Contemporary Yoga and Sacred Texts

Susanne Scholz, Caroline Vander Stichele

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9780367185428
• eBook ISBN: 9780429589584
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religious Literary Criticism

This book explores the textual traditions that authorize the history, legitimacy, and authenticity of today's physical posture practice. The volume focuses on why and how yoga communities have adopted various texts that they consider sacred or spiritually meaningful. Among the texts discussed are Yogananda's Autobiography, Sri Aurobindo's Savitri, Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, the Bhagavad Gita, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the Upanishads, the Vedas, and the Yogin? Tantra. Famous thinkers included are Aurobindo, Yogananda, Osho-Rajneesh, Sogyal Rimpoche, Charles Johnston, and Howard Thurman. Offering a starting point, the ten chapters address the nature, selection, and function of various ancient and contemporary texts read in contemporary yoga settings. The attention centers on how and why texts are read and for whom they are read. As yoga is practiced in ashrams, yoga studios, gyms, meeting rooms, and even private living rooms, scholarly approaches to investigate the connections between yoga and texts are necessarily diverse.

This volume aims to inspire further scholarship on the reading of texts in past and present yoga communities. The collection demonstrates that textual tradions deserve to be an important part of contemporary yoga scholarship. The volume will, therefore, be of great interest to scholars of religious studies, yoga studies, and Asian studies, as well as those studying sacred texts.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Why Thinking about Texts Matters in Contemporary Yoga Studies
• 1 Sādhana-krīyā and Moksṇa in the Yoginī Tantra
• 2 An Exploration of “Crazy Wisdom” in Ancient and Contemporary Buddhist Stories
• 3 Charles Johnston’s Translation of the Yogasūtra as a Book of Theosophical Initiation
• 4 Life, Death, and Deathlessness in Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri
• 5 Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi as Sacred Text
• 6 Howard Thurman and the Roots of Modern Black Atlantic Yogas
• 7 Osho-Rajneesh and the Reformulation of Yoga in the Twentieth Century
• 8 How the Vedas Became the Word of God
• 9 Reading Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra Like the Bible in Sunday School
• 10 Texts, Teachers, and Traditions of Flemish Yoga Pioneers
• Index