Guest guest Posted April 30, 2006 Report Share Posted April 30, 2006 namas te here is something only for those who enjoy and tolerate hard hitting columns that sometimes have quite a bit of truth through it may be bitter http://cleaves.zapto.org/clv/newswire.php?story_id=207 warm regards Yogacharya Dr.Ananda Balayogi Bhavanani Chairman : Yoganjali Natyalayam and ICYER 25,2nd Cross,Iyyanar Nagar, Pondicherry-605 013 Tel: 0413 - 2622902 / 0413 -2241561 Website: www.icyer.com www.geocities.com/yognat2001/ananda Talk is cheap. Use Messenger to make PC-to-Phone calls. Great rates starting at 1¢/min. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted April 30, 2006 Report Share Posted April 30, 2006 Hello !!! Two comments : 1) first on the first part on religion " formal " and " living " . I feel the view expressed in this article is not very " advaitic " . I always try to remind myself that " samsara is nirvana and nirvana is samsara " . All creation is a mix of space and form or whatever you want to call these polarities. The existence of any spiritual or religious path is testimony that " union " has not been achieved ... otherwise why theorize or look for understanding ?? A search for knowledge only makes sense where it is not there. And the knowledge comprises form and the formless. It is easy to hit on other religions, to compare the deep and complex knowledge one has about his own tradition with the very superficial knowledge one may have of the other tradition ... I am very critical about many of the new emerging Christian churches. Personnally I am a catholic and I am also quite critical about the institution of the catholic church. Nevertheless it gives meaning and a path to many people and from that point of view is definitely not dead. And more important you cannot reduce the Christian path to the exoteric church. The Christian tradition very clearly states that the exoteric legacy, the building of the worldly church has been handed to Peter. But the esoteric part, the inner path has been handed to John. So there have always been at least these two broad streams of St Peter's and St John's church ... The esoterics have long been persecuted by the worldly church but they have kept on deepening their paths and their traditions. The author also states that " A single religion fragmented into many splinter groups and sub-groups has obviously lost its way – some would say severe fragmentation is symptomatic of spiritual bankruptcy or at the very least, degeneration and decay. " According to this definition " Hinduism " should be dead since milleniums ... And at a more pragmatical level, the amount of criticism Swamiji made about the state of affairs on ashrams, saddhus, yogis etc. only in the Yoga Lifes from 1970 to 1977 (I have not gone further yet) very much reveals that " living Hinduism " does not fare to well neither... Every religion, spiritual path has its " idolaters " , and probably most people following any path (you can include there also all kinds of trends, ideologies, sciences etc.) are only " blind believers " and not real " seekers " . This holds true for any " religion " or " spirituality " . But any religion or path also has its genuine seekers and masters, who are not always apparent and in the limelight but who have deep understanding of the living aspect of their tradition. 2) I do not know Susan Bordenkircher and I do not have any idea what " Christian Yoga " is about. It is possible that what she does is absurd. It is possible it is just another strategy to attract converts ... or earn money ... But what the author says about what she does, does not give enough evidence of the alleged stupidity or self-interest of her approach and it is even based on false arguments. I cannot speak for all Christians, but for the Catholics the most important moment in the mass is the communion. During communion the two elements are the wine and the bread, the blood and the body of Christ. Wine which is made of grapes (which are round and red) symbolizes the feminine principle and the bread made of wheat and white represents the male principle. The major symbol in a catholic church is Jesus Christ crucified on the cross, which symbolizes the cosmic spirit on the cross of the four elements or more generally matter. It is true that mainstream christianism does not always emphasize these symbolic aspects so much. And it is true that the feminine is not very obviously present in mainstream church ... as Mary is supposed to be " only " the mother of Jesus, but that we do not have officially a " wife of God " ... but many streams of researchers have very much dwelled on this aspect of the feminine - the succes of the recent book " Da Vinci Code " shows that there is sensitivity towards the feminine / masculine relationship for many Christians and it also documents some of the streams of thought which explored this idea very much. It is thus easy to condemn Susan Bordenkirchner on a ground which is maybe not hers. The author does not tell us what approach of Christianism she shares. The author of the article has himself first stated the huge diversity of approaches in Christianism and then falls back to argue as if there was only one, and the one being necessarily a dead and stupid one which by a circular argument can be deduced from the fact that there are so many approaches ... Now is it completely stupid to speak about " Christian Yoga " ?? According to some people, and many of my Indian friends remind me of this with great pride when I discuss with them, where was Jesus in his whole youth before starting to teach when he was thirty ?? He studied in India (and after having " died " on the cross he was supposed to have gone back to India where he died in his eighties in Kashmir). Fine. If this is true, then Jesus was trained as a Yogi and his teaching was rooted in Yoga although he gave it a different form according to the reform he had to make and according to the different cultural context where he acted. If we talk on grounds of " living religions " and as Jesus is recognized as a " living master " by many traditions, at least in him the union of a " yogic " and of a " christian " approach made sense. Last aspect : the author states " that a living blade of grass contains more ‘knowledge’ than all the books that have ever been or will be printed. " If I take this seriously then I must take any living human being more seriously than any written tradition. The human contains everything, the whole universe and God. There is thus no reason why there should be any privilege of knowledge on basis of " tradition " etc. Some traditions may have deepend a certain knowledge further than others, or have emphasized different aspects. But this does not exclude a universality in the human being which can permit all of them to find their way and beneficially learn from each other. You will say but then why talk of " Christian Yoga " ?? I do not know in the case of Susan Bordenkirchner. I also do not know if her work is serious or not. I do not know. But I feel that when very harsh criticism is expressed it should be substantiated and I feel it very dangerous to implicetely play " nice versus good guy " games ... it reminds me of the recent and still present rhetorics in world politics of the " axis of good versus the axis of evil " ... Genuine research automatically includes a critical attitude. But true critique demands an effort of understanding and of contextualizing. It demands a dialogical attitude. Maybe there are " good " and " bad " things about " Christian Yoga " ... inherently or linked to the contexts ... It is easy to see all that is wrong with the others .... but maybe sometimes something can also be learned from them if a humble attitude is taken. Plenty of dialogical energies !!! Christoph --- " Yogacharya Dr.Ananda Bhavanani " <yognat2001 a écrit : > namas te > > here is something only for those who enjoy and > tolerate hard hitting columns that sometimes have > quite a bit of truth through it may be bitter > > > http://cleaves.zapto.org/clv/newswire.php?story_id=207 > > warm regards > > > > Yogacharya > Dr.Ananda Balayogi Bhavanani > Chairman : Yoganjali Natyalayam and ICYER > 25,2nd Cross,Iyyanar Nagar, Pondicherry-605 013 > Tel: 0413 - 2622902 / 0413 -2241561 > Website: www.icyer.com > www.geocities.com/yognat2001/ananda > > > > > > > > > Talk is cheap. Use Messenger to make > PC-to-Phone calls. Great rates starting at 1 & cent;/min. _________________________ Découvrez le nouveau Messenger : appelez vers des téléphones en France et à partir de 0,012 €/minute ! Téléchargez sur http://fr.messenger. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted May 3, 2006 Report Share Posted May 3, 2006 A website where yoga in McDonalds is being condemned by American Christians. Sometimes, life can be very surreal. Dave. http://www.prophezine.com/Articles/ProphezineArticles2006/GimmieYogaaBurgerandFr\ ies/tabid/288/Default.aspx , " Yogacharya Dr.Ananda Bhavanani " <yognat2001 wrote: > > namas te > > here is something only for those who enjoy and tolerate hard hitting columns that sometimes have quite a bit of truth through it may be bitter > > http://cleaves.zapto.org/clv/newswire.php?story_id=207 > > warm regards > > > > Yogacharya > Dr.Ananda Balayogi Bhavanani > Chairman : Yoganjali Natyalayam and ICYER > 25,2nd Cross,Iyyanar Nagar, Pondicherry-605 013 > Tel: 0413 - 2622902 / 0413 -2241561 > Website: www.icyer.com > www.geocities.com/yognat2001/ananda > > > > > > > > > Talk is cheap. Use Messenger to make PC-to-Phone calls. Great rates starting at 1 & cent;/min. > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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