Love in Yoga
Meditationtime Forum Post
Date: Posted 3 years before Jan 14, 2017
MiBeloved 3 years ago
Love in yoga is about the process of yoga and the teachers who show us how to apply the process. For instance there are instructions in Patanjali Yoga Sutras about clamping down on and completely ridding the self of the chitta vritti mento-emotional operations. The statement is there but still one might need to get firsthand information from someone who was proficient doing this.
To make a nuclear bomb may seem to be simple if you read about it on the Internet, and still it is not really as simple as the instructions are given there. One will need to have a practical physicist on hand to give pointers.
Even for those persons who are Advaita Vedantis, even for the nihilistic Buddhists, there is the necessary step that they must take help from other persons. On one hand they advocate and are convinced that persons are illusion. They are not persons, they say, anatta (anatma). And still they go to persons to get information about how to remove illusion. Can you imagine how essential persons are, that even though on one hand I might be convinced that there are no persons and that all individuality is illusion, and that there is only oneness without differentiation, still I have to go to some person to get information about a process for the realization of my conviction?
In all the systems in those where there is a conviction that there is a Person God, and in those where there is the idea that there is no such person, there is necessity to relate to a teacher of a process and to the process itself.
Love in yoga means that sincere relationship with the process and with the teacher.
Alfredo 3 years ago
I think this is an appropriate perspective of what is love in relation to yoga.
Since love is a word that has been used so much so as to practically lose its meaning, it is good to know what you think about it.
Specifically within the New Age movement much abuse has been heaped upon the word love, which is used in an idealistic context that defies the realities of daily life. It is used here together with the argument of oneness, all is one, there are no others, and so on. It is an argument that mostly defies experience.
You even see many famous Gurus playing the game, of course, usually by proxy.
The chosen disciples hint that the Guru is impersonal, does not have any preferences, sees everything as one, sees no others, is self-realized, and so on, but, once and again, the Guru (a limited human being) shows bias, prejudice, for family, friends, disciples, contributors.
As for the Adwaita Vedantins, you once told me that you do not believe a word of their Moksha. I must agree. Their winning analogy is that of the river and the sea, and the primordial question: why would the river care about itself when it merges into the sea? Well, what about if the river wants to remain a river, or at least be called as such after merging? A tremendous amount of maneuvering was needed by Swami Yogananda to try to accommodate the answer to this last question.
The other analogy is more in line to what Lord Krishna affirms in the Gita, that of the green parrot that merges in the green forest. Everything is green, but there is still a parrot.
