KT,
I am not sure how much yoga is popular in the west, maybe you know about it more than me thus i take your word for it.
But, as you rightly mentioned in your post, just like Buddhism, the physical part of yoga has beet taken out of the context from the whole of the and considered is as an ultimate goal. What is generally taught in the name of yoga around the world is not yoga in true sense. That is yogasan, which means various physical postures in which yoga can be done.
The tern yoga is used in both of Sanskrit and Hindi as verb and noun. The verb stands for adding something while Noun means Total or Aggregate of all added things. Yoga symbolises the act or effort to be one with reality or the ultimate. If you go in details, yoga is one of the six Theistic Philosophies of Hinduism which are Samkhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Mimamsa and Vedanta while there are three other Atheistic philosophies are Buddhism, Jainism And Charvka. Having said that, the practices very similar to yoga are very much there in Buddhism and Jainism.
Essentially, Yoga is nothing but doing meditation in different ways and postures.As a philosophy, it was built on Samkhya school of thought which is basically a dualistic philosophy and proposes its ultimate goal in Moksha(Libration), which is the same as Buddhism and Jainism. The only difference is in terminology, nothing else.
Having said all that, i am not saying that physical aspect of yoga is bad. Not at all. It is good for health but that is it.
Neither me nor anyone can help it if your own frame of mind is faulty, And, you do not wantt o correct it either. Each and everything what others say, you discredit that claiming it as intellectual contraption but hav you ever realized what you do every time is not the same?
Believe me or not, I am more than sure that not many of living people as of now have reached where i have been. You may think that i am exaggerating but i am not. I can provide you proof but not on the net. To get the proof, you have to submit me for some months and follow my instructions without any questions and you will get the proof But you will never be able to do that so let us put an end to that. There are no shortcuts.
It’s hilariously popular. People carrying their plastic yoga mats under their arms, on the back of their bikes’, tossed in the back seat of their cars. There are dozens of types of yoga, some where they heat the room, or yoga for pregnant mothers or yoga for seniors or…and so on.
I’m really not saying that my concern prevents all errors. Really.
Yes, that’s more or less my point: a part of wisdom is knowing that parts of systems often need other parts to be effective or not damaging. If knowing this your intuition, for example, still leads to you try just one piece, well you probably have a better change or realizing something is missing or wrong later on.
Again, given that my own interest in religion [God or No God] revolves around how those on a spiritual path intertwine their religious beliefs in their behaviors in their assumptions about “I” – the “soul” – on the other side of the grave, you will either bring the words “faulty” and “correct” thinking down to earth here or you won’t.
Given a particular context in which, depending on their religious and moral beliefs, different people choose different [and often conflicting] behaviors, how do we account for this? And how do those on their different spiritual paths come together in order to choose the optimal behaviors?
And how do they go about demonstrating that their own beliefs regarding morality here and now and immortality there and then reflect that which all other spiritual people are obligated to embrace in turn with so much at stake?
But, again, all I can do is to ask you to bring the existential parameters of your own spiritual path “out into the world” and describe a set of circumstances in which you have thought yourself into believing that your own thinking is not faulty, but is correct. That way, in turn, you could note more substantively how and why my own thinking [encompassed in my signature threads] is in fact faulty and not correct.
Also, we could examine your accusation that I somehow manage to turn all of the arguments from others into “intellectual contraptions” more…existentially?
Instead, you go straight back up into the clouds of “spiritual” abstraction:
You have proof. Proof for anyone. But they would have to “submit [to you] for some months and follow [your] instructions without any questions and [they] will get the proof.”
I’m sorry but that sounds more like something out of Scientology or Nxivm or one of the dozens of new age/guru mentalities with their prepackaged spiritual agendas.
Only yours is the one true path, right?
Just out of curiosity, have you in fact taken others down this path? Did they see the light? Do you charge money for this? No, seriously.
Okay, if that’s the argument you wish to use for explaining the behaviors that you choose in a world teeming with conflicting goods that ends in the death of each of us one by one, it virtually guarantees that no one here will be able to take you up on it.
But can’t you at least give us some idea of how “correct thinking” persuades you to choose the behaviors that you do in your interactions with others when value judgments comes into conflict? And what you imagine the fate of your own “soul” to be on the other side?
No problem. I can imagine what is at stake for you if you ever start to doubt your own years-in-the-making “spiritual contraption”. All I have to do is think back on what happened to me when I began to doubt my own.
But what I wouldn’t given to actually have the option to take you up on your claim to be able prove that what you do believe “in your head” really is the one true spiritual path to…what exactly?
Besides, there are plenty of folks here at ILP who are more than willing to explore religion with you – East or West – up in the stratosphere of more purely spiritual pursuits.
There is no such one true spiritual path. All paths are valid so whatever works for one. However the ultimate goal is the only one for each and every path. Intermediate stations during that journey may differ to some extent. Having said that, some religions/ paths stop before the ultimate goal.
Well, if you medidate in a mindfulness tradition and focus on observing your thoughts and emotions, just observing them, it seems to me you will reach, after many years, a different place than someone in a Bhakti Hindu ecstatic tradition or someone who spends their time focusing on love of Jesus and trying to see Jesus in everyone they meet or than a shaman who focuses on going through the underworld and seeking visions of a deity or many. For examples. There are other traditions also. IOW you are training to do quite different things, and in neurological terms, you are engaging different parts of the brain and involving the neuronal clumps in the heart and gut regions quite differently also. I meant place metaphorically.
I notice that people who share the same biology and live in the same universe reach different understandings and insights. And then also states of mind, which is where I was focused. And also modes of life.
Some of those understandings and insights are mistaken.
These practices are supposed to lead to a clearer, truer understanding. Therefore, I think that they ought to converge. If not to one point then to multiple uniquely identifiable points.
That’s what I’m focusing on because states of mind and modes of life could be called subjective.
I’m not arguing there is. I think if your main practice is filled with passion and is decidedly interpersonal, this will lead to you have different experiences and expertise, states of mind, than someone who has a detached, not interpersonal, emotionally calm practice. In a sense like any two people learning two quite different skills will, when they perform their art or job, will perform differently. Perhaps some understandings will be the same, perhaps not. But it seems likely to me that if one set of practices is intentionally engaging the amygdala as central to the practice and the other is detaching from it, what one experiences down the line, and what one is like down the line will have significant differences.
And then, also, different understandings of the role of emotions and what one is striving for.
This also fits my experience of the people who have been practicing these traditions for a long time. They have rather different presences, especially if we include pagan/indigenous/shamanistic practitioners creating a third distinct mode, different ways of relating (as tendencies in the groups) and different insights.
It’s not a coincidence that Buddhism tends to no self in ways that other practices do not. That some traditions have a no self rebirth and others a full on reincarnation. Or that the Christians have no reincarnation and a heavy moral focus. Or that the submissive self effacing practices (which include a kind of fatalism) in Islam leads to the way Muslims live and behave and relate to death.
Different practices, different parts of the brain, different foci.
I feel like it’s a cliche that they all lead to the same place, same beliefs.