Yoga in Practice

David Gordon White, David White

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9780691140865
  9780691140858
• eBook ISBN:
  9781400839933
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Asian Religions

Primary texts in yoga, from ancient times to today

Yoga is a body of practice that spans two millennia and transcends the boundaries of any single religion, geographic region, or teaching lineage. In fact, over the centuries there have been many "yogas"—yogas of battlefield warriors, of itinerant minstrels and beggars, of religious reformers, and of course, the yogas of mind and body so popular today. Yoga in Practice is an anthology of primary texts drawn from the diverse yoga traditions of India, greater Asia, and the West. This one-of-a-kind sourcebook features elegant translations of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, and even Islamic yogic writings, many of them being made available in English for the very first time. Collected here are ancient, colonial, and modern texts reflecting a broad range of genres, from an early medical treatise in Sanskrit to Upanishadic verses on sacred sounds; from a Tibetan catechetical dialogue to funerary and devotional songs still sung in India today; and from a 1930s instructional guide by the grandfather of contemporary yoga to the private papers of a pioneer of tantric yoga in America.

Emphasizing the lived experiences to be found in the many worlds of yoga, Yoga in Practice includes David Gordon White's informative general introduction as well as concise introductions to each reading by the book's contributors.

Foundational Yoga texts

— 1 —

The Path to Liberation through Yogic
Mindfulness in early

yurveda

Dominik Wujastyk

It can come as a surprise to discover that buried in one of the earliest medical treatises in Sanskrit is a short tract on the yogic path to liberation. This tract— a mere thirty-nine verses—occurs in the chapter on the embodied Person (

r

rasth

na) in the Compendium of Caraka (Carakasa

hit

). The Compendium is a medical encyclopedia and perhaps the earliest surviving complete treatise on classical Indian medicine. it is even more surprising to find that this yogic tract contains several references to Buddhist meditation and a previously unknown eightfold path leading to the recollection or mindfulness that is the key to liberation. Finally, Caraka’s yoga tract almost certainly predates the famous classical yoga system of Patañjali. Let us explore these points in turn.

Classical Indian medicine,

yurveda (“the knowledge for long life”), is based on the body of medical theory and practice that was first collected and synthesized in several great medical encyclopedias, including especially the The Compendium of Caraka and The Compendium of Su

ruta (Su

rutasa

hit

). However, there are traces of the formation of this medical system to be found in earlier Sanskrit and P

li literature. The first occurrence of the Sanskrit word

yurveda in Indian history is in the Mah

bh

rata epic. The epic also refers to medicine as having eight components, a term that is so standard in later literature that the science “with eight components”

becomes a synonym for medicine. These components include topics such as therapeutics, pediatrics, possession, surgery, and toxicology.

But the very earliest reference in Indian literature to a form of medicine that is unmistakably a forerunner of

yurveda is found in the teachings of the Buddha (probably f. ca. 480–400 BCE, but these dates are still debated). As far as we know, it was not yet called

yurveda, but the basic concepts were the same as those that later formed the foundations of

yurveda. The Pali Buddhist canon as we have it today probably dates from about 250 BCE, and records a fairly trustworthy account of what the Buddha said. in the collection of Buddhist sermons called the “connected Sayings” (Samyutta Nik

ya), there is a story that tells how the Buddha was approached by a monk called S

vako who asked him whether disease is caused by bad actions performed in the past, in other words by bad karma. The Buddha said no, that bad karma is only part of the picture and that diseases may be caused by any of eight factors. The factors he listed were bile, phlegm, wind, and their pathological combination, changes of the seasons, the stress of unusual activities, external agency, as well as the ripening of bad karma. This is the first moment in documented Indian history that these medical categories and explanations are combined in a clearly systematic manner. The term “pathological combination” (P

li sannip

ta) is particularly telling: this is a technical term from

yurveda that is as specific as a modern establishment doctor saying something like “hemoglobin levels.” This term signals clearly that the Buddha’s list of disease-causes emanates from a milieu in which a body of syst...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Contents by Tradition
• Contents by Country
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Note for Instructors
• Foundational Yoga Texts
• Yoga in Jain, Buddhist, and Hindu Tantric Traditions
• Yoga of the Nāth Yogīs
• Yoga in the Colonial and Post-Colonial Periods
• Glossary of Foreign Terms
• Index