Feuerstein: Yoga has strayed from its core

[Guest guest]

Has yoga strayed from its core?

Douglas Religion News Service [u.S.]

Aug. 11, 2007

 

Yoga has lost its moral compass as a result of its rapid rise

in popularity in North America, says a book by one of the

world's leading yoga scholars.

 

Georg Feuerstein, author of Yoga Morality: Ancient

Teachings at a Time of Global Crisis, is worried that in the

process of becoming so many things to so many people,

yoga has lost its ethical, philosophical and spiritual roots.

 

Confined just four decades ago to the hippie or ethnic

fringes in Western culture, yoga has become, especially in

the past five years, thoroughly mainstream.

 

Yoga now forms the heart of a $4 billion-a-year industry

and is practiced by almost 10 percent of North Americans,

with much higher participation rates on the West Coast,

according to a poll by Yoga Magazine.

 

Dr. Feuerstein says most of today's yoga practitioners don't

care about, or don't understand, the tradition's moral

teachings, which could offer guidance on sexuality, war,

corporate greed, racism, politeness, gluttony, financial debt

and pollution.

 

When tens of millions of North Americans find their

identities in saying they " do yoga, " he says, widespread

ignorance about yoga's ethical traditions represents a tragic

lost opportunity.

 

What would a traditional Hindu yoga teacher, steeped in

modesty, think of those revealing outfits women and men

wear to classes, Dr. Feuerstein asks. He worries that many

yoga practitioners focus obsessively on mere physical

health.

 

" It should not require much imagination to appreciate that a

person can be superbly fit but mentally lethargic,

emotionally insensitive, morally corrupt and spiritually

bankrupt, " he writes.

 

Dr. Feuerstein, author of dozens of other books, loosely

structures Yoga Morality around the five virtues taught by

Patanjali, a pseudonym given to the early authors of the

Yogasutras. He translates Patanjali's ethical values as

" nonharming, " " truthfulness, " " nonstealing, "

" greedlessness " and " chastity. "

 

He places the five virtues under the umbrella Hindu

principle of " interconnectedness, " which teaches that we

need to develop a sense of kinship with all human beings as

well as with nature.

 

Dr. Feuerstein talks about how yoga opposes all violence -

harming - from unjust wars to calling people " stupid " or

" losers. "

 

Dr. Feuerstein says we live in a world saturated with lies

and spin instead of " truthfulness. "

 

" Nonstealing " is a crucial ethic from yoga tradition,

according to Dr. Feuerstein, who considers the growing gap

between rich and poor a form of theft, as CEOs make in a

few hours what minimum-wage earners receive in a year.

He says sweatshops and child labor also are forms of

institutionalized theft.

 

He believes the U.S. national debt of nearly $9 trillion is a

form of greed.

 

Decrying the fashion parade and sexy outfits in yoga

classes, he laments how " modesty, once a highly valued

yogic virtue, is considered old-fashioned. " He is especially

appalled at the concept of nude yoga classes. And he says

ancient tantric yoga, which often deals with sexual energy,

has been abused by exploitative teachers. It's a criticism he

shares with Buddhism's Dalai Lama.

 

Dr. Feuerstein does not interpret chastity as total abstinence

from sex, but he warns that " we cannot indulge in sex and

[at the same time] hope to liberate ourselves from the

shackles of the unconscious and the instinctual habits it

favors. "

 

" Ethics is the foundation of yoga, " Dr. Feuerstein contends,

asserting that virtue can open the gateway to spiritual

liberation.

 

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