Thursday, April 26, 2018

Modern Gurus: Ram Das

MODERN GURUS!-FALLEN GURUS?

Ramm Das...



Yoga: A State of Mind?????

Yogic Values: Do they Transfer into the Real World of Activism?
  • interdependence
  • nonviolence
  • community
QUESTIONS:
  • Can we transition from a personal practice to a collective form of social change?
  • Should we? Is this yoga?
  • Should yoga be "in the world"?
  • does yoga make us more intuitive and therefore empathetic?
  • Is Yoga about "articulating another way of viewing the world"? 
  • Does yoga see a difference between what you are doing and how you are doing it? (BG/p.166)
Connections:
  • Is our "freedom" tethered to the freedom of others?
  • is "non-attachment" the key to intimacy and "engagement"?
  • Karma (effect in all actions) is a metaphor for what we are doing to the environment (great for Earth day!!)
  •  Is non-attachment the ability to shift viewpoints?
  • Happiness comes from the "service of others"? Or from "inside our selves"?
    • self-centered happiness is an oxymoron
Yamas, Niyamas and the New Economy
  • ahimsa (nonviolence) I am not separate from all that is
  • satya-(truthfulness) listening, acting and speaking from the heart
  • asteya-(non-stealing) being satisfied with what you have
  • brachmacharya -encountering all creatures with respect and dignity
  • aparigraha (non-greed) -using all ingredients in life without clinging

 Is Yoga Messing With Your Mind? 
The Language of Yoga
  • energy
  • chakras
  • auras
 Advaita Vendanta Redefined! (Go USA!)
  • Yoga is when you feel good
  • the body and mind are one entity, so working on the mind IS working on the body
  • all negative thought and emotion is a projection of one's mind (consciousness generates reality)
  • Moral relativism of yoga (its anything you want it to be!!!)
Is yoga a religion? Is Energy a religion?
“To answer this question, I look to the roots of yoga. Traditionally, yoga is the science of the Self. Yoga seeks to help us understand our inner world through various techniques that include med­itation, asanas, breathing, focused awareness, and certain rules of behavior and conduct. If by religion we mean the religious experience of transcendence, the loss of fear of death, and the emergence of platonic qualities such as truth, beauty, goodness, harmony, and evolution, then yes, yoga can give us a religious experience. It is not religion in the form of ideology, dogma, belief systems, or compliance; it’s a spiritual experience that gives us access to a universal domain of reality.”
Cultural Appropriation 


—Deepak Chopra, MD, Founder of The Chopra Foundation, author, public speaker, physician, La Jolla, California

“Yoga, though not a religion in the traditional sense, was adopted and utilized by every religious tradition that emerged from Vedic India, including Buddhism and Hinduism. Yoga lays out the means to overcome suffering and achieve self-realization. For those with a theological orientation, that could be rephrased as, ‘To overcome suffering and achieve God-realization.’”
—Gary Kraftsow, Founder and director of the American Viniyoga Institute in Oakland, California

“We have been born. We will die. In the meantime, what do we do with this life? Yoga offers us a darshana: a view or approach to engaging this question with our whole self, body, breath, and mind. Yoga teaches us that we can live in intimate relationship with all that is, and it provides practices to help us recognize and eliminate the obstacles to doing that. Religion? Maybe. For sure, yoga is goodness and beauty.”
—Cyndi Lee, Author of Yoga Body, Buddha Mind, Lynchburg, Virginia

“My practice doesn’t frame yoga as a religion, as I think that invites a bias that belies the great possibilities of yoga: liberation from dogma and from entrenched ideas about the Self and the world. But is the practice of yoga spiritual? For me, absolutely—it’s the ground from which I cultivate wonder and generosity. And the ritualistic aspect can guide us into intimacy with ourselves and others that we might not otherwise find.”
—Sarah Trelease, Yoga Journal reader and co-director of Practice and Presence: Integrated Yoga Teacher Trainings in Portland, Oregon

“There is something irreplaceable about the group dynamic with yoga, something I think organized religion provides at its very best. It is this sense of community that gives yoga a religious element, but one that is not bogged down in the rules of how you must follow it.”
—Doug Schnitzspahn, Yoga Journal reader and editor of Elevation Outdoors, Boulder, Colorado

___________________________________
Yoga & War

  • Do Yogis have a responsibility to create a more just world?
  • Is Yoga SUBVERSIVE in this way?
    • if so, the insight of spiritual practice must be translated through the unique social and ideological frameworks of the practitioner into ACTION
    • spiritual practice alone is not enough to inform people about the pressing social challenges of the day let alone do something about them
    • are yoga people particularly ILL INFORMED? 
  • Buddhism & War
    • Buddhism supported the Japanese imperial empire
    • Yogis in India supported the caste system and opposed Ghandi's reforms
    • Yoga and the US MILITARY?
      • ability to focus to kill better
      • PTSD
      • TILTON STORY
  • Corporate Yoga
    • better defraud people?
  • Does Yoga need an ETHICAL CONTEXT?
    • what should it be?
    • ___________________________________________
    • Yoga & Ethics ....hmmmm SOCIAL MEDIA
  • Is yoga more about IDENTITY (in its incipient stages of growth in the West) than it is about SERVICE?
  • Does yoga have a COMMUNITY? An organization which strives to engage itself in a positive way in the wider world?
  • Has Western notions of INDIVIDUALITY and INDIVIDUALISM spawned a "private self" which runs counter to creating a culture of service?
    • (Julian Jaynes) "modern consciousness" : a private self which seeks enlightenment and can dissociate from its ecology in the "ecstasy of personal concern" (ME)
    • where is the sense of the public self, the social self, the political self, the ecologically dependent self, the empathetic self? Are they absent from modern yoga?
    • WHAT IS SELFLESS SERVICE? (Can we do it here?)
    hmmm....copied this from facebook! check out the initial comments from the famous empathic yogis. hmmm..Krista is the Hardtail apparel model always pictures half naked. Hardtail is not ethically produced clothing. (just for a bit of background). Abby...WAY TO GO!...(that is my "like"). Pointing out hypocracy is touchy with yogis.
    Brockandkrista Cahill commented on this.

    Brockandkrista Cahill shared Fighters Against Animal Cruelty's photo.
    1 hr ·
    I would love to see this man on death row! What a douche bag! New York Jets suck, can't believe they would hire a massive lowlife!!
    Like · · 
    • 3 people like this.
    • Lora Lennon signed..
      1 hr · Like
    • Carole Ly Sing Lao Signed and shared
      1 hr · Like
    • Leeah Taylor SIGNED. While banning from the NFL doesn't seem like anywhere near a harsh enough punishment to me, it's a place to start…
      1 hr · Like
    • Marisa Flores Sikes done...makes me sick!
      1 hr · Like
    • Jessica Crow signed
      1 hr · Like
    • Katja Wargin can't believe Nike is sponsoring him again with millions of dollars. If that's what they stand for as a company, I am for one not buying their products.
      1 hr · Like · 1
    • Abby Klein Shiner he did serve 2 years jail time for his crimes. and though his actions were heinous and cruel, it's important to recognize that this is complex. he conducted actions in a poor community where gambling based dog fighting rings, like the ring he funded, h...See More
      1 hr · Like
    • Katja Wargin @Abby, I just feel there are many other inspiring athletes nike could endorse.
      1 hr · Like
    • Leeah Taylor 2 years of jailtime for this is not enough in my opinion… the entire community of dog fighting is horrific. Anyone that could harm an animal this way deserves one hellofa punishment (and it's far more than 2 years in jail).
      1 hr · Like · 1
    • Brockandkrista Cahill He is not a fit role model for young men looking up to nfl stars. Personally, there is no forgiveness for anyone who harms an animal. He showed no mercy with countless dogs. Fuc@ him. He should b made an example in the NFL for animal rights!
      39 mins · Like
    • Laurie Greene
    PSYCHOSOMATIC OBSTACLES to the formation of community:
    • practice has often been antisocial
      • resistant to householding
      • resistant to the bondage of human attachments
      • denying rules of caste
      • breaking social patterns
    • Yoga as Trauma-Response to Bicameral Breakdown (Jaynes)
      • people use yoga as a retreat from the stressful moments in their lives
      • a negotiation of the shift between pre-modern and modern consciousness and living - it is in some ways a way to avoid the interactions in the present world. To deny changes or refuse them
      • prior to agriculture, humans felt little agency in the world. They were PART OF NATURE, they had little sense of personal decision making or self assertion
      • agriculture and the growth of populations and economies of trade and intercultural interaction leads to skills of NEGOTIATION, SYMBOL MANIPULATION and MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES.
      • The TRUTH is no longer obvious but found negotiated in social interactions
      • new questions
        • who am I?
        • what is true?
        • why can't we go back to a similar time? when we knew?
          • yoga answers these by retreating from the world to a simpler time
      • PATANGALI is about this disconnect from the natural world found in SANKHAYAN DUALISM
        • purusha is not prakriti
        • escape plan (eight limbs)
        • is CLASSICAL YOGA RELEVANT AT ALL????in our modern world. or do we NEED to engage?
        • or is self generated PEACE enough to change the world passively?
      • The legacy
        • dissociative trauma
        • ECOLOGICAL STRESS DISORDER? (anxious burnout of climate change activists)
        • THE SECRET (psycho-PONZI scheme)
          • OMG...take a look at yoga people's inspirational facebook quotes every day!
          • yoga offers FASHIONABLE INNER PEACE to a small entitled fraction of humanity
      • PROBLEMS:
        • no infrastructure
        • arc of self-therapy
      • what can we do?
        • practitioners
          • study yourself
          • measure your spiritual evolution by your capacity for social participation
          • work toward an equal balance of self and other care
      • studios
        • give in the community with your revenues
        • work with other studios
        • sliding fees
        • income and charitable classes
        • share your space with the community
        • kitchen to eat
        • CSA
        • family programming
        • bring people in to your community
        • service projects
        • be honest
    YOGA, ACTIVISM & IDENTITY! what do you think?
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