...somebody made a remark about a recent post to the effect of hey, it actually has something to do with yoga! He had a point, and it's one that strikes me at times, particularly when, having just written another post about David Bowie albums and naked hot tub parties, I see Yoga for Cynics listed under the heading of Yoga Blogs on the sites of some of its erudite and strikingly good looking yoga-blogging readers....then, to me, writing this stuff is yoga...in the sense that it's part of an ongoing attempt to be more open...positive...peaceful...all that crap....then, actually, what I don’t write...or at least don’t post...might be more significant in that regard....hell, I could spew bile all day long...and, in fact, it’s awfully tempting to spend hours every morning ranting to the wireless multitudes about everybody and everything that pisses me off...which is exactly why I don’t do that...except, of course, in the form of comments on other peoples’ blogs....There is no one here but us chickens and so it has always been: a people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful, and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive, and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death.... There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.
Annie Dillard
Then, it’s pretty evident that yoga freaks tend to fill out a pretty broad spectrum...with what could be termed yoga fundamentalists at one end (am I getting myself in trouble yet? Probably...), with literal Hindu beliefs, hardcore vegetarianism, celibacy, and reams and reams of ancient dogma...and, at the other, people for whom yoga is a competitive sport and an excuse to buy lots of expensive and fashionable products...with the one end perhaps seeing the other as offering a badly corrupted and diluted version of a pure spiritual product coming out of the mists of a far more pure and spiritual time and place...to which those on that end might reply that they’re freeing useful practices from a tradition bogged down with myth, superstition, and outmoded ideas, as well as enhancing those practices with all the modern world has to offer....when you’re dealing with an ancient discipline that focuses on the here and now, some tug-of-war is probably inevitable...
believe it if you need it; if you don’t just pass it on...
Robert Hunter
Personally, I’ve never believed in an Indian garden of Eden that got ruined by the Western snake...nor do I get all fuzzily spiritual when surrounded with the unprecedented array of designer products now available at the local overpriced yoga boutique...neither tradition nor innovation is inherently good or bad...and the wisdom to be found in ancient texts is no more inherently valid or invalid than that found in the latest magazines...though, admittedly, both are more reliable than anything you’re likely to read in blogs....
