Is Yoga a Religion? – John Schumacher

cultivate the mind of the yogi in asana. If we are not going toward yogasana, then asana falls back into mere pose or posture.

approaching the yogic state of mind.

6. “You have to be your own social media network.”

getting out a chair and finding a place for it was a little much this final pose, Prashant said, “I’ve attempted to teach you

We must work with integration with the various parts of ourselves. Work with the breath, particularly the exhalation. We must isolate various parts and see the effect. We must coordinate the effect of these parts.

7. A humorous interlude about income tax.

Prashant told this very funny story about using his “crafty mind” to provide the Indian government with documents that proved yoga was an art form.

8. “I haven’t taught a new point about asana in many years.” The point is to move beyond the accumulation of points. At the same time, you can’t just do whatever you want in a pose. At slightly after an hour in, Prashant paused, looked at the clock, and said, “This part of the lesson is adjourned. We should be teachingphilosophyandyoga.blogspot.com.

clear that it is not over but adjourned.” We went onto part two: epistemology.

9. The knower, knowing, and the known.

object. Then, treat the mind that knows or the process of knowing that as an object. The part of you that is able to do that is the knower. Treat that too as an object and you are

10. “Create a better lesson for yourself.”

After we cycled through rope Sirsasana (by the way, ladies did not get to go first), he gave us a choice between doing Janu Sirsasana, chair Sarvangasana, or Viparita Karani. The idea of for me. Also, finding a place at the wall seemed daunting. I had just come out of rope Sirsasana, which I was in for the whole knower, knowing, and the known talk. I was feeling a bit dizzy. I created the lesson of Janu Sirsasana for myself. As we were in something. You probably won’t do your homework, so I’m giving you time to do some now. Review what you’ve learned and what you think you need to learn. Create a better lesson for yourself than I’ve been able to give you.”

Anne-Marie Schultz (Intermediate Junior I) teaches philosophy and yoga in Austin, Texas. Read her blog at www. First, recognize that you know something. Treat that as an

IS YOGA A RELIGION?

BY JOHN SCHUMACHER

In the 70s, I taught yoga for the Montgomery County Department of Recreation (in

Maryland), which held many of its adult education classes, including yoga, in local public schools. Shortly after I began teaching, someone filed a separation of church and state complaint, claiming that a government facility shouldn’t be promoting any religion and that yoga was a religion. The Rec Department officials asked me if I thought yoga was a religion. I said I did not, so they asked me to write a letter to that effect. Apparently it was convincing enough, because I continued to teach those classes for several more years. Now, after 40 years of teaching and study, my reply to the question, “Is yoga a religion?” is a bit more nuanced.

John Schumacher in Sidhasana

This question has been floating around yoga and religious circles for a long time and still evokes everything from fierce partisan debate to shoulder shrugs. Some fundamentalist Christian groups claim that yoga is a false religion and is really the work of the Devil. Father John A. Hardon, a close associate and advisor of Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II, and Mother Teresa, says that yoga is incompatible with Catholicism because it is the best known practice of Hindu spirituality. Father Gabriele Amorth, the former chief exorcist (!) of the Vatican, says yoga can lead devotees to Hinduism. “Practicing yoga is Satanic,” he says. major schools of thought, or darshanas: Samkhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Mimamsa, and Vedanta. The underlying thread between these six darshanas, they say, is the acceptance of the Vedas as the supreme revealed scriptures. They declare that it is with this very basic understanding in mind that yoga should be examined and its roots in Hinduism be properly acknowledged.

On the other side of the coin, many yoga teachers and practitioners strongly resist the idea of yoga as a religion, claiming that it is, in fact, a spiritual practice quite apart from religion.

B.K.S. Iyengar, in an email interview for Beliefnet with Corinne Schumann, said, “Yoga has a lot to offer to people, whatever [their faith]. It has no geographical boundary, gender, caste, or religion.”

At the closing ceremony of the “Yoga into the 21st Century” conference in New York City in September 2000, T.K.V. Desikachar, Krishnamacharya’s [Guriji’s guru] son and Mr. Iyengar’s nephew, offered some thought-provoking comments on the subject, especially in relation to the preceding comments by the Hindu American Foundation. “Yoga was rejected by Hinduism,” he noted, “because yoga would not insist that God exists. It didn’t say there was no God but just wouldn’t insist there was.” And, he added, there was an important lesson for yogis inherent in this schism: “Yoga is not a religion and should not [affiliate] with any religion.”

Phil Catalfo, in a 2007 article for Yoga Journal, suggests, “Perhaps it would be helpful to consider the difference between the word ‘religion’ and another word commonly associated with it, ‘spirituality.’ Spirituality, it could be said, has to do with one’s interior life, the ever-evolving understanding of one’s self and one’s place in the cosmos—what Viktor Frankl called humankind’s ‘search for meaning.’ Religion, on the other hand, can be seen as spirituality’s external counterpart, the organizational structure we give to our individual and collective spiritual processes: the rituals, doctrines, prayers, chants, and ceremonies, and the congregations that come together to share them.”

Although it’s a tidy distinction and recognizes a role for both religion and spirituality, it seems to imply that the difference between spirituality and religion is that religion is an organized “structure” and is essentially external or worldly, while spirituality is not structured or organized and is, instead, internal.

While I have a great deal of sympathy for these ideas, I don’t see the question quite so neatly. To look at it in a different way, let’s consider the word “religion.”

Webster’s Dictionary online defines “religion” as the belief in a god or in a group of gods; an organized system of beliefs, ceremonies, and rules used to worship a god or a group of gods; an interest, a belief, or an activity that is very important to a person or group.

Couldn’t these definitions apply to yoga as well? Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras speak of Ishwara/God in numerous places, and in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna, who is the manifestation of God, speaks to Arjuna about dharma, samnyas, karma, or the means to worship God. Thus, two of the essential texts or scriptures of yoga could correspond to the first two definitions of religion, respectively. The third definition would probably be relevant to everyone reading this and, I hope to show shortly, provides a clue for penetrating to the heart of our question.

While the definitions offer us a starting point in exploring the relationship between religion and yoga or the distinction between religion and spirituality, delving into the etymology of the word “religion” is more revealing. perhaps, based on the Latin religare, “to bind.” Wictionary says that ligare means “to tie, bind, or unite.” (Think ligament.) Of course, it’s fairly well known that the word yoga derives from the Sanskrit root yuj, meaning to yoke or unite. So it can be seen that from a linguistic point of view, at their roots, religion and yoga share the same meaning of uniting or joining.

As far as I know, most of the established religions of the world, and certainly all of the major ones, grew out of one person’s or a small group of persons’ direct experience of some force, power, presence, being, essence that transcends our mundane experience of the world and our place in it and touches a state of consciousness that sees (in the deepest sense of that word) the divine nature of the unity of all things, including you and me. In Light on Yoga, Guruji says, “The system of yoga is so called because it teaches the means by which the jivatma [the individual human spirit] can be united to or be in communion with the Paramatma [God].” In that sense, then, yoga is religious in that it deals with the experience of our essential connectedness to the Cosmos— and it’s a system, a structure.

Going back to Catalfo’s comments on the distinction between “religion” and “spirituality,” perhaps one source of the problematic nature of the question is relying on the dictionary definition of religion especially as it relates to the issue of organization. Restricting the use of the word “religion” to refer to God or gods or defining it, as Catalfo says, as “the organizational structure we give to our individual and collective spiritual processes” is too limiting, too narrow.

In a way, the question becomes a semantic one, depending on how one defines what a religion is. Some yoga groups are quite structured with hierarchies and distinct rules and dogma. Some religions are very loose with no requisite belief structure or theism.

If we rely more on the third definition—an interest, a belief, or an activity that is very important to a person or group—then we could very well speak of yoga as a religion. Along this line, Einstein said, “Try and penetrate within our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible, and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion.”

Not surprisingly, the Dalai Lama is more succinct. “My religion is simple,” he said. “My religion is kindness.”

Me, I’m one of the shoulder shruggers. “Is yoga a religion?” No. No church, temple, synagogue. “Is yoga a religion?” Yes. Through yoga, when I’m lucky, I feel the unity, the oneness of everything. So I guess, in the sense of Einstein and the Dalai Lama, yoga is my religion.