Yoga is Hindu. Period.
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Anonymous
Yoga classes in the US are about as Hindu as the average Chinese restaurant is authentically Chinese or the average Mexican restaurant is authentically Mexican. |
Anonymous
| For me, yoga is a useful way to stretch and get time away from the kids. Period. My religious beliefs are totally separate. |
Anonymous
*pats PP on the head for thinking that post was an "insult". |
Anonymous
Which is the entire point of this thread. By the way, American Chinese restaurants are still called Chinese restaurants. Same goes for Mexican restaurants. The food is still acknowledged as Chinese or Mexican. Yoga is Hindu and should be acknowledged as such. |
Anonymous
| Fun fact: the asanas ("poses") of hatha yoga are actually just one step out of 8 stages to God-realization. I realized I got the best benefit out of them when I used them just before my meditation practice. That got me reading the Hindu scriptures that explain yoga in much greater depth, like the Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita. It's definitely a spiritual practice, not a fitness routine. |
Anonymous
I think that actor is a famous Bollywood actor. |
Anonymous
| Wait... I'm Buddhist and pretty sure my yoga teachers are too. I think we are practicing Buddhism, not Hinduism. |
Anonymous
Here's a paper from the University of West Florida debunking the Aryan invasion theory: http://uwf.edu/lgoel/documents/amythofaryaninvasionsofindia.pdf Stephen Knapp refuted the Aryan invasion theory in his book, "Advancements of Ancient India's Vedic Culture" (look at that, a non-Hindu nationalist debunking the Aryan theory!). Here's the relevant excerpt: http://www.stephen-knapp.com/aryan_invasion_theory_the_final_nail_in_its_coffin.htm Here's the BBC admitting that the Aryan invasion theory was a myth: https://web.archive.org/web/20060705184146/http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/hinduism/history/history5.shtml Genetic testing on South Indians and North Indians denies a historical migrational split: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Aryan-Dravidian-divide-a-myth-Study/articleshow/5053274.cms Here's a Harvard study debunking the Aryan invasion theory and concluding that it was a myth: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/drishtikone/2009/09/aryan-invasion-theory-myth-large-harvard-study/ Doesn't it just suck when you can't justify your appropriation with "science" and can't scapegoat all the Aryan invasion theory dissenters as "Hindu nationalists"? |
Anonymous
I would say yoga is dharmic. It's unique the core non-dual philosophy of the dharma religions, which would mean Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism. |
Anonymous
Haha! This is the funniest thing I've read in months. |
Anonymous
Um, you do know the history of Buddhism, right? Or please say this is a sarcastic post. |
Anonymous
It's especially appalling because modern "fitness" yoga tends to just produce narcissists, especially in some of the yoga teachers who have active Instagram accounts and hundreds of followers. If these people were to meet an actual yogi - as my guru, a self-realized master, is - they would shit their pants. |
Anonymous
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I'm going to share some insights that I learned from my master.
Yoga was brought west slowly by various Hindu monks, in stages, as was meditation. The most famous of these Hindu monks was Paramahamsa Yogananda, the man who founded the Self-Realization Fellowship and wrote "Autobiography of a Yogi", Steve Jobs' favorite book. Yogananda had a daunting task when he came to America in the early 20th century. He wanted to teach the techniques of self-realization and yoga, but whenever he tried to teach it the authentic way that he had been trained in by his guru Sri Yukteswar, he found he wasn't getting any enthusiasm. Traditional kriya yoga invokes the Hindu gods, especially Shiva and Shakti. Yogananda's own preferred conception of God was as the Divine Mother Kali. He found a lot of resistance to this when he tried to bring authentic kriya yoga teachings to the US in the 1920s. He also got physically attacked by hostile fundamentalist Christians. Slowly, he stripped religion away from his teachings. He stopped wearing saffron robes and rudraksha malas, cut his long hair, and deliberately, consciously, made a calculated effort to change his theological language from Hinduism to Christianity, invoking Jesus Christ as a supreme guru and avatar of God. In many ways, Yogananda's efforts to "dilute" Hinduism for the West is where modern New Age thinking comes from. In order to teach yoga, Yogananda even changed the mantras. For kundalini pranayama meditation, for example, the mantra "va-shee" is used to denote Lord Shiva. This had to be changed to "Ah-eee" to avoid offending Christians who viewed Shiva as the devil or whatever. Ancient kriya techniques were boiled down to "self-energizing" exercises, which is a pretty big (and inaccurate) simplification of how prana (or chi, as the Chinese call it) works. This is kind of how we ended up where we are today. |
Anonymous
Wow, you must have a really dull life. |
Anonymous
So thats all you want? An acknowledgement that its Hindu? Okay its Hindu. I'm still going to do it though. |