Yoga Journal: Lowering the Bar, One Deep Thought At A Time · 22 July 2008
Bhakti Collective posted a letter to the YJ Editors. Excerpt, with a little emphasis added:
“For me, bhakti means whatever strikes your heart with beauty, whatever hits the mark of your heart and inspires you to feel the love,” says Sianna Sherman, a senior Anusara Yoga teacher….
[In this YJ conception,] [b]hakti becomes whatever you want it to mean, which gives rise to odd ideas of bhakti sadhana. Ideas which could be better characterized as more of a New Age mental adjustment, something to make the mind to feel good.
I found the art accompanying the piece particularly relevant. It is a painting of a naked woman, waist deep in a pond with her head dropped back... It reminded me more of a shampoo advertisement than any traditional depiction of bhakti I’ve ever come across…. It is a somewhat warped idea of yoga which nurtures an egoism in which one conceives of oneself as a beautiful woman.... There is a shift from yoga being the restraint of the minds modifications… [to] a state of mind which is perhaps a bit more sattvic, but not really yogic at all.
P.S. Feel the Love by Donna Summer. At least better than shampoo:
Posted by (0v0)
Categories: self-deception
, spirituality
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“a state of mind which is perhaps a bit more sattvic, but not really yogic at all”
that’s solid gold, right there. it really nails the core of the new age vs. yoga debate. thanks.
Posted by: cody · Jul 22, 04:22 PM · #
Whatever inspires you to feel the love? Is this bhakti by Nike? “Just Feel It!” (while we’re at it, let’s Not Think of an Elephant!) For what it’s worth, even my buddies the Surrealists had a clearer definition of what it is to find “the marvelous.”
Posted by: patrick · Jul 22, 04:50 PM · #
“Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all.”
No mention of sattvic. Highly unyogic of Breton.
Posted by: karen · Jul 22, 05:03 PM · #
OK, but how is Patanjali Bhaktic? And how is all yoga eight-limbed? Your criticism is apples-to-oranges.
Posted by: Guest · Jul 22, 05:36 PM · #
Dang it Karen, are you gonna make me dig through my volume of Nadeau for all the right quotes? Yikes. True, unyogic of Breton. BUT what I was thinking of was a sense of contradiction, of Breton’s original “surreality” in the definition, the way his set-off sentence, “there is a man cut in two by the window” started it all. The irresolvable sort of duality of the image. The marvelous.
Posted by: patrick · Jul 22, 06:20 PM · #
Oh my god. I adore you people. To be blessed with such readers is really something.
Anyway, I messed up this post! Just threw it up without formatting. This has created confusion which I will now try to remedy with some formatting.
Meantime: CP, I didn’t say that—Kathsuba Das said it in the linked post. He’s really on to something that I think many of us have been suspicious of for a while. The use of yoga as escapist fantasy, and its conflation (I hear conflation is the word of the day?) with New Age woo woo. (Yes, woo woo is usually an adjective in these parts, but I hope the noun form makes sense as well.)
Dear Guest, you are right about Patanjali Yoga and Bhakti Yoga. Sienna Sherman’s quote is from a YJ article specifically about bhakti yoga, and the Bhakti Collective article dresses her down on those terms rather than on the terms of Patanjali Yoga. (I am not sure if the two fall into different darshanas… this seems to be what you are saying?)
Posted by: (0v0) · Jul 22, 06:44 PM · #
Parenthesis. Ok, I really don’t like this band at ALL, nor the song reeally, but can’t resist quoting My Morning Jacket’s summer ballad of librarian lust in honoring the man cut in two by the window and whatever.
“When god gave us mirrors, he had no idea.”
Posted by: (0v0) · Jul 22, 06:47 PM · #
Also, this post takes off on the Bhakti Collective thing.
This blogger, Cara, is sensitive and curious in a cool way. We talk about colonialism in the comments with Joy Suzanne.
Posted by: (0v0) · Jul 22, 06:56 PM · #
You despise My Morning Jacket? Even “Golden”? Obviously, you’ve never tried to play that guitar line.
Hell yes, mirrors.
Posted by: patrick · Jul 22, 07:23 PM · #
I don’t despise them! I just refrain from liking them. They’re fine though. I sort of like the long disco-ish last track to the latest record.
They’re ubiquitous in a certain swath of LA public places. Generally, if Nic Harcourt loves a band, this means it will gain public LA ubiquity on that circuit. Nic’s famously dull taste for overly palatable music could be mistaken for the soundtrack to some fake-indie movie (i.e. Focus Features productions starring a scruffy Philip Seymour Hoffman and meant to look small, auteurish, and “quirky”). Extremely melodic and soooo narrative with a little overripe drama thrown in. Hookable, digestable, forgettable.
His criterion for good music seems like: “Could I use this song to background the film version of this or that scene in my life?”—which is how a certain kind of Hollywood kid likes his music: “Oh but they got it so right in the final scene of Donny Darko—I want my life to feel like THAT!”
:)
Posted by: (0v0) · Jul 23, 11:12 AM · #
I can completely aptly say, “LMAO.” Your precision in describing the palatability, to say nothing of the cliche consumability, of the “indie” scene (film or music, doesn’t matter) has a proximity that perhaps only LA or NY can bring. Brilliant!
Anyway, know what “Golden” has always sounded like to me? The soundtrack (precisely!) to some helicopter-shot, sunsettish drive in some film, along the mountain roads of the West, totally a remix of the frontier-by-automobile that is SO, SO common throughout the seventies. Big beautiful nostalgia shots that reek of gasoline.
Posted by: patrick · Jul 23, 05:49 PM · #
It seems like these kinds of discussions always are built upon unconsidered assumptions. In fact, it’s more than “seeming” — that’s precisely what’s going on here. It’s difficult to get a grip on exactly what the writer wants to say. If I had access to the original article and I were willing to read it and this letter a few times then I probably would be able to figure out more about Das’s frame of mind.
One of the undeveloped assumptions here is how objects of devotion are anthropomorphized by some or are left abstract by others. Das alludes to this but leaves her personal viewpoint vague (I assume Das is female). No matter what else is going on between Das and Isaacs, though, there’s an undertone of possessiveness in Das’s letter. Bhakti is to Das as Das defines it. That is a problem for any practitioner, no matter what they call their practice, and no matter who they accept as their co-practitioners.
ANY writing or expression on spiritual subjects is FOREMOST an effort by its author to get a grip on what (s)he is writing about. No writing on yoga can be considered whole and authoritative. Indicting authors for failure to “get it right” is silliness. The worldwide yoga community needs more patience and humor. Anyone who does not express their yoga with these two traits probably is having a harder time with their yoga than they think.
Posted by: Carl · Jul 24, 11:15 AM · #
God, I just read the title of this post and laughed my ass off…You’re a funny little owl.
Oh, and then Carl writes..“No writing on yoga can be considered whole and authoritative. Indicting authors for failure to “get it right” is silliness.”
Then Carl writes..“The worldwide yoga community needs more patience and humor. Anyone who does not express their yoga with these two traits probably is having a harder time with their yoga than they think.”
Oh my god, I am laughing a lot today. Hahahahaaha.
Carl, you non-authoritative authoritarian you!
Posted by: Susan · Jul 24, 04:05 PM · #
Susan, you’re the funny one!
Carl, Yes I agree. Esp about the way that trying to own yoga makes people (us too) weirdly defensive. But I say we have to be able to see ourselves sort of clearly AND do critique. If we get so self-involved that we don’t have the leverage to see that Yoga Journal is stupid, then we’re just solipsistic, ineffective dupes.
Some practitioners get so self-involved and anti-intellectual that they stop believing their own perspective on the world around them.
Discover yourself as a perspective-taking being, yo.
Posted by: (0v0) · Jul 25, 11:51 AM · #
Patrick, nice. :)
I am a film cretin, but thought that example would make sense. I imagine a few will think I’m a contrarian or killjoy for neglecting to like MMJ. But yeah, it’s the whole vibe. When music (or in your case film) is dear to you, sometimes you get allergic to music that is trying too hard to be packageable, to fake the feeling, to make itself available for easy feeling-manufacture. This is not to say that everything else is “authentic” or whatever, just that I’m sensitive to the treacle gasoline-reek. To artists who are trying too hard to package an emotion. Experience is boring when you over-determine it like that. Art should open you up to experience, not reduce you to it.
Posted by: (0v0) · Jul 25, 11:52 AM · #
(cough) I have to talk in code here. I’ve come across street-issued yoga mags (not store bought) that had pictures of yogis I’ve met, that prompted me to comment about them offblog to cyber friends – containing indescribable displays of ______. Cheers.
Posted by: arturo · Jul 30, 05:01 AM · #