FW: Pls forward - Theft of Yoga; join HAF to stop this if you are a true practioner of Vedic Sanskriti.

[Guest guest]

JAI MAA,

 

Forward this to every one you know.

 

 

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/aseem_shukla/2010/04/nearly\

_twenty_million_people_in.html

 

co-founder, Hindu American Foundation

 

 

 

 

Aseem

Shukla

 

 

Associate Professor in

urologic surgery at the University of Minnesota medical school.

Co-founder and board member of Hindu American Foundation.

 

 

ALL POSTS

 

 

 

The theft of

yoga

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nearly 20 million people in the United States gather together

routinely, fold their hands and utter the Hindu greeting of Namaste --

the Divine in me bows to the same Divine in you. Then they close their

eyes and focus their minds with chants of " Om, " the Hindu representation

of the first and eternal vibration of creation. Arrayed in linear

patterns, they stretch, bend, contort and control their respirations as a

mentor calls out names of Hindu divinity linked to various postures:

Natarajaasana (Lord Shiva) or Hanumanasana (Lord Hanuman) among many

others. They chant their assigned " mantra of the month, " taken as they

are from lines directly from the Vedas, Hinduism's holiest scripture.

Welcome to the practice of yoga in today's western world.

 

 

Christians, Jews, Muslims, Pagans, agnostics

and atheists they may be, but they partake in the spiritual heritage of a

faith tradition with a vigor often unmatched by even among the

two-and-a half-million Hindu Americans here. The Yoga Journal found

that the industry generates more than $6 billion each year and continues

on an incredible trajectory of popularity. It would seem that yoga's

mother tradition, Hinduism, would be shining in the brilliant glow of

dedicated disciples seeking more from the very font of their passion.

 

 

Yet the reality is very different. Hinduism in common parlance is

identified more with holy cows than Gomukhasana, the

notoriously arduous twisting posture; with millions of warring gods

rather than the unity of divinity of Hindu tradition--that God may

manifest and be worshiped in infinite ways; as a tradition of colorful

and harrowing wandering ascetics more than the spiritual inspiration of

Patanjali, the second century BCE commentator and composer of the Yoga

Sutras, that form the philosophical basis of Yoga practice today.

 

 

Why is yoga severed in America's collective consciousness from

Hinduism? Yoga, meditation, ayurvedic natural healing,

self-realization--they are today's syntax for New Age, Eastern,

mystical, even Buddhist, but nary an appreciation of their Hindu

origins. It is not surprising, then, that Hindu schoolchildren complain

that Hinduism is conflated only with caste, cows, exoticism and

polytheism--the salutary contributions and philosophical underpinnings

lost and ignored. The severance of yoga from Hinduism disenfranchises

millions of Hindu Americans from their spiritual heritage and a legacy

in which they can take pride.

 

 

Hinduism, as a faith tradition, stands at this pass a victim of overt

intellectual property theft, absence of trademark protections and the

facile complicity of generations of Hindu yogis, gurus, swamis and

others that offered up a religion's spiritual wealth at the altar of

crass commercialism. The Maharishi

Mahesh Yogi, under whose tutelage the Beatles steadied their mind

and made sense of their insane fame, packaged the wonders of meditation

as Transcendental Meditation

just as an entrepreneur from here in Minneapolis applied the

principles of Ayurveda to drive a commercial enterprise he coined as

Aveda. TM and Aveda are trademarked brands--a protection not available

to the originator of their brand--Hinduism itself. And certainly these

masters benefited millions with their contributions, but in agreeing to

ditch Hinduism as the source, they left these gifts orphaned and

unanchored.

 

 

The Los Angeles Times last week chronicled

this steady disembodying of yoga from Hinduism. " Christ is my guru.

Yoga is a spiritual discipline much like prayer, meditation and fasting

[and] no one religion can claim ownership, " says a vocal proponent of

" Christian themed " yoga practices. Some Jews practice Torah yoga,

Kabbalah yoga and aleph bet yoga, and even some

Muslims are joining the act. They are appropriating the collective

wisdom of millenia of yogis without a whisper of acknowledgment of

yoga's spiritual roots.

 

 

Not surprisingly, the most popular yoga journals and magazines are

also in the act. Once yoga was no longer intertwined with its Hindu

roots, it became up for grabs and easy to sell. These journals

abundantly refer to yoga as " ancient Indian, " " Eastern " or

" Sanskritic, " but seem to assiduously avoid the term " Hindu " out of

fear, we can only assume, that ascribing honestly the origins of their

passion would spell disaster for what has become a lucrative commercial

enterprise. The American Yoga Association, on its Web site, completes

this delinking of yoga from Hinduism thusly:

 

 

" The common belief that Yoga derives from Hinduism is a

misconception. Yoga actually predates Hinduism by many centuries...The

techniques of Yoga have been adopted by Hinduism as well as by other

world religions. "

 

 

So Hinduism, the religion that has no known origins or beginnings is

now younger than yoga? What a ludicrous contention when the Yoga

Sutras weren't even composed until the 2nd Century BCE. These

deniers seem to posit that Hinduism appropriated yoga so other religions

may as well too! Hindus can only sadly shake their heads, as by this

measure, soon we will read as to how karma, dharma and

reincarnation--the very foundations of Hindu philosophy--are only

ancient precepts that early Hindus of some era made their own.

 

 

The Hindu American Foundation (Disclosure: I sit on the Foundation's

Board) released a position paper

on this issue earlier this year. The brief condemns yoga's

appropriation, but also argues that yoga today is wholly misunderstood.

Yoga is identified today only with Hatha Yoga, the aspect of

yoga focused on postures and breathing techniques. But this is only one

part of the practice of Raja Yoga that is actually an

eightfold path designed to lead the practitioner to moksha, or

salvation. Indeed, yogis believe that to focus on the physicality of

yoga without the spirituality is utterly rudimentary and deficient.

Sure, practicing postures alone with a focus on breathing techniques

will quiet the mind, tone the body, increase flexibility--even help

children with Attention Deficit Disorder--but will miss the mark on

holistic healing and wellness.

 

 

All of this is not to contend, of course, that yoga is only for

Hindus. Yoga is Hinduism's gift to humanity to follow, practice and

experience. No one can ever be asked to leave their own religion or

reject their own theologies or to convert to a pluralistic tradition

such as Hinduism. Yoga asks only that one follow the path of yoga for

it will necessarily lead one to become a better Hindu, Christian, Jew or

Muslim. Yoga, like its Hindu origins, does not offer ways to believe

in God; it offer ways to know God.

 

 

But be forewarned. Yogis say that the dedicated practice of yoga

will subdue the restless mind, lessen one's cravings for the mundane

material world and put one on the path of self-realization--that each

individual is a spark of the Divine. Expect conflicts if you are sold

on the exclusivist claims of Abrahamic faiths--that their God awaits the

arrival of only His chosen few at heaven's gate--since yoga shows its

own path to spiritual enlightenment to all seekers regardless of

affiliation.

 

 

Hindus must take back yoga and reclaim the intellectual property of

their spiritual heritage--not sell out for the expediency of winning

more clients for the yoga studio down the street.

 

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