

>something that is practiced in the gym of the local community college.

>Indeed, I have to work hard to make my students understand that Yoga in

>the

>true sense of the word has very little to do with the kinds of athletic

>practices that you described in your article.

>

> As you do note in the separate "A Shopper's Guide", what you

>covered

>in

>your article is technically called Hatha Yoga, which is itself a minor

>and

>subsidiary branch of a much larger and encompassing set of spiritual

>disciplines. To mistake this branch for the whole is about as gross an

>error and misrepresentation as talking about "sport" in the abstract

>when in

>fact one is only describing boys' little league baseball. Hatha Yoga is

>certainly a part of Yoga, but at best a secondary and subsidiary part.

>TIME's readers would have been better served had they been told

>somewhere in

>your main piece that there is much more to Yoga than what they found

>depicted in these few pages. I found it particularly troublesome that

>in

>your coverage in the main article you failed to distinguish between the

>many

>forms of Yoga (and by that I _don't_ mean the many brand names of

>commercialized Hatha Yoga that you listed in Shopper's Guide!): where is

>the

>Yoga of devotion, the Yoga of mantra, the Yoga of Kundalini, the Yoga of

>Grace? And your blithe characterizations (in the lead-in to the

>"Shopper's

>Guide) of Bhakti yoga (as being mainly about prayer and mantra

>chanting),

>and Tantra (as being largely about sex), made me writhe and cringe in

>their

>superficiality!

>

> Strangely absent from your discussion is even a passing allusion

>to

>the

>real meaning of Yoga which involves primarily a complex set of interior

>meditative disciplines. (And I am NOT talking here about Benson's

>Relaxation

>Response, something he seems to have confected from his encounters with

>Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Transcendental Meditation more than thirty years

>ago.) Rather, the complex set of interior meditative disciplines that

>constitute Yoga are laid out in one of the most important Sanskrit texts

>of

>the Indian tradition, the _Yoga-Sutras_ of Patanjali (ca. 4th century

>C.E.)

>When one studies this text, one discovers that the asanas and pranayama

>of

>Hatha Yoga form but a very minor section of this text's concerns. The

>sophisticated mappings of human consciousness and the interior practices

>of

>deep meditation described in abstruse technical vocabulary in Patanjali

>form

>the real core of Yoga.

>

> And about this real "science" of the Yoga of Patanjali, the Rodney

>Yee's

>and Christy Turlington's of your article seem to know precious little.

>

> TIME's article _was_ interesting to me in that it documents the

>commercialization and much wider acceptance of the practice of Hatha

>Yoga

>in the US. But the article was itself a deplorable example of the ways

>this

>ancient practice has been misunderstood and deformed even as it is

>transposed into a commercial enterprise for the many and made

>user-friendly

>for the masses. Of course, TIME is meant to cover current events, and

>the

>increasing popularity of fashionable Hatha Yoga salons with their

>glittering

>personalities and athletic teachers inventing precious variations of

>physical poses is certainly a newsworthy topic. Given what is for the

>most

>part the appalling superficiality of the kind of Yoga that takes place

>there, however, it is not at all surprising that western science still

>looks

>on all of this somewhat askance!

>

> Much more interesting, however, is the strong impulse toward real

>and

>authentic spiritual discovery that appears to motivate many of those who

>seek out these Hatha Yoga salons. Deceived by a few Sanskrit technical

>names, the smell of Nag Champa incense, and the sound of OM, these

>sincere

>seekers mistake their athletic teachers for the real masters of Yoga! I

>don't mean to tar all of these teachers with the same brush. There _are_

>many dedicated and knowledgeable souls among them, I am sure. But there

>_is_

>a disturbing tendency among many of these so-called Yoga teachers to

>cash in

>on a trend on the basis of very little knowledge, very little practice,

>and

>much commercial savvy. This is a tragedy for many reasons, including

>the

>fact that the real "science" of Yoga (as proclaimed on your front cover)

>will never really be understood and appreciated by western science until

>the

>sophisticated Yoga of Patanjali is properly studied in both its complex

>theory and its intricate and exquisitely powerful practices. Until

>then,

>western science will remain properly skeptical, I am sure.

>

> By the way, a wonderful resource in order to gain access to a much

>more

>complete understanding of Yoga (in the true and encompassing sense of

>the

>word) is to be found in Georg Feurstein's book, _The Yoga Tradition_

>(Hohm

>Press, 1998.) Here one will find a complete description of all of the

>many

>forms of Yoga, most of which have very little to do with a fold-out of

>an

>apparently anorexic Christy Turlington in padmasana! (One suspects that

>she

>must have a _very_ good PR person!)

>

> A plea to TIME: next time you write an article on this (or any

>other

>topic

>related to Asian religions) please contact one of the many specialists

>in

>the Academy to help you to write something that is deeper and more

>rooted in

>real knowledge from the tradition, less frothy, more connected to the

>big

>picture of the phenomenon, and less fascinated with transitory

>personalities

>and big-dollar commercializers. Thank you!

>

>with very best wishes,

>

>Paul E. Muller-Ortega, Ph.D.

>Professor of Religion

>University of Rochester

>

>bhairava (AT) rochester (DOT) rr.com

>

>

>

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