Essays by Mr. Smith. Reprinted with permission of the North East Holistic Resource
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Getting Acquainted With Yoga (Part 1)
Mention
the word "yoga" and you may receive a variety of curious looks
and responses by people who think it is weird. People typically think
of meditation in the lotus (cross-legged) posture. Others have heard
it is good for relaxation. At the extreme, some think it is a dangerous
heretical religious cult. In places like Boston, New York and Los Angeles,
classes are packed with enthusiasts.
The purpose of this column will be to shed light on the realities of
yoga for the benefit of the reader. In fact, many people are discovering
that yoga--Hatha-yoga, to be more specific--is a valuable form of training
which builds character and confidence in conjunction with physical fitness.
Moreover, what they find is that classes are taught by typical people
who are friendly, supportive, and definitely not strange or fanatical.
Yoga is an ancient field of study from India and, to a certain extent,
Tibet. There are several schools of yoga, each advocating a set of practices
designed to lift the individual to a better condition of mental and
physical health. The culmination of yoga comes about when the practitioner
transcends material greed, attaining a state of harmony with nature
and others. The word yoga is derived from the Sanskrit, "yuj,"
which means to bind. Yoga is the science of binding the body to the
spirit, and a way to spiritual salvation. It is not, however, a religion.
We in America have our own traditions of individual freedom and democracy,
and a political, economic, religious and cultural history very different
from India's. For yoga to be successful, it is imperative that the essence
of yoga thought be expressed through a language people can understand.
Yoga has indeed gained a good deal of acceptance and visibility in the
last twenty years. Open any health magazine and you will find references
to yoga. And in Central New York where I reside there are a surprising
number of part time yoga teachers. But there is much work ahead for
those wishing to establish the fledgling yoga profession on a permanent
basis. The kind of profession I envision will be anchored in tradition,
characterized by good science and technical excellence, and dedicated
to serving the health and happiness of society.
As a practitioner and teacher, I believe in yoga's potential to bring
about positive social change. The methods may be ancient, but they are
powerful and relevant today as ever. As we gradually adopt yoga into
the mainstream we run the risk of diluting the message. Personal transformation
is difficult and requires self examination. Progress in yoga requires
self examination and self discipline. In many cases yoga practice has
been watered down to the level of another commercial palliative. I hope
that through my teaching and through writings such as this column people
will come to appreciate the inherent value of authentic yoga practice.
Returning to the question of why certain people scoff at the idea of
yoga, I believe that they are reacting to the artificiality of the commercial
variety and not to traditional yoga. I don't like to think we are a
bigoted nation regarding other cultures and modes of thought. Given
correct information about authentic yoga, typical Americans will come
to respect this great practice if they don't happen to take the plunge
themselves.
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Yoga's Ancient Historical Roots (Part 2)
Unraveling the mystery of Yoga will certainly require a lifetime of
practice under the guidance of master teachers. But equal attention
must be paid to the study of the history and philosophy associated with
Yoga. The practice of Yoga is designed to strip our consciousness down
to a more primitive level that is unencumbered by ego identity. But
delving into ourselves in an effort to uncover something of our original
nature is by definition delving into our personal and collective history.
Yoga theory suggests that our personal history, historicity, must be
deconstructed in order to grasp the universal. Those of us who pursue
Yoga are indebted to the historians, archaeologists and anthropologists
who keep history alive for us to explore. In fact, our story begins
with an archeological find of great import regarding the question of
Yoga's historical roots.
In the early 1920's, a survey led by Sir John Marshal revealed the great
Indus-Sarasvati civilization to an archeological community who thought
it had found the last of the ancient empires. This civilization dating
back at least to 3000 BCE* spanned a thousand miles along the Indus
and Sarasvati rivers in what is now modern day Pakistan. In 1900 BCE
the Sarasvati river dried up and the civilization migrated eastward
to the Ganges river. A key to the uniqueness of the civilization also
known as Harappa were hundreds of soapstone seals used by merchants
depicting plants, animals and mythological figures. Of particular interest
is the seal which depicts a divinity enthroned on a low seat in a cross
legged posture. It is believed that the image--many have been found--is
that of none other than Shiva, "Lord of the beasts" (pashu-pati)
and arch Yogin. The reason this is important is because Yoga in particular
and Hinduism in general, whose pantheon certainly includes Shiva, had
long been thought to have evolved exclusively from another culture whose
language was Sanskrit; the Harappan language was an archaic form of
Dravidian.
As the Harappan civilization began to decline, Sanskrit speaking Indo-European
invaders from the Kirgitz Steppe who called themselves Aryans swept
into Bihar (Northwestern India) through the Khyber pass in the Hindukush
mountains. The Vedic culture brought by these Russian conquerors was
well established by 1500 BCE if not earlier. The first literary sign
post of the Vedic culture is the Rig Veda which was the first of the
great hymnodies which were the bible of the Vedic religion. These hymnodies
were full of prayers, invocations and metaphysical speculations. Veda
means "revealed knowledge" and the composers of the these
works were called Rishis or "seers," they were the high priests
of the Vedic religion. The Aryan invaders were a people confident of
their superiority over the Harappan natives and clearly laid the foundation
for the great religious and philosophical culture of Hinduism in the
Vedas. However, as is usually the case, elements of the indigenous Harappan
culture--and very likely yoga practices--filtered into the Vedic culture
and are, no doubt, still around in some form today. Who were the Harappans
and where did they acquire their purification rituals and other practices
which could be called proto-yoga? We don't know but their influence
must be appreciated.
A contemporary example of the triumph of indigenous cultural values
which become adopted by a conquering society is closer to home than
you might think. Matilda Joslyn Gage, the great feminist and contemporary
of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, argued for women's suffrage
in part on the observation that Iroquois women were heads of their households
and had voting privileges. In 1754 Colonial Commissioner Benjamin Franklin
invited the great Iroquois diplomat Canassatego to Albany to discuss
formation of a treaty to unite the colonies and Iroquois League. The
Albany Plan was offered up to the New York Legislature for defeat. However,
the plan, based on an original proposal of Canassatego himself, later
became the basis of the Articles of Confederation. Today, many people
have turned to the naturalistic appeal of Native American spirituality
in an effort to restore ecology to lives beset with modern stresses.
In our next segment we will return to the early historical rites and
practices which eventually evolved into the classical system of thought
and practice known as Yoga.
* Common Era, CE and Before Common Era, BCE are theologically neutral
substitutes for AD and BC.
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From Shamanism to Yoga (Part 3)
Before looking at early yoga's relationship to the Vedic religion of
the ancient Rishis, we must take an important detour through the crucial,
if perhaps unexpected, topic of shamanism and its relationship to yoga.
The word shaman (SHAH-maan) comes from the Tungus people of Siberia
and has been adopted as the general term for tribal medicine persons
who have been known by such terms as witch, sorcerer, wizard and witch
doctor. The shaman plays a tremendous role in human history for s/he
has been society's traditional healer for thousands of years. Shamanism
is hardly done justice by trite images depicted in a bad Hollywood movie.
It is a tradition held by persons of great self-mastery and is still
very much with us today as evidenced by the shamanic services offered
through this publication.
The traditional shaman has, no doubt, worked with herbs and natural
substances to effectuate healing. But the shaman's special prowess lies
in his or her ability to access realms of consciousness through trance
states normally denied to the layperson. The shaman enters a state of
mind which Mircea Eliade has called ecstasy and journeys to psychic
realms sometimes called the underworld in order to receive power and
information which can be applied to heal a member of society. Soul retrieval
is a process wherein the shaman specifically calls back an aspect of
the patients personality which has been split off due to some trauma
either physical or psychic.
In April, 1994 I personally availed myself of the services of a shaman
named Christina Stock in Woodstock, New York. She performed a soul retrieval
on my behalf. I pursued the experience as part of my ongoing process
of healing and self-discovery. Upon returning from her journey, which
lasted only a couple minutes, she reported encountering two aspects
of myself which were ages ten and twenty-three. Without going into the
particulars of the psychology involved, it was clear that the aspects
with whom Christina communicated were me. I take it as a given that
the experience did reintegrate those aspects of my personality.
Bearing in mind that the Rishis of the Vedic religion--which forms the
historical basis of yoga and Hinduism--came from Russia, and that shaman
comes from Siberia, there would be no reason to doubt that the Vedic
people brought a shamanic tradition with them into India. It is noteworthy
that Eliade has written an important work on Yoga subtitled Immortality
and Freedom in addition to his work on shamanism. Georg Feuerstein adopted
Eliade's term ecstasy for the title of his ground breaking work, Yoga:
Technology of Ecstasy. Clearly these scholars see an important connection
between yoga and shamanism. The principal difference between the yogi
and the shaman is that the shaman utilizes psychic power to bring about
a specific beneficial result where the yogi utilizes control of the
mind in an effort to become liberated from spiritual ignorance.
In addition to shamanism, concepts of asceticism and naturalistic religion
must be included in a discussion of the historical roots of yoga. Since
the beginning of human history, going back fifty-thousand years, people
have sung and danced the praises of the deities presumed to be behind
the fearsome forces of nature upon which we depend for survival. People
are instinctively drawn to the performance of ritual observances designed
to win favor with deities who hold our fate in their hands. Sacrifice,
prayer and devotional practices are presumed to bring divine grace while
asceticism has long been thought to be a road to direct acquisition
of the natural powers themselves. Thus, for example, the shaman may
fast in preparation for his or her paranormal journey. The ascetic might
bake in the hot sun to incorporate solar power unto his or her self.
Any of these ancient practices could properly be called yogas accepting
the broad definition of yoga as any technique or technology designed
to increase personal power or knowledge.
The formalized practice of yoga, or Yoga, evolved through the interaction
of these myriad esoteric practices with the Vedic religious orthodoxy
which was in turn colored by the native Harappan culture we discussed
in part 2. Part 4 will continue the story of yoga in ancient times,
ca 2500 BCE.
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The
Radical and the Orthodox, Yoga's Two Historical Worlds Part 4
There is a discussion within
scholarly circles whether Yoga should be capitalized or spelled with
a small 'y'. Readers of earlier installments in the Holistic Resource
may have noticed that I have not been entirely consistent in my use
of capitalization, an egregious scholarly error The inconsistency results
from the fact that Yoga historically has straddled two worlds, one radical,
individualistic and mystical--small 'y'-- and the other, orthodox, hierarchical,
liturgical--capital 'Y.'
This dialogue between the two Ys is a metaphor for the tendency in religious
history for periods of tighter control by a priestly hierarchy to be
followed by periods of individualism and back again. The Renaissance
in Europe uncorked a flood of artistic expression whose pagan and humanistic
tendencies made their way into the liturgical music of the church. The
Protestant Reformation, initiated by Martin Luther in 1517, split the
church in the interest of wresting salvation from the hands of priests
who bought and sold the rites of passage to heaven. By 1545, a council
was formed by the church at Trent in northern Italy with the urgent
purpose of establishing a Counter Reformation. A small part of the council's
business was to purge the secular spirit from liturgical music so that
the "House of God could rightly be called a house of prayer."
During the Vedic period of Yoga history, the rishi or priest represented
orthodoxy while the muni or silent sage straddled a world between the
Vedic religion and the primitive world of the shaman and nativistic
culture. An interesting counterpart to the muni can be found in the
desert fathers c. 300 CE who left the early church and civilization
to "better hear the voice of God" in the silent wilderness.
The meditative prayer they practiced is strikingly similar to the yogic
practice of mantra meditation.
The tremendous religious impulse characterized by the whole of Indian
history was well established by the rishis whose sacrificial rites were
infused with contemplative techniques and prayerful meditations. The
rishis employed mantra or exploration of sound, visualization of a deity--Rudra,
Vayu, Agni, Sarasvati and Indra are a few representatives of the Vedic
Pantheon--and absorption into psychic and cosmic mysteries in their
highest stage of meditation. The hymnodies, which were the product of
the Vedic bards are deeply spiritual works full of metaphysical and
cosmological speculations. Bearing in mind that we are still in the
age of magic and mythology, the hymns are poetic and symbolic and can
not be understood in terms of the kind of rigorous philosophy which
evolved in later centuries. However, the Vedas, revealed knowledge,
are rightly revered for their expression of great spiritual truth which
later generations would build upon.
For the rishi, the written word, song, prescribed ritual--fire and sacrifice
are continually mentioned in connection with Vedic religion--, observance
of austerities and intensive meditative practice ( proto-yoga) were
all part of the same experience. Thus was laid the foundation of the
great Indian religious and philosophical tradition with Yoga eventually
taking a dominant position as the universal means to spiritual knowledge.
Westerners seeking to enrich themselves through the incorporation of
elements of Eastern thought into their world view need to grasp the
import of a ritual practice as the cornerstone of philosophical knowledge.
Western science has greatly benefited by the rigorous application of
skepticism and empiricism. Since empirical science tells us we are sense
bound, we are skeptical about the possibility of transcendent knowledge.
This world view accounts for the cultural divide between religion and
science. The Indian philosophical tradition has not suffered this divide.
Moreover, the ancient yogis soon discovered the limits of empirical
knowledge when it comes to solving the great mysteries of our cosmic
origins. Meditation, which is more or less interchangeable with Yoga,
is necessary if you wish to know the unknowable, see the unseeable,
grasp the ungraspable. For the Indian philosopher, science and intellectual
knowledge are valid to the extent that they support the possibility
of transcendental liberation, a goal forgotten in the West to our detriment.
The Yoga tradition is powerful and valuable beyond estimation for modern
day practitioners who wish to improve themselves and society as a whole.
Yoga is part of an orthodox philosophy which fairly eclipses the Western
tradition in its scope, and yet has retained its association with radical
experimentation on the part of the individual. It is ironic that the
same Hindu culture which produced the caste system, produced a means
to physical and spiritual perfection that is so democratic. We the modern
beneficiaries of democracy and economic wealth should not overlook the
opportunity and expediency of incorporating Yoga into our culture for
the sake of our health as a society.
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Yoga And The Birth Of Philosophy Part #5
The fire sacrifices performed by the Vedic priests were very elaborate
and highly ritualized. Several active fires would be arranged in spacial
relationships that reflected the order of the cosmos on a microcosmic
level. This arrangement as a template of the universe can be seen as
an early form of mandala which would in subsequent generations become
an important object of meditation, especially in Tibet. Adherents of
the Vedic religion saw creation as a perpetual act of sacrifice, and
their rituals were thought to harmonize humanity with creation and especially
with the gods. Pouring ghee into the fire or sacrificing a particular
animal at a particular time would serve to maintain the seasons and
all classes of animals and other existants. Intense Sanskrit chanting
of hymns accompanied all rituals. The place of speech Vac in the maintenance
of the universe was not lost on the Vedic priests. Speech, or language
after all, is the very mechanism by which we identify anything
as having an independent existence. The prologue to the Gospel According
To St. John opens with a powerful expression of the metaphysical view
that language and the substratum of reality itself are closely related.
In the beginning was the Word:
the Word was with God
and the Word was God.
In the later Vedic writings we see that the cozy relationship between
humanity and the gods so nicely maintained by the sacrifice was coming
into question. As the speculative power of the Vedic thinkers evolved,
they came to see that the gods themselves were creations which then
begs the question of how they came into being.
Who truly knows? Who shall proclaim it--whence they were produced, whence
this creation?
(The Hindu Religious Tradition, Thomas J. Hopkins, p 21.)
Thirty-five hundred miles to the west in the area surrounding the Agean
Sea known as Ionia, a remarkable parallel development was occurring.
Hesiod, who lived at the time of Homer, 800 BCE, was writing the poetry
which would become the earliest known example of ancient Greek philosophy.
The Theogony was Hesiod's explanation of the formation of the world
order. His formidable story begins:
First of all was Chaos born;
Then, after him, wide-bosomed Earth,
a sure eternal dwelling-place
for all the deathless gods who rule
Olympus snowy peaks.
(An Introduction to Early Greek Philosophy, John Mansley Robinson, p
4.)
Like the bards of the late Vedic period on the northern Indian sub-continent,
Hesiod was asking the right ontological* question. Given the assumption
that there must have been a time before the present world order existed,
how do we account for it? The problem with the accounts of Hesiod and
his Indian contemporaries was that they didn't go far enough, resting
as they did on a kind of primal mix of phenomenal realities (Chaos)
given shape by the gods as the basis of reality. It would be left to
the next generation of thinkers to postulate a ground of existence prior
to existence itself. According to Aristotle, it was Anaximander, born
ca 612 BCE, who concerned himself "not with the gods but with an
investigation of nature itself."
Anaximander asserted that the source and element of existing things
is the "infinite." He was the first to introduce this name
for the source. He says that it is neither watery nor any of the other
so called "elements," but of another nature which is infinite,
from which all the heavens and the world orders in them arise. (An Introduction
to Early Greek Philosophy, John Mansley Robinson, p 24.)
The Upanishadic thinkers would go beyond the Vedic bards the same way
Anaximander surpassed Hesiod. Brahman --equivalent to Anaximander's
infinite-- was the name given to the unconditioned absolute reality
which is prior to existence and yet is from which existence is derived.
Aristotle goes on to offer a perfect explanation of Brahman.
Everything either is a beginning or has a beginning. But there is no
beginning of the infinite; for if there were one, it would limit it.
Moreover, since it is a beginning, it is begotten and indestructible.
For there must be a point at which what has come into being reaches
completion, and a point at which all perishing ceases. Hence, as we
say, there is no source of this but this appears to be the source of
all the rest, and "encompasses all things" and "steers
all things..."
(An Introduction to Early Greek Philosophy, John Mansley Robinson, p
24.)
The period wherein this transformation in human thought occurred, 600-500
BCE, has been called the "Axial Age" and could be said to
be the time of the birth of philosophy as distinct from mythology. From
Aristotle on, Western philosophy became allied with empirical science
and gave up the search for universal truth as perhaps naive or unattainable.
But Hindu philosophy has always been emphatically oriented toward the
solution--theoretically attainable--of the problem of our paradoxical
relation to the infinite. The word which best summarizes the divergence
between Eastern and Western philosophy is Yoga, a method for cutting
through the limits of discursive thought to realize the true nature
of ourselves in relation to the infinite. The acceptance of Yoga as
a distinct area of thought during the Upanishadic age of Hindu history
is synonymous with the birth of philosophy. By the time of the age of
Buddha and the great philosophers, Confucius, Plato, Yoga had been long
information. If, as Alfred Whitehead suggests, "all of Western
philosophy constitutes a series of footnotes to Plato," then Yoga
could be considered the mother of all Eastern philosophies of spiritual
cultivation.
* Ontology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of
existence itself apart from the nature of a given object.
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According to Mircea Elliade, four interdependent concepts or "kinetic
ideas" bring us directly to the core of Indian spirituality. They
are: karma, maya, nirvana and yoga. He states that a complete history
of Indian thought could be written using any one of these concepts as
the point of departure and that all would inevitably be included. To
summarize these concepts in the order written: karma is the accumulation
of past actions which determine the individual's state of existence;
maya is the cosmic illusion which blinds us to the true nature of ourselves
in relation to existence overall, encouraging us to fall continually
into the trap of karma; nirvana is the end of existence attendant to
the cessation of karmic activity; and yoga is the means to effectuate
the cessation which leads to nirvana.
Although karma (literally "action") has become part of our
common parlance, "man, he's got some heavy karma," the casual
usage of the term is pretty close to the simple but awesome truth of
the law of karma. When someone feels betrayed you might hear him or
her exclaim, "what goes around comes around," in an effort
to satisfy his or herself that justice will eventually be forthcoming
and that the perpetrator will get his or her comeuppance. Indeed, our
actions have consequences beyond imagining not only for others but for
ourselves. Suppose you get lazy, leave a bag of wet trash in your basement,
close the door and forget about it. Two weeks have gone by and you and
your housemates develop respiratory symptoms. Of course you, your housemates
and your doctor are scratching your collective heads to determine the
cause of the cough and headache. One day a sickly smell becomes palpable
and with horror you remember the bag of wet trash, now the home of a
festering toxic slime whose fumes have permeated the house. Your moment
of sloth set the stage for serious consequences for your housemates
including time off work, late bill payments, failure to attend an important
exam review meaning a six month delay in entering law school, and having
to relocate during the cleaning process. If you are lucky, they will
forgive you.
The anxieties, anger, rejection, hurt and what is generally thought
of as "bad blood" that arise between people out of a concrete
situation such as the one described has psychic consequences that may
last long after the problem has been remedied on the physical plane.
Some people sadly hold lifelong grudges until someone dies, precluding
healing. We are primarily spiritual beings who occupy the human body
on a temporary basis. We therefore take our accumulated karma right
out of this life and into the next. So the bad news is that if you hurt
any human being, physically or psychologically (it doesn't matter if
no-one is looking or ever finds out), you will incur a karmic debt which
will come back to haunt you in this life or in the next. The good news
is that you may be given an opportunity to heal your relationship with
the other person in another life.
It was the great Upanishadic philosopher Yajnavalkya who theorized the
law of karma in 850 BCE. By this time the concept of Brahman or the
Infinite (see part 5) had been well established. But the ritual practices
designed to link earthly realities with Brahman were merely descriptive
of a well ordered world wherein the sun comes up on schedule. To understand
who we truly are in relation to Brahman, an empirical investigation
of our psychophysiological processes was necessary. Bear in mind that
we are trying to solve a cosmic paradox: How is it that the permanent
unconditioned reality that is Brahman consented to be reflected through
the impermanent world of form? By extension, how do we as phenomenal
beings realize Brahman which is not knowable in terms of phenomenal
attribution? What is it that binds us to the path of ignorance when
our true nature, that is Brahman, is right under our collective nose?
According to Yajnavalkya, it is desire for material objects which leads
us to the perpetual cycle of life, death and rebirth. A person, he says,
consists simply of desire. "As he desires, so he resolves; as he
resolves, so is the deed he does; as is the deed he does, so is that
to which he attains." (The Hindu Religious Tradition, Hopkins,
p42) Maya, the illusion that we are independent beings, is what blinds
us to the consequences of actions which inevitably touch everyone and
everything. Thich Nhat Hanh argues for introduction of a new term for
the English language, "interbeing," to describe our collective
reality.
To practice Yoga according to its full meaning is to deliberately undergo
a process of karmic purification through service to others and perfection
of personal character. The yogi realizes all too well the consequences
of our actions, even thoughts, and takes full responsibility for how
he or she lives and acts in this world. Given the "eons" of
accumulated karma we all possess, the yogi knows that dedication to
purification is an imperative for now and all future lives. Nirvana,
literally extinction, is attained with the complete cessation of karmic
activity. At this point the self or purusha becomes completely identified
with Brahman.
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The late Upanishadic period of Indian history, 600-500 BCE, saw the
emergence of great thinkers who did not necessarily adhere to Vedic
orthodoxy as the source of their insights and observations. But the
traditions dating to this period are alive to this day and could be
said to be the substantial historical fruit of the archaic and ritualistic
Vedic religion. Kapila founded the Samkhya tradition while Mahavira
founded a movement known as Jainism. The Samkhya, literally number,
was an ontology concerned with the enumeration of the categories of
existence. The term purusha we employed in the last paragraph of part
six is one of Samkhya's two primary categories with prakriti being the
other.
Consistent with what was said in earlier segments regarding the close
historical relationship between Indian philosophy and mysticism, the
early Samkhya was known as Samkhya-Yoga. Yoga and Samkhya eventually
divided and each found a place within Hindu orthodoxy. Jainism, however,
was to become a heretical system looking as it did to the wisdom imparted
by enlightened master Mahavira and not to Vedic authority as the basis
of spiritual practice. The reader may never have heard of Jainism but
it is more prevalent than you might think. A member of my Zen center
in Syracuse, NY is a Jain who has practiced with a master teacher. Beryl
Bender Birch, author of Power Yoga and teacher from whom I learned the
Astanga Yoga method, practiced with a Jain master as well. My Hatha-yoga repertoire includes a standing kapalabhati* series I learned from
a Jain monk who happened to be passing through Binghamton, NY in 1979.
Shakyamuni Buddha--Buddha means awakened one--ca. 558-478 BCE, was actually
the seventh historical Buddha but was the one who founded the great
tradition which today is one of the dominant world religions along with
Islam and Christianity. Like Jainism, Buddhism was from the outset a
heretical tradition in relation to Hindu orthodoxy. More is known about
the historical facts of Buddha's life than Jesus of Nazareth. He was
born prince Siddhartha into the Gautama clan within country of the Shakyas
which lay in the foothills of the Himalayas in present day southern
Nepal. It was prophesied that Siddhartha would become either a great
monarch of a great Buddha. His father, Shuddhodana, king of the Shakyas,
desiring an heir made every attempt to dissuade his son form pursuing
the latter. Siddhartha, however was not content with palace life and
became determined to follow the mendicants path in order to solve the
problem of human suffering, dukkha. Tradition says Gautama encountered
two teachers who exposed him to the meditative practices of the day,
Arada Kalama and Rudraka Ramaputra. Gautama would have found himself
in the hermetic world of the munis, silent sages, described in part
four. Retention of the breath, fasting and meditating under extremely
harsh conditions would have been the yoga practices of the day. Gautama's
self mortification for the sake of enlightenment nearly killed him.
He decided to eat enough at least to survive and subsequently attained
supreme enlightenment. He thus became Shakyamuni, sage of the Shakyas,
greatest of all yogis.
Shakyamuni completely rejected Vedic and scriptural authority and the
priesthood as the ground of true practice. He founded a monastic community
in the forest whose adherents were given over to the strictest guidelines
for living. They likely ate only once per day and their food consisted
of garbage thrown out by householders. The followers, Arhats, were ordered
to meditate in the presence of rotting human corpses in order to disabuse
themselves from attachment to "the pleasures of the flesh."
Although Buddhism has come to be called the "middle way" between
asceticism and gluttony, the middle way in 500 BCE was probably more
severe than we can imagine. Even today the tradition of self denial
is alive in India where cave dwelling renunciates live a life of silence.
There are still monasteries in Japan where life for the resident is
shockingly severe by today's standard of physical and emotional comfort.
In spite of the potentially off-putting aspects of the tradition, Buddhist
spirituality is a sublime system for cultivation of human wisdom and
happiness.
Of historical interest is the fact that Shakyamuni survived to die at
a reasonably old age from food poisoning in spite of his radical rejection
of his Indian culture. Jesus Christ, who lived at a different time under
a militant regime would not be so lucky. Buddha's followers are known
to have been vilified by members of the population. But an overall atmosphere
of tolerance seems to have pervaded much of the religious history of
India. Thus the radicals like the Buddha (yogis with the small 'y')
have always been able to coexist with their earth bound compatriots.
This is fortunate, because these traditions, both radical and orthodox,
are all alive and well for us to investigate today.
