Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

David Gordon White is the J. F. Rowny Professor of Comparative Religion at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His books include Sinister Yogis and Tantra in Practice (Princeton).

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"This volume fills a vacuum in yoga studies. An indispensable resource for teachers and students, it is also of immeasurable value to every thinking yoga practitioner. Through an astute selection of key texts, White effectively demonstrates that yoga is a collection of vibrant, disparate, and distinctive traditions, and he also highlights continuities that unite ideas and practices of yoga through two thousand years of history."--Suzanne Newcombe, Inform, based at the London School of Economics and Political Science

"Yoga in Practice deals with a topic of great academic significance and broad popular appeal, and the contributors are solid scholars who know their material inside out. Yoga is a global phenomenon, and this collection provides clarification of key points and careful contextualization of the history of ideas that has produced yoga. There are really no other books comparable in range, presentation, or quality."--Joseph S. Alter, University of Pittsburgh

"This anthology makes available a wide variety of translations of primary sources on yoga, especially texts focused on practice, and places each in the broader context of the Indian traditions of yoga. The volume breaks new ground by including little-known texts and offering new perspectives on more familiar ones. Many of these texts are unavailable in translation elsewhere."--David Carpenter, Saint Joseph's University

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YOGA IN PRACTICE

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Contents by Tradition.....................................................................................................................................viiContents by Country.......................................................................................................................................ixContributors..............................................................................................................................................xiIntroduction ? David Gordon White....................................................................................................................1Note for Instructors ? David Gordon White............................................................................................................24Foundational Yoga Texts...................................................................................................................................291. The Path to Liberation through Yogic Mindfulness in Early Ayurveda ? Dominik Wujastyk.............................................................312. A Prescription for Yoga and Power in the Mahabharata ? James L. Fitzgerald........................................................................433. Yoga Practices in the Bhagavadgita ? Angelika Malinar.............................................................................................584. Patañjala Yoga in Practice ? Gerald James Larson.............................................................................................735. Yoga in the Yoga Upanisads: Disciplines of the Mystical OM Sound ? Jeffrey Clark Ruff.............................................................976. The Sevenfold Yoga of the Yogavasistha ? Christopher Key Chapple..................................................................................1177. A Fourteenth-century Persian Account of Breath Control and Meditation ? Carl W. Ernst.............................................................133Yoga in Jain, Buddhist, and Hindu Tantric Traditions......................................................................................................1418. A Digambara Jain Description of the Yogic Path to Deliverance ? Paul Dundas.......................................................................1439. Saraha's Queen Dohas ? Roger R. Jackson...........................................................................................................16210. The Questions and Answers of Vajrasattva ? Jacob P. Dalton.......................................................................................18511. The Six-Phased Yoga of the Abbreviated Wheel of Time Tantra (Laghukalacakratantra) according to Vajrapani ? Vesna A. Wallace.....................20412. eroticism and cosmic transformation as Yoga: The Atmatattva of the Vaisnava Sahajiyas of Bengal ? Glen Alexander Hayes...........................22313. The transport of the Hamsas: A Sakta rasalila as Rajayoga in Eighteenth-century Benares ? Somadeva Vasudeva......................................242Yoga of the Nath Yogis....................................................................................................................................25514. The Original Goraksasataka ? James Mallinson.....................................................................................................25715. Nath Yogis, Akbar, and the "Balnath Tilla" ? William R. Pinch....................................................................................27316. Yogic Language in Village Performance: Hymns of the Householder Naths ? Ann Grodzins Gold and Daniel Gold........................................289Yoga in the Colonial and Post-Colonial Periods............................................................................................................30717. The Yoga System of the Josmanis ? Sthaneshwar Timalsina..........................................................................................30918. Songs to the Highest God (Isvara) of Samkhya-Yoga ? Knut A. Jacobsen.............................................................................32519. Yoga Makaranda of T. Krishnamacharya ? Mark Singleton, M. Narasimhan, and M. A. Jayashree........................................................33720. Theos Bernard and the early Days of tantric Yoga in america ? Paul G. Hackett....................................................................35321. Universalist and Missionary Jainism: Jain Yoga of the Terapanthi Tradition ? Olle Qvarnström and Jason Birch................................365Glossary of Foreign Terms.................................................................................................................................383Index.....................................................................................................................................................389

Chapter One

Dominik Wujastyk

It can come as a surprise to discover that buried in one of the earliest medical treatises in Sanskrit is a short tract on the yogic path to liberation. This tract—a mere thirty-nine verses—occurs in the chapter on the embodied Person (Sarirasthana) in the Compendium of Caraka (Carakasamhita). The Compendium is a medical encyclopedia and perhaps the earliest surviving complete treatise on classical indian medicine. it is even more surprising to find that this yogic tract contains several references to Buddhist meditation and a previously unknown eightfold path leading to the recollection or mindfulness that is the key to liberation. Finally, Caraka's yoga tract almost certainly predates the famous classical yoga system of Patañjali. Let us explore these points in turn.

Classical Indian medicine, ayurveda ("the knowledge for long life"), is based on the body of medical theory and practice that was first collected and synthesized in several great medical encyclopedias, including especially the The Compendium of Caraka and The Compendium of Susruta (Susrutasamhita). However, there are traces of the formation of this medical system to be found in earlier Sanskrit and Pali literature. The first occurrence of the Sanskrit word ayurveda in indian history is in the Mahabharata epic. The epic also refers to medicine as having eight components, a term that is so standard in later literature that the science "with eight components" (astanga) becomes a synonym for medicine. These components include topics such as therapeutics, pediatrics, possession, surgery, and toxicology.

But the very earliest reference in indian literature to a form of medicine that is unmistakably a forerunner of ayurveda is found in the teachings of the Buddha (probably fl. ca. 480–400 BCE, but these dates are still debated). as far as we know, it was not yet called ayurveda, but the basic concepts were the same as those that later formed the foundations of ayurveda. The Pali Buddhist canon as we have it today probably dates from about 250 Bce, and records a fairly trustworthy account of what the Buddha said. in the collection of Buddhist sermons called the "connected Sayings" (Samyutta Nikaya), there is a story that tells how the Buddha was approached by a monk called Sivako who asked him whether disease is caused by bad actions performed in the past, in other words by bad karma. The Buddha said no, that bad karma...