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 Kickle
A Growing Hope
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 A Critique of Yoga Forms 
#12364023 - 04/09/10 06:51 PM (2 years, 1 month ago) |
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"[Yoga] exercises represent special techniques prescribed in advance and intended to achieve a definite psychic effect, or at least to promote it. This is true both of Eastern yoga and of the methods practiced in the West. They are, therefore, technical procedures in the fullest sense of the word; elaborations of the originally natural processes of transformation. The natural or spontaneous transformations that occurred earlier, before there were any historical examples to follow, were thus replaced by techniques designed to induce the transformation by imitating this same sequence of events."
What do you think?
Can a replication of a naturally occurring phenomena still produce the effects of a naturally occurring phenomena?
Or are such paths looking in the wrong direction?
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 appleorange
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Re: A Critique of Yoga Forms [Re: Kickle]
#12364069 - 04/09/10 07:00 PM (2 years, 1 month ago) |
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All I know is that Patanjali who was the originator of yoga, never practiced yoga as we know it today. all this handstand physical stuff known as kriya yoga in india was invented in the 1800's.
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Icelander
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Re: A Critique of Yoga Forms [Re: Kickle]
#12364167 - 04/09/10 07:17 PM (2 years, 1 month ago) |
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In my ignorant opinion the basis of all this is to create a mind that can concentrate deeply. By any means and with intent, life can be experienced more fully.
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“What is the ideal for mental health, then? A lived, compelling illusion that does not lie about life, death, and reality; one honest enough to follow its own commandments: I mean, not to kill, not to take the lives of others to justify itself.”
― Ernest Becker
"Beneath the civilized veneer, man remains the supreme predator. Cursed with what he believes is understanding, his true soul blossoms godlike in the heart of the nuclear inferno."
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yogabunny
Sillypants McFuzzyfluff
Registered: 11/01/09
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Quote:
appleorange said:
All I know is that Patanjali who was the originator of yoga, never practiced yoga as we know it today. all this handstand physical stuff known as kriya yoga in india was invented in the 1800's.
source that patanjali never practiced asana? (he's not the originator of yoga, but more involved in the development of Classical Yoga)
it is true though, that no poses are mentioned by name in the Sutras. asana is referred to as a "comfortable, steady, posture"
poses started to develop and get names from teh 13th-18th century......
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appleorange
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Re: A Critique of Yoga Forms [Re: yogabunny]
#12364360 - 04/09/10 07:54 PM (2 years, 1 month ago) |
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Everything I know about yoga is from my friend Abhik.
He's a hindu and we talked about yoga one day, aside from what he told me I know very little about yoga.
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Kickle
A Growing Hope
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Re: A Critique of Yoga Forms [Re: yogabunny]
#12364376 - 04/09/10 07:57 PM (2 years, 1 month ago) |
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If I may, I think that whenever forms came around is a secondary question to whether a naturally occurring experience/phenomena can accurately be captured and reproduced over time.
It drives straight into language too.
Can we really capture in words these experiences?
And perhaps more importantly, why do we try to explain these experiences?
"There was once a queer old man who lived in a cave, where he had sought refuge from the noise of the villages. He was reputed to be a sorcerer, and therefore he had disciples who hoped to learn the art of sorcery from him. But he himself was not thinking of any such thing. He was only seeking to know what it was that he did not know, but which, he felt certain, was always happening. After meditating for a very long time on that which is beyond meditation, he saw no other way of escape from his predicament than to take a piece of red chalk and draw all kinds of diagrams on the walls of his cave, in order to find out what that which he did not know might look like. After many attempts he hit on the circle. "That's right," he felt, "and now for a quadrangle inside it!"--which made it better still. His disciples were curious; but all they could make out was that the old man was up to something, and they would have given anything to know what he was doing. But when they asked him: "What are you doing there?" he made no reply. Then they discovered the diagrams on the wall and sad: "That's it!"--and they all imitated the diagram. But in so doing they turned the whole process upside down, without noticing it: they anticipated the result in the hope of making the process repeat itself which had led to that result. This is how it happened then and how it still happens today."
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yogabunny
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Re: A Critique of Yoga Forms [Re: Kickle]
#12364394 - 04/09/10 08:01 PM (2 years, 1 month ago) |
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sorry, OP, i got caught up in yoga history.
im not sure i 100% understand your question.
are you propsoing that the poses are less valid now because they have names???
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Kickle
A Growing Hope
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Re: A Critique of Yoga Forms [Re: yogabunny]
#12364418 - 04/09/10 08:05 PM (2 years, 1 month ago) |
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I'm suggesting that the poses were a manifestation of the search for truth, but that they are not the truth nor even what leads to truth.
And that this often is confused by spiritual practitioners.
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yogabunny
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Re: A Critique of Yoga Forms [Re: Kickle]
#12364461 - 04/09/10 08:12 PM (2 years, 1 month ago) |
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im not sure what you mean by the truth, but i believe that asana is a step on the path to Yoga.
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Kickle
A Growing Hope
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Re: A Critique of Yoga Forms [Re: yogabunny]
#12364476 - 04/09/10 08:15 PM (2 years, 1 month ago) |
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Truth in this context being a synonym for what all spiritual paths seek.
Is Yoga a synonym for Enlightenment or Oneness with God?
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yogabunny
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Re: A Critique of Yoga Forms [Re: Kickle]
#12364487 - 04/09/10 08:17 PM (2 years, 1 month ago) |
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where is that quote from?
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appleorange
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Re: A Critique of Yoga Forms [Re: Kickle]
#12364491 - 04/09/10 08:18 PM (2 years, 1 month ago) |
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I think the physical postures developed as a way to help realize the truth.
In Zen for example, the point of zazen is to settle the mind to a point where body and mind disappear.
I'm sure kriya yoga has a similar intent.
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Kickle
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Re: A Critique of Yoga Forms [Re: yogabunny]
#12364498 - 04/09/10 08:19 PM (2 years, 1 month ago) |
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Both are from Jung as he spoke on the archetype of spiritual rebirth.
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Kickle
A Growing Hope
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In Zen for example, the point of zazen is to settle the mind to a point where body and mind disappear.
Do you believe this is possible through zazen?
Or that zazen happened through truth?
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appleorange
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I always enjoy watching this yogi on youtube because of his frequent use of the word stargate.
He makes yoga sound like an episode of star trek.
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appleorange
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Re: A Critique of Yoga Forms [Re: Kickle]
#12364550 - 04/09/10 08:29 PM (2 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
Kickle said:
In Zen for example, the point of zazen is to settle the mind to a point where body and mind disappear.
Do you believe this is possible through zazen?
Or that zazen happened through truth?
Is it possible in Zazen? Yes, it happens rarely though.
Master Dogen is the only one who comes to mind who achieved satori through Zazen.
I think for most people, Zazen merely helps to lay the foundation for the reception of truth.
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yogabunny
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Re: A Critique of Yoga Forms [Re: Kickle]
#12364555 - 04/09/10 08:29 PM (2 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
Kickle said:
Both are from Jung as he spoke on the archetype of spiritual rebirth.
figures 
i absolutely believe that yoga postures, when practiced with dedication and for a long time, are a step toward realizing "truth". i think meditation is also a necessary part of the equation. Quote:
Kickle said:
In Zen for example, the point of zazen is to settle the mind to a point where body and mind disappear.
Do you believe this is possible through zazen?
Or that zazen happened through truth?
chicken?
egg???
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Kickle
A Growing Hope
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Re: A Critique of Yoga Forms [Re: yogabunny]
#12364583 - 04/09/10 08:35 PM (2 years, 1 month ago) |
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I won't argue for stepping stones -- seems to me that everything is a stepping stone.
Merely that no one stone is more important than any other.
Seems to me that this artificial importance leads to attachment which leads to stagnation.
And in this stagnation, the truth is believed to be known -- even while it is moving on.
chicken?
egg???
Maybe...
I guess I see the first yogi as the chicken and yoga as their egg.
I don't think that yoga will turn you into a chicken though 
To me, yoga is just one of many eggs.
And the first yogi, one of many chickens.
IMO the best thing you can do with an egg, is to eat it.
Eat it and gain nourishment from it.
Other than that, I don't think it's going to get you to the truth.
Edited by Kickle (04/09/10 09:05 PM)
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MarkostheGnostic
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Re: A Critique of Yoga Forms [Re: Kickle]
#12364903 - 04/09/10 09:27 PM (2 years, 1 month ago) |
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I think that if you're truly interested in origins, Mircea Eliade's Yoga: Immortality and Freedom is THE most scholarly way to go. There are speculations about the Soma of the Vedas, that either Amanita muscaria or Psilocybian (my guess, owing to its impartation of sacrality to cow dung, which imparted sacrality to the cow!) mushrooms, gave rise to yoga techniques as mushrooms became scarce. It may have been the desire to become independent of mushrooms, so as to develop greater freedom from attachment. I know that was my motivation originally, to move away from acid years ago - to establish the consciousness on my own, or with grace, but without material aid. This might mark the change from shamanism to sagehood or sainthood, depending upon the model. Eliade also wrote Patanjali and Yoga, and Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. The late Romanian historian of religion probably changed my life in 1974 with his book The Sacred and the Profane.
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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Sauton - Know Thyself
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Kickle
A Growing Hope
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Markos, do you believe in the historical past?
Meaning, do you believe that it is more than just a parallel of our lives?
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