Anonymous wrote:And I'll just add, THANK YOU for pointing out how far Western yoga practitioners (not all, but quite a few) will say they believe in "Yoga" and "Vedanta" but deliberately avoid using "Hinduism" because of its polytheist aspects.

Yet they are perfectly okay using the word "Buddhism". A lot of this comes from the mistaken belief that Buddhism is atheist. It's not. Buddhism also has a very polytheistic pantheon, which gets dismissed because who wants to acknowledge Kuan Yin, Tara, and Manjushri?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And I'll just add, THANK YOU for pointing out how far Western yoga practitioners (not all, but quite a few) will say they believe in "Yoga" and "Vedanta" but deliberately avoid using "Hinduism" because of its polytheist aspects.

Yet they are perfectly okay using the word "Buddhism". A lot of this comes from the mistaken belief that Buddhism is atheist. It's not. Buddhism also has a very polytheistic pantheon, which gets dismissed because who wants to acknowledge Kuan Yin, Tara, and Manjushri?

Hindu religion is not polytheistic. It has one God, referred to as Ishvara, Brahman, Parameshvara, etc. All the others are just aspects of this one God. Only Ishvara, Brahman, etc. are complete. Christianity has the holy trinity. Does that make it polytheistic?

Trinitarian Christianity has the Holy Trinity. Unitarian Christianity does not.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Most Hindus don't give any thought to whether their religion is polytheistic, monotheistic, pagan, or whatever. The division exists for those outside the faith looking in and trying to understand or relate.

Exactly.

How is this possible?

So then there's one god but many lesser gods?

What about Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth? the goddess for Diwali
Do they believe she's real?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I believe this essay is saying that modern yoga, such as vinyasa, flow, and power yoga, is not Hindu at all.

http://www.yogajournal.com/article/philosophy/yoga-s-greater-truth/

The arguments made in this journal have not only been addressed earlier in this thread, but the Yoga Journal itself has been discussed as perpetuating this problem.

The article is written by Michael Singleton, who also wrote this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Yoga-Body-Origins-Posture-Practice/dp/0195395344

Yoga is so prevalent in the modern world--practiced by pop stars, taught in schools, and offered in yoga centers, health clubs, and even shopping malls--that we take its presence, and its meaning, for granted. But how did the current yoga boom happen? And is it really rooted in ancient Indian practices, as many of its adherents claim?

In this groundbreaking book, Mark Singleton calls into question many commonly held beliefs about the nature and origins of postural yoga (asana) and suggests a radically new way of understanding the meaning of yoga as it is practiced by millions of people across the world today. Singleton shows that, contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence in the Indian tradition for the kind of health and fitness-oriented asana practice that dominates the global yoga scene of the twenty-first century. Singleton's surprising--and surely controversial--thesis is that yoga as it is popularly practiced today owes a greater debt to modern Indian nationalism and, even more surprisingly, to the spiritual aspirations of European bodybuilding and early 20th-century women's gymnastic movements of Europe and America, than it does to any ancient Indian yoga tradition. This discovery enables Singleton to explain, as no one has done before, how the most prevalent forms of postural yoga, like Ashtanga, Bikram and "Hatha" yoga, came to be the hugely popular phenomena they are today.

Drawing on a wealth of rare documents from archives in India, the UK and the USA, as well as interviews with the few remaining, now very elderly figures in the 1930s Mysore asana revival, Yoga Body turns the conventional wisdom about yoga on its head.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And I'll just add, THANK YOU for pointing out how far Western yoga practitioners (not all, but quite a few) will say they believe in "Yoga" and "Vedanta" but deliberately avoid using "Hinduism" because of its polytheist aspects.

Yet they are perfectly okay using the word "Buddhism". A lot of this comes from the mistaken belief that Buddhism is atheist. It's not. Buddhism also has a very polytheistic pantheon, which gets dismissed because who wants to acknowledge Kuan Yin, Tara, and Manjushri?

Hindu religion is not polytheistic. It has one God, referred to as Ishvara, Brahman, Parameshvara, etc. All the others are just aspects of this one God. Only Ishvara, Brahman, etc. are complete. Christianity has the holy trinity. Does that make it polytheistic?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I believe this essay is saying that modern yoga, such as vinyasa, flow, and power yoga, is not Hindu at all.

http://www.yogajournal.com/article/philosophy/yoga-s-greater-truth/

The arguments made in this journal have not only been addressed earlier in this thread, but the Yoga Journal itself has been discussed as perpetuating this problem.

Yoga is so prevalent in the modern world--practiced by pop stars, taught in schools, and offered in yoga centers, health clubs, and even shopping malls--that we take its presence, and its meaning, for granted. But how did the current yoga boom happen? And is it really rooted in ancient Indian practices, as many of its adherents claim?

In this groundbreaking book, Mark Singleton calls into question many commonly held beliefs about the nature and origins of postural yoga (asana) and suggests a radically new way of understanding the meaning of yoga as it is practiced by millions of people across the world today. Singleton shows that, contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence in the Indian tradition for the kind of health and fitness-oriented asana practice that dominates the global yoga scene of the twenty-first century. Singleton's surprising--and surely controversial--thesis is that yoga as it is popularly practiced today owes a greater debt to modern Indian nationalism and, even more surprisingly, to the spiritual aspirations of European bodybuilding and early 20th-century women's gymnastic movements of Europe and America, than it does to any ancient Indian yoga tradition. This discovery enables Singleton to explain, as no one has done before, how the most prevalent forms of postural yoga, like Ashtanga, Bikram and "Hatha" yoga, came to be the hugely popular phenomena they are today.

Drawing on a wealth of rare documents from archives in India, the UK and the USA, as well as interviews with the few remaining, now very elderly figures in the 1930s Mysore asana revival, Yoga Body turns the conventional wisdom about yoga on its head.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Most Hindus don't give any thought to whether their religion is polytheistic, monotheistic, pagan, or whatever. The division exists for those outside the faith looking in and trying to understand or relate.

Exactly.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

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.

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.

Anonymous wrote:I believe this essay is saying that modern yoga, such as vinyasa, flow, and power yoga, is not Hindu at all.

http://www.yogajournal.com/article/philosophy/yoga-s-greater-truth/

Anonymous wrote:
Most Hindus don't give any thought to whether their religion is polytheistic, monotheistic, pagan, or whatever. The division exists for those outside the faith looking in and trying to understand or relate.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And I'll just add, THANK YOU for pointing out how far Western yoga practitioners (not all, but quite a few) will say they believe in "Yoga" and "Vedanta" but deliberately avoid using "Hinduism" because of its polytheist aspects.

Yet they are perfectly okay using the word "Buddhism". A lot of this comes from the mistaken belief that Buddhism is atheist. It's not. Buddhism also has a very polytheistic pantheon, which gets dismissed because who wants to acknowledge Kuan Yin, Tara, and Manjushri?

Hindu religion is not polytheistic. It has one God, referred to as Ishvara, Brahman, Parameshvara, etc. All the others are just aspects of this one God. Only Ishvara, Brahman, etc. are complete. Christianity has the holy trinity. Does that make it polytheistic?

OP here. A lot of modern Hindus try to hand-wave the polytheistic element of Hinduism these days, and I don't know why. Polytheism and monotheism and pantheism are not mutually exclusive in Hinduism. I think it's frankly weird that modern Hinduism are embarrassed about our polytheistic practices.

The one God is Ishvara, Brahman, or Adi Shakti...but the one God takes many forms. I have 3 deities at my home puja shrine, and you can bet that I worship them as deities, not abstract symbols. Each deity can lead you back to Brahman, and that is the beauty of Hinduism.

Yes, all the deities are aspects of Brahman, but to say "Hinduism isn't polytheistic" is to ignore that the deities themselves have divinity.