Traditions

How can comparative philosophy help us to cope with and ideally overcome terror? How can it help us envision a world without terror and the steps toward making such a world a reality? My approach in this paper is to situate the question of terror in the larger context of the question of violence more generally (of which terror is of course a sub-variety) and ultimately in the even larger context of suffering (of which violence is a sub-variety).

If you want to know where something is going, it is good to know where it came from. “To be ignorant of what happened before one was born,” said Cicero pointedly in his Orator, “is to remain ever a child.” History provides context and meaning, and Yoga is no exception to this rule. If you are fond of history, you’ll enjoy what follows. Many of the facts and ideas presented here have not yet found their way into the textbooks or even into most Yoga books. We put you in touch with the leading edge of knowledge in this area. If you are not a history buff, well, perhaps we can tempt you to suspend your preferences for a few minutes and read on anyway.

Jonathan is a Vaishnava Hindu scholar.

In modern times, yoganidrā is generally understood to be a specific type of guided meditation performed in a supine position. This common interpretation is largely due to the success of the Satyananda Yoga Nidra technique that has been trademarked and taught by the Bihar School of Yoga. In Swāmī Satyānanda Saraswati’s book Yoga Nidra, first published 1976, he claims to have constructed this seven part guided meditation technique from ‘important but little known practices’ (2009 edition: p. 3), which he found in various Tantras.

​Different from grasping, the gesture of greeting enables openness between the subject and object.  Greeting is an invitation to the abyss within. Meditation is a gaze within that provides an already sublimated energy to thought (Irigaray, 1991, 171). The gaze of the meditating Buddha is not divisive, or incisive, it does not grasp, but wistfully sits, open to existence as it is.  In the realization that nowhere is anything lasting, phenomena appear, exist, and then disappear; gone forever, existing only in the tumultuous caverns of memory. The decrepitude of the material realm, the impermanence of the body, is an “invariable form of variation” (Deleuze, 1994, 2).

Yājñavalkya is one of the most memorable characters in Vedic literature, known not only for his wit, insolence and intimidation – he nearly purloined one thousand cows from a group of renowned brahmins just before shattering the head of one of them –, but also for the profundity and newness of his thought.

Explaining the premodern Indian conception of mind to Westerners poses an interesting problem. Western popular culture tends to posit two primary centers of our being other than the body: the mind (locus of thoughts) and the heart (locus of feelings). This is in complete opposition to the Indian model, whereby ‘mind’ and ‘heart’ both translate the same Sanskrit word (chitta), for as every good psychologist knows, thoughts and feelings are inextricably linked–indeed, they exist on a continuum.

Swami is a Hindu monk an Vedanta teacher.