Bishop says Yoga is not suitable for a parish school

Your Face wrote: »

Thread full of vomit.

Too many big words and history?

Padre_Pio wrote: »

Is that sarcasm? I really hope it is.

Science was well established by the Greeks long before Jesus. There are dozens of promient Greek philosophers, mathmeticians and logisticians.
There's also innumerable inventions and discovieries made in the Muslim world too.
Science has developed before, during, after, in the absense of and in spite of Christianity. To say it's in any way dependent on it is woefully untrue.

You may want to edit this.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Revolution

joeguevara wrote: »

Are you honestly saying that science only existed in Europe? Did Egypt not have science?

Did Incas and Aztecs not have it?

Can you define your interpretation of science?

Yes I am saying that.

My interpretation is the standard one. The scientific revolution started in Europe.

In any case you seem to have abandoned your original argument about the church being anti science to now wondering what science exactly is.

My mother in law is an absolute holy roller, goes to mass every day, handed out save the 8th leaflets etc and as far as she is concerned yoga, reiki and the like are the work of satan himself. She read something in one of those religious magazines a number of years ago by a priest in Poland who said it and since then she is not for turning.

Technically the Bishop is correct.

It is nothing new. I have been teaching Yoga for 30 years - long ago the Parish Priests would regulrly preach about the local yoga class from the pulpit, but so what, that is their right. It has never bothered me even a tiny bit. I feel respectful of their religion. The nuns have always graciously rented convent spaces. Some priests likewise rent community spaces over which they have control.

It is kind of a pity that the Bishop does not use his objection as an opportunity to hone his metaphysical argumentation, instead of some infantile dismissal. It would be more honest if the clergy appreciated the intellectual capacity of their flock, rather than shepherding them as a helpless flock, but then I think this intellectual contempt for their congregation is more behind the decline in Catholicism than any abuses. Bishops could draw on fascinating theologians such as Thomas Aquinas or Johannes Scotus to make arguments for the raison d'etre of their positions, but instead they choose to finger wag as the all-knowing paternalists.

Anyway Yoga, in spite of the bastardisation of it by almost all western practitioners, whereby the metaphysical element has been reduced to a feel good, Im all right Jack, New Age NLP-style delusion, is in fact deeply roted in Vedic metaphysics. I don't teach that aspect though I have never tried to pretend that Yoga is simply a stretching routine. It is not. There are many ultra physical types of yoga out there but they simply trade under the name yoga - they are (often extreme) aerobics under a presumptive name. Nothing wrong with them - they are what they are.

Thing about Vedic metaphysics and its later interrogations is that it runs the gamut from full on atheism to full on union with God. And owing to the very open nature of the Hindu psyche people from opposite ends of this spectrum can be happily married to each other and understand and accept the others point of view. Our western psyches with their emphasis on individualism are far more polarised.

But essentially Yoga is a metaphysical practice with a deeply religious background. The physical elements especially were codified in the late middle ages in books like Hatha Yoga Pradipika and the Samhitas. Its philosophical elements were codified much earlier by great thinkers like Patanjali and Shankaracharya - people often claim these philosophers were atheist but they were not (it could be argued that Shankaracharya was responding to the atheistic terms of the growing popularity of Buddhism of his times, and thus arguing on that level...but then again I think there is even an argument to be made that the atheism of Buddhism has been over-stated) . These philosophers were deeply rooted in the religious persuasions of their times. Elements of Yoga can be traced back to the Rig Veda, but it goes back even further and one could say that there are elements from the early shamanic cultures that are the beginnings of all religion planet wide. It is a highly elemental metaphysics.

The traditional metaphor of uniting Shiva and Shakti through the practises of yoga, refer on one level to those deities, and in India that would be a common understanding, not even as an allegory but as pure reality for the devotee, and on other levels to the potential inner union of the forces of nature or matter (Prakriti - Shakti) and pure consciousness (Purusha - Shiva). Yoga on all levels of manifestation is de facto full of gods, goddesses, metaphysics, religion. The Bishop is correct to know that in many ways, as a system which anticipates the human potential of self reliance when it comes to the experience of the numinous, yoga is antithetical to any Abrahamic religion that relies - in its exoteric manifestation, at least, which is what most know - on a priestly caste to intercede with the Divine on behalf of its adherents. Although there are interesting people like Bede Griffiths who made great inroads into bridging any divide.

Anyway. Fair cop, Bishop.