jot1
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Oct 28, 2004, 5:38 AM
Post #1 of 23
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Yoga is a religion
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YOGA IS A RELIGION
Yoga is not only a religion, but: Yoga is a universal religion. Of course the religion in question is Hinduism and specifically Vaishnavism: Yoga came into existence when the world came into existence and has existed from time immemorial. Hiranyagarbha was the original propounder of Yoga. Hiranyaarbha is none other than Narayana [the Hindu Deity Visnu], the Creator. Yoga was not created but it was always there and it will remain forever.
Though Patanjali is not the originator of Yoga, the credit goes to him as he collated and codified the subject and presented the essence of Yoga which was scattered in the [various Hindu scriptures] Vedas and Upanishads. Patanjali is an incarnation of Adisesa the [snake] couch of Lord Visnu.
Why do we do Yoga? It is only after we continue practicing yoga that it dawns on us that we do not do yoga for health. Lord Krishna [an incarnation of Vishnu] says in the Bhagvad Gita [fundamental Hindu scripture] that each one of us remains unmanifest in the beginning, gets manifested and at the end dissolves into the unmanifested state. So Krishna is your teacher and my teacher. HE is the foremost Guru. The enlightenment of wisdom comes from Lord Krishna who is in the heart. Yoking the mind, intelligence and consciousness to the Soul or the Self is possible only through the Yogic disciplines. Lord Krishna says: 'I am the mata, dhata, pitamahah' which means He is the mother, the father, the grandsire and everything. 'I am the Lord,' He says, 'the witness, the Resort, and the saranam,' which means that you can totally depend on Him and He will take care of everything.
People often divide yoga practices as physical, mental and spiritual. This is untrue. The moment you say that you are doing yoga on the 'physical' level as exercise for your health, it indicates that your psycho is completely dormant. We create divisions to show that one is highly qualified or educated. It is humbug. It was a travesty that asanas were dubbed as exercises, deprecated as exercises. Commercialization is harmful for yoga because then you give what people want. This is not proper. Yoga can never ever become a profession; should not become a profession! There can be no licensing [certification] applicable to teaching yoga. Full-time yoga teaching is not good and not proper. Believing a thief to be an ordinary man is ignorance, but believing a thief to be a saint is 'perverse science' and is dangerous.
Everybody knows that the union of the individual soul with the universal soul is yoga. Asanas may be performed physically when one newly starts learning them but they should not remain a physical endeavor. If one does so, it is like a child going to school and only attending Phys. Ed. Yoga is not an alternative system of medicine, because there is no alternative to yoga and yoga cannot be an alternative to anything else. Doctors who consider the science of yoga as substandard to their science and ask people not to do it or think of it as contortions of the human body, are not the Gods of the human body but the devils of the human body.
Of course Yoga is the suffix for the many Hindu religious practices. It is to be understood here that yoga is a blend of the four yogas. You cannot be practicing bhakti Yoga, or jnana or karma yoga or dhyana yoga in isolation. We have to build our foundation with hatha yoga, raja yoga, mantra yoga, laya yoga, karma yoga, jnana yoga and bhakti yoga. Hence, the need of Yoga in educational institutions. By exposing the children to yoga asanas at the middle school level, interest in the subject of yoga will be created at the right age. Later, at the high school level, when these children are more mature, they can take up the higher aspects of yoga.
Yoga practice is best launched with prayers. The invocation commences with the utterance of aum [the symbol \ of Hinduism] three times. All qualities of God, divinity, are encapsulated in that one single word.
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. and yoga is not a religion. well, you are going to say "yoga is a religion"
and write hundreds of pages about it, considering as heretics all the bad yogis who don't practice the right way (the right way=your way, of course), etc etc... you are too dogmatic, modern yoga is "religion-free" (you know , as low fat food is "sugar-free"). in my opinion religion for people is like sugar: in small quantity, it can makes life a little bit sweet, in big quantity, it kills you (and other people ...) so pratice your yoga the way you like it, with the amount of religion you like, but don't oblige anybody to walk on your step (this is to be a taliban
...). love & peace 