I’ve written before about the contradictory problem of studying yoga intellectually. Put simply, to paraphrase Patañjali, the fundamental point is “sit down and shut up”, so academic analysis of yogic ideas points in different directions.
Scholars sometimes acknowledge as much. In the words of James Mallinson, Oxford’s Boden Professor of Sanskrit: “To speak of ‘yoga philosophy’ is to miss the point: yoga is a practical discipline aimed at attaining liberation. If duly practiced, it will work, irrespective of the practitioner’s beliefs.”
One could maybe go further and argue beliefs get in the way – the ultimate goal is a state beyond thought, which was originally defined in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad as “when the five senses, along with the mind, remain still and the intellect is not active”.1
That’s a lofty objective, of course. But whatever one’s practical aims, it helps to have a clearer understanding about where things come from – as well as what they’re for in traditional terms, and how that relates to contemporary methods.
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