I’m reflecting on this question as I work on new writing. It also helps when teaching philosophy – ideas from old texts don’t always translate to contemporary contexts.
To take one example, yoga first developed as a way of escaping from cycles of birth – which isn’t often the reason that modern practitioners roll out a mat. Yet parts of the message can still sound appealing, as exemplified by Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back.
To quote the scholar Jeffery Long, there are many hidden links – the literal meaning of upaniṣad in texts – between the Star Wars series and Eastern traditions:
“Apart from his name sounding vaguely like ‘yoga’ (and being similar to yodha, or ‘warrior,’ in Sanskrit), Yoda, in many ways, fulfils the archetypal role of the eccentric teacher whose divine madness serves to uproot the limiting preconceptions of the student and open the student’s mind to higher spiritual realities.”
As Yoda tells Luke Skywalker, there are subtler forms of seeing that point beyond the limits of material existence. Expanding on the lines on the image above, Yoda says:
“Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes.”
In Long’s view, “the most obvious comparison between the Force and something in Hindu philosophy is with the omnipresent Brahman” – a transcendent mix of being, consciousness and bliss that is an underlying theme of the early Upaniṣads.
However, “the real behind the real”, as the oldest of these sources describes it, is hard to perceive by conventional means. This leads to explanations in later traditions about illusory dreamworlds that keep us distracted – a bit like The Matrix, which also riffs on Upaniṣadic themes.
Another striking parallel is with psychedelics. This clip of the comedian Bill Hicks – from a 1992 show called Revelations, which ends with his philosophy of life as “just a ride” – imagines a positive story on drugs from TV news, which sounds remarkably similar to liberating insights from Indian philosophy.
“Today, a young man on acid realised that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we’re the imagination of ourselves…”
The influence is no less pronounced in more rarefied sources. T. S. Eliot’s modernist masterpiece The Waste Land ends by quoting the oldest Upaniṣad, the Bṛhadāraṇyaka. The penultimate line cites three qualities, expressed as commands – generosity (dāna), compassion (dayā) and restraint (dama) – and the final three words are peace (śānti). Their invocation shone a glimmer of hope in the post-war bleakness of 1922.
What sort of ideas might these texts inspire next? Join me to explore them together! I’m hosting a four-week online course from April 29, combining pre-recorded videos and live conversations. Find out more via the button below.
In conclusion, a couple of questions: does something get lost in translation from yogic tradition to contemporary contexts? Or would teachings get lost without changes? Let me know what you think!
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