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[quote=Anonymous][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.  [b]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.[/b]

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.

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Do you recall which ones? I wonder why this is not taught in Indian schools... [/quote]

Jainism, Buddhism.  Early Hindus ate meat.  The vegetarianism comes from Jainist influence.  Advaita Vedanta is believed to be a response to Buddhist schools of thought, a way to sort of incorporate some of those concepts into Hinduism.

Hinduism doesn't have a set, codified set of beliefs.  It's more of an umbrella term for a lot of different sects, a lot of various movements -- some more theological and others more pure philosophy.   Unlike the three main monotheistic religious traditions -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam -- Hinduism does not have one text.  Rather, there are a bunch of different texts from different time periods.  And even then, there are also many strands of "Hinduism" that are more like tribal religions in certain regions of India (worship of the mother goddess in some areas is a good example of this).

There was even a point in time and some strands of Hinduism that practice animal sacrifice to deities.  That stands in sharp contrast to the vegetarianism many people associate with Hinduism today.

I would also caution people about making declarative statements about Buddhism, as Buddhism has many schools as well.  Some forms of Buddhism have gods; others not so much.

The point is that I don't think you can talk about Hinduism in the same way you talk about Judaism or Christianity.  Even though there are different schools of thought in Judaism and Christianity, they still hold one book as kind of the primary source.  So their differences lie in their interpretation of that book.  In Hinduism, there isn't one book.  There are lots of sources.  And even outside of that, there are traditions that aren't written in any source.  Some scholars even take issue in the term "Hinduism."  They find the term itself something that came from outsiders to describe a religion they didn't really respect or understand.

So even if we all agree that "Yoga is Hindu," there isn't agreement on what it means to be "Hindu."  Like "yoga," the term is an umbrella term.

So all of the offense and outrage is kind of misplaced.  These are dynamic systems.  It's all a conversation.  Hinduism isn't a closed system.  Neither is yoga.

And besides, no one owns a term.  No one owns a religion.  No one owns a practice.  I don't care if people call themselves yogis, Hindus or whatever.  So long as they don't try to copyright terms and practices that existed before they were born, then they can do whatever they want.  So long as they don't try to sue someone else who practices and teaches something that has been around for a long time, then I'm cool with them doing what they want.

I think, on the whole, yoga -- even Americanized, gym yoga -- does a lot of good for a lot of people.   To expect the general masses of people to be highly spiritual or study ancient texts is kind of a foolish expectation.  Even most religious practitioners -- Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists -- only know sort of a certain base level of knowledge.  I went to school with a guy who was born and raised Buddhist (he was from a South Asian country), and he used to laugh when people assumed he was some sort of expert on Buddhism.  He was like most of the rest of us.   He knew some traditions, some basic tenets about his faith.  But it's not like he studied in a Buddhist monastery.   He was a regular guy.   But he certainly didn't take offense if Americans were interested in Buddhist meditation or reading Buddhist texts in translation.

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