Yoga is a beautiful thing. Bodies turned gently into elegant shapes — stretching limbs, releasing stress, encouraging a sense of centredness in a ragged world.
More than 1.7 million British Columbians (43 per cent of the population) have either tried yoga or plan to do so, according to a 2005 Mustel Group poll conducted for The Vancouver Sun.
Confined just four decades ago to the hippie or ethnic fringes of North America culture, yoga has become, especially in the past five years, thoroughly mainstream.
But has yoga lost something in the translation to mass popularity? Has it lost its spiritual and ethical core?
Anybody can be a yoga teacher now. And anybody is. Yoga is being taught by tens of thousands of people with wildly differing levels of training. Some possess philosophical and psychological wisdom. Some do not.
For most people, the ancient practice has become much more about physical fitness than spiritual discipline. That’s not all bad. Like many, I’ve done yoga the past few years mainly to respond to aches and pains and computer over-use and to seek a sense of calm.
Yet, yoga has also become a way for many people to increase their sex appeal. What would a traditional Hindu yoga teacher, steeped in modesty, think of those revealing outfits women and men wear to classes? Of the women who want to look as lithe as Meg Ryan and men who want to model themselves after Arsenal soccer star Thierry Henry?
The author of the new book, Yoga Morality: Ancient Teachings at a Time of Global Crisis (Hohm Press), is worried that, in the process of becoming so many things to so many people, yoga has lost its moral compass.
Georg Feuerstein, one of the world’s foremost scholars of yoga, makes a convincing case that yoga has become a victim of its own phenomenal popularity.
Whether in regards to sex, greed in high places or climate change, Feuerstein believes most of today’s yoga practitioners either don’t care about, or don’t understand, the tradition’s moral teachings.
And, when tens of millions of North Americans are finding their identities in saying they do yoga, Feuerstein thinks that poses a lost opportunity, even a tragic loss.
I was grateful for the way Feuerstein builds a contemporary ethical framework around yoga.
Yoga practitioners may be physically flexible and balanced, but many don’t have a deep worldview. Some don’t seem to go further than suggesting the main thing in life is to “be in the now.
There is nothing wrong with “being in the present, an old idea recently popularized by Vancouver’s Eckhardt Tolle, author of the bestselling The Power of Now. But it doesn’t take into account the complexities of life.
Compared to the work of Tolle or even Deepak Chopra, both greatly admired by yoga teachers, Feuerstein’s book is a philosophical and historical tour de force.
Instead of offering enigmatic platitudes, Yoga Morality is a wide-ranging look at the philosophy of yoga, its ethical origins and how they are relevant today.
Feuerstein worries that many yoga practitioners focus obsessively on mere physical health. “It should not require much imagination to appreciate that a person can be superbly fit but mentally lethargic, emotionally insensitive, morally corrupt and spiritually bankrupt, he writes.
Not one for pulling his punches, Feuerstein goes on to note that Nazi Germany’s Third Reich also placed immense emphasis on physical fitness, to bolster pride and military strength.
“It is certainly desirable to have a fit and healthy body, he says, “but we could profit from a stable and perceptive mind combined with a loving, caring heart. Yoga is primarily about the latter ideals.
Feuerstein, author of The Shambhala Encyclopedia of Yoga and dozens of other books, loosely structures Yoga Morality around the five virtues taught by Patanjali, the pseudonym given to the early authors of the Yogasutras.
Feuerstein translates Patanjali’s ethical values as “non-harming, “truthfulness,” “non-stealing,” “greedlessness” and “chastity.” He brilliantly shows how crucial they could be in our morally centreless world.
He places the five virtues under the umbrella Hindu principle of “interconnectedness,” which teaches that we need to develop a sense of kinship with all human beings, as well as nature.
Regarding t4375.yoga woman Yoga spirituality subsumed by sex, greed and exercise mentalityhe virtue of “non-harming,” Feuerstein talks about how yoga opposes all violence. That includes rejecting unjust wars, which is how he sees the invasion of Iraq, and violent speech, including calling people “stupid” or “losers.”
Highlighting the virtue of “truthfulness, Feuerstein says we live in a world saturated with lies and spin, with deception coming from the highest places. People who lie, he says, contribute to their own ruin, and that of others.
“Non-stealing” is a crucial ethic from yoga tradition, according to Feuerstein, who has recently moved from the U.S. to Saskatchewan, home of his wife, Brenda. He considers the ever-growing gap between the rich and poor a form of theft, when CEOs can make in one day what a minimum-wage earner receives in a year. He believes sweatshops and child labour are a form of institutionalized theft.
Then there is “greedlessness,” or “non-grasping.” Says Feuerstein: “The impulse to want ever more is self-perpetuating.” He believes the U.S. budget deficit of $8 trillion, much of it to fund a pointless war in Iraq, is a form of greed, which does not recognize limits. He also associates greed with gluttony.
Some of Feuerstein’s most challenging thoughts centre on the virtue of “chastity.”
In a world in which the average person is exposed to 300 sexual images a day, he thinks people are succumbing to “shallow body narcissism.” Decrying all the “sexy outfits” and the “fashion parade” in yoga classes, he laments how “modesty, once a highly valued yogic virtue, is considered old-fashioned.
He is especially appalled at the concept of nude yoga classes. And he says ancient Tantric Yoga, which often deals with sexual energy, has been abused by superficial, exploitive teachers. It’s a criticism he shares with Buddhism’s Dalai Lama.
Feuerstein does not interpret chastity as total abstinence from sex, but he does warn, unpopularily, that “we cannot indulge in sex and hope to liberate ourselves from the shackles of the unconscious and the instinctual habits it favours. He ultimately calls for raising the libido “above the genitals so that it can fuel spiritual transformation.
I welcome his contrarian analysis of a yogic culture that now largely mirrors mass culture. Even for non-religious people, yoga can be about much more than bodily fitness. In the end, we could learn from Feuerstein’s claim: “Ethics is the foundation of yoga.
Virtue, he justifiably maintains, can open the gateway to spiritual liberation.
