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Re: ARTICLE : Hinduism and yoga
l23@hopi.dtcc.edu (GERALD J. LA CORTE) writes:
>There arose two posts on a different usegroup about Hinduism being a
Did they define what hinduism was ?
>requirement for practicioners of yoga. The originator of the post was
>actually commenting (complaining) how yoga in the States is independant of
>Hinduism and commenting about Buddhist yoga. Their statement was
>essentially that all yoga was Hinduism and outside of Hinduism there was
>no yoga.
Ah, I don't know which newsgroup you are referring to but my friend
forwarded a couple of posts from alt.yoga where the posters (who claim
to teach yoga) have said that 'Yoga has nothing to do with Hinduism'
'Yoga was started by atheists'
These statements were quite enlightening to me. I have
read only Patanjali yoga suutras and also thought it belonged to the
one of the six schools (saddarshana) of Santana Dharma.
Of course, Patanjali may not have been Hindu since Hindu is undefinable.
Some other poster has claimed that Bhagvad gita gives a good
definition of yoga. But the poster fails to note that Bhagvad gita is
also followed by vaisnavities (all of whom are not hindu).
>I know that the vast majority of yogi have been and always will be Hindu.
Here is where you may be wrong. You have to define Hindu first.
Remember, if a yogi worships Shiva, he may be a shaivite and not hindu.
If he worships Shakti, he may be a shakta and not hindu.
and so on and so forth. This should be discussed in a newsgroup appropriate
like soc.religion.shaivite or soc.religion.shakta and
soc.religion.vedas. no-author. soc.religion.vedas.authored. etc
Since yoga is transcendental and not a religion, it should be
discussed under soc.transcendental.yoga.
>I'd like to know, historically, how closely Hinduism and yoga have been.
That's impossible. Define Hinduism first.
>That is, in the past have there been a segment of yogis who were Hindu or
>if yoga existed before Santana Dharma or if they weren't orignally
Re-read your sentence. Santana Dharma means eternal religion. How
can something exist before eternality ?
>affiliated but only became such later in time. Is my question clear?
Perfectly. Only point is that you have to define Hinduism perfectly.
The teachers of yoga in alt.yoga seem to agree with you in that Hinduism
has nothing to do with yoga.
Giri
