World Yoga Day – Let’s Go Beyond Political and Physical Posturing

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna.
Hare Krishna. World Yoga Day. Let’s go beyond political and physical postures.
The World Yoga Day will be celebrated on June 21st as per the suggestion of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the United Nations. The fact that scores of countries all over the world, including many even Islamic countries, are practicing in this celebration is testimony to the universal appeal of yoga. Unfortunately, while the world is celebrating, gearing up to celebrate World Yoga Day, the celebration has got caught in India in an unnecessary and unfortunate controversy.
Some groups have alleged that the national celebration of yoga is a covert attempt to impose Hindu practice on the whole country, thereby subverting India’s secular fabric. Such an allegation stems from an inability to understand the difference between the specificity of the origin of a thing and the universality of its purpose. Consider, for example, a branch of knowledge such as classical physics.
Now this system of thought originated in England primarily through the British scientist Isaac Newton and was thereafter developed by many other scientists. Today it has become a part of the common human wisdom heritage and its insights and the applications stemming from it are accessible to everyone everywhere. Now we can freely acknowledge the classical physics developed in England, but that doesn’t in any way mean that we are endorsing Anglican colonialist nationalism.
That same intellectual and cultural ethos also led to the development of the thought system that eventually colonized most of the world. So that colonialist nationalism is not being endorsed when it’s acknowledged that classical physics developed from England. So by the same token of reasoning, acknowledging that yoga originated in India among the traditions that also gave birth to what is in modern times called as Hinduism.
This acknowledgement of the historical origin of yoga does not in any way mean endorsing right-wing Hindu nationalism. So the universality of yoga is something which we need to understand. We need to go beyond political posturing to understand its universal purpose.
And unfortunately some groups today are abusing yoga to score political brownie points for themselves. And this is a distressing devaluation of a venerable ancient tradition. Now what is the universal purpose of yoga? To understand that we need to look beyond another superficiality that obscures yoga.
And that superficiality is physical posturing. While in India currently yoga is getting obscured by political posturing, in the West and in most parts of the world yoga’s purpose is obscured by physical posturing wherein yoga is reduced to a set of exercises for controlling and for treating and shaping the body. Now yoga is at its core a system of understanding and experiencing our spiritual side.
And when we harmonize with our spiritual side, the mental pacification and physical healing are by-products that result incidentally. They are not the essential purpose of yoga. Now this transcendental purpose of yoga is pointed to in almost all the great yoga texts, all the ancient yoga texts.
For example, the Bhagavad Gita refers to yoga as the art of work. The Yoga Sutra refers to yoga as mind control. The Yoga Yajnavalkya refers to yoga as the union of the finite consciousness with the infinite consciousness.
But the Upanishads refer to yoga as various sense control, as mind control. So like that there are various definitions of yoga but nowhere do these traditional yoga texts ever say that yoga means physical postures. Then where does this idea come from? How has yoga become equated with physical postures? The classic text of yoga is Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra.
And in that text it is stated that actually yoga is at its core universal, that yoga has eight limbs within it. And the third among those limbs is asana, which refers to physical postures. And this is actually a preliminary stage for getting into the heart of yoga.
This is a batsman may have a particular posture. Some batsmen may stand with their bat raised up. Some batsmen may stand with their legs spread far apart.
Others may stand with their bat right on the ground and their legs close to each other. Now these postures can be different and the postures are basically meant to provide a comfortable launching pad for the batsman’s, for the cricketer’s performance. So the cricketer can hit the ball most effectively if there is a proper posture and thereby maximize the run scored.
Similarly, the purpose of yoga in terms of the asanas in yoga, the third stage in yoga is to serve as a launching pad for sending the consciousness on a spiritual journey. It’s like batting posture is meant to hit the bat and to catapult the bat on a journey. Similarly, the purpose of yogic posture is to send the human consciousness on a journey towards the spiritual side of life.
The Bhagavad Gita celebrates such intrepid spiritual explorers, such yogis as the best human beings. 6.46 it states that तपसुद्भ्योधिको योगि घ्यानिभ्योपिमदोधिक्व कर्मिभ्यस्चाधिको योगि तस्माद्योगी भवार्जुना So it says become a yogi because yogi is better than everyone else. And thereafter it states that among all seekers, the yogi who has linked one’s consciousness with the infinite consciousness योगिनावपिसरवेशामद्गतेनांतरात्मनः शद्धावान्भजितेयोमा समेयुक्ततमोमतः That one who has connected one’s consciousness with the infinite, that is the topmost yogi.
And this ultimate purpose of yoga in terms of connection in love is reflected in the standard dictionary meaning of yoga which means connectedness. Now the reduction of yoga to simply postures can be understood say from another example or say like the common English word lady. Now if we go back historically to the Middle English nidif and if you go to Old English nidli that refers to a nidir of dove.
So now a nidir of dove that is usually in today’s language thought of as the word of servants certainly not of ladies. So just as the word can get distanced from its original meaning over time so same has happened not just in terms of meaning but also in terms of purpose with respect to yoga. So if we want to go beyond whatever controversies are there today we can actually seek the spiritual essence of yoga and that is the essence in terms of the essence of connectedness and for raising this consciousness upwards from the material level to the spiritual level for launching the consciousness on a human journey by which we can experience our spiritual side we can experience our spiritual connectedness with everyone as parts of the same one tree we can fulfill our universal longing to love and to be loved for doing that we need to raise our consciousness.
The best way to raise our consciousness is through mantra. Mantra is a power packed transcendental sound that contains within it the power to propel our consciousness. Indeed mantra yoga is the easiest way for us to relish and realize the universal purpose of yoga and fulfill the longing of the human heart for lasting fulfillment.
Thank you. Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna