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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm of Indian descent. Yoga weirds me out precisely because of this.

Especially when they use Hindi or other made-up Hindi-like words/phrases/chants. [/quote]

They're not Hindi chants.  It's Sanskrit, not Hindi.

As for OP, there are schools of Hinduism that are pretty close to being atheistic.  They don't have a notion of a personal god, which is what most American atheists reject.  So it's possible to be an atheist and a yogi at the same time.  Union with the divine doesn't necessarily mean union with a specific personal god.  "Divine" is a pretty open-ended concept.  And a lot of yogic texts are very vague on the notion of what "divine" actually means.

As for the whole debate about cultural appropriation, pretty much all of my Hindu friends celebrate Christmas and participate in Christmas, and they don't care if Americans meditate and say Sanskrit chants.  The thing they mind is when Americans (or Indians for that matter) try to copyright poses and phrases that have been around for hundreds of years in order to profit from them.

Most of the yoga teachers I know don't make a lot of money from their classes.  The money maker is the studios and their teacher training programs.  I take issue with them only because I don't know that they're really adequately regulated so that people who know anatomy and philosophy are running it.

I don't know why people are so touchy about it all.  The thing about Hinduism is that it has drawn from so many other traditions.  My theology professors said that part of what has made it so dynamic is its ability to absorb other philosophical movements.

One of the most physical forms of yoga, by the way, is Ashtanga.  It's not just in the West that there are different styles of yoga, some more physical than others.

[/quote]

This is actually a great response, thank you. (I'm the OP).

The interesting difference here is that Charvaka isn't Hinduism, it's an Indian philosophical school that more or less separated from Hinduism. So I wouldn't describe it as a Hindu atheistic tradition, anymore that Jainism or Buddhism or Sikhism are Hindu. Charvaka is a school of materialism. It's also really interesting but I should be careful about going off on a tangent here. What I'm trying to say is that yes, there are Indian philosophical schools that do not believe in a personal god - Buddhism, Charvaka, and Jainism are great examples of these. But they are not Hindu.

Hinduism may share central terms with other Indian religions/philosophies, but the terms are defined slightly differently in each tradition to the point where you could say that dharma, karma, and samsara mean different things to Hindus, Jains and Buddhists.

Hindus do worship a creator god, whether directly as Brahman are under the philosophy that the formless takes form in specific deities. Yoga reflects that. It's a Hindu philosophical school, where the practice either brings you closer to the abstract, formless Brahman directly or through the devas, or the gods. (For example, the surya namaskar is literally worship of the sun god, Surya.)

The issue with me commenting on the Christmas tradition is that Christmas is a hot-button issue not only for Christians who see their religious holiday being appropriated, but also people who identify as Wiccan/Celtic and consider Christmas a pagan winter solstice holiday soooo....I think Christmas is really its own topic and likely deserves its own thread.

Like I said, my issue is not the study of yoga but the appropriation of it, where the study is disassociated from its context. I gave an example from my own life, where I mentioned that I found the Kabbalah utterly fascinating to read about, but would not under any circumstances tell people that I practice it. I'm not practicing Judaism, and I recognize that I cannot say I practice the Kabbalah unless I also practice Judaism. Does that mean I find the Kabbalah any less enlightening and fascinating? No. But it does mean that I recognize it as an esoteric, closed tradition.[/quote]

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