BY: ROCANA DASA
Oct 2, CANADA (SUN) — A weekly response to Dandavats editorials.
Today's Obeisances is in response to the article on Dandavats written by HH Danavir Goswami, entitled Yoga Mart, in which he has awakened us to the fact that there's been a "recent upsurge in gymnastic and meditational yoga-related courses being offered within ISKCON".
Unfortunately he doesn't provide many details as to which temples are offering these programs, nor does he qualify how such programs are actually administered or run. Are they being used as a means to attract people to Krsna Consciousness? Sita Pati dasa, a devotee and yoga teacher from Australia, posted a good response to Yoga Mart, so I won't repeat his comments here.
It is easy to understand the potential benefit of attracting people to the philosophy by surrounding them with all sorts of Krsna Conscious content, in the same way one gives vegetarian cooking classes or opens a vegetarian restaurant. These are common practices, likely for the same reason the yoga classes are given: to generate income while at the same time introducing people to Krsna Consciousness. Of course, prasadam has a great added benefit, but one could always serve snacks to the yoga students.
Aside from whether Hatha is being taught on temple grounds or at a studio down the street, ISKCON certainly faces a serious problem with the preaching in North America, where the temples are increasingly being controlled and supported primarily by the Indian community. Very little preaching is being directed towards attracting Westerners to our type of yoga, Bhakti. In North America, in particular, I can understand why the devotees are using Hatha yoga to attract newcomers given the absence of vibrancy in so many of our temples, combined with the general public's surge of interest in Hatha yoga.
While he provided little clarification as to the circumstances that sparked his article,
Danavir Goswami has given us a long list of reasons -- 15 in all - why Hatha yoga should be avoided in the context of ISKCON. This list is redundant, and could have been reduced down to two or three items. Following the list he has provided us with asterisked notes, and some of these are also unrelated and unnecessary, considering that most devotees know that Srila Prabhupada made a clear distinction between Krsna Consciousness/Bhakti yoga and what is being presented as yoga in the West today. Next, he lays out the seven purposes of ISKCON, which we all know. He presumably does this to prove that the words "Hatha yoga" are not included in the list.
For the most part, I agree with Danavir's basic proposition, and I don't see how the disciples of Srila Prabhupada could disagree with the end conclusion -- that the type of yoga he's describing shouldn't be presented in ISKCON temples. But as Sita Pati dasa points out, it's a mistake to broad-brush the entire devotee Hatha yoga community by not clarifying that such activities off the temple grounds are perfectly fine, if done properly.
That said, my real objection to Yoga Mart is what Danavir Goswami fails to mention. The "Hatha yoga problem" pales in comparison to other influences that I consider to be far more detrimental to the development and presentation of Krsna Consciousness. The heaviest, most intense influence within the North American temples is the evolution towards becoming Hindu temples. This is particularly a detriment for preaching to Westerners, which was Srila Prabhupada's main focus in coming to America. He didn't travel all this way simply to convert the Indians who came over here for economic benefit. I'm not saying that those of Indian origin aren't sincere and don't love Srila Prabhupada, and so on, but they undoubtedly tend to focus on their own community and wish to provide support for their community's social needs. In an attempt to support the temple economically, local management caters to those needs, and we increasingly see weddings at the temples along with events that are not on the Vaisnava calendar, what to speak of the proliferation of fund-raising fire yajnas. The fact that some unnamed temples are attempting to preach by presenting Hatha yoga seems to me to be fairly minor compared to the Hindu-ization of the temples.
The way Danavir Goswami depicts Hatha yoga is way overboard, and some of the conclusions he comes to are irresponsibly exaggerated. For example, he makes it sound like those who are teaching Hatha are, by definition, Mayavadis, and they're all preaching Mayavadi philosophy. This, of course, is not true. He says that devotees who fail to point out that Hatha is just gymnastics will "fall prey to the enticement of dhanam, janam and sundarim (the desire for wealth, followers and women)". That's so far out of line it's hard to believe. What entices most devotees to fall prey to these things is not the practice of Hatha yoga, but rather pretentiously taking on the role of being a big sannyasis or guru when one is unqualified. That enticement is far greater than falling prey to these things as a result of not preaching that Hatha is gymnastics.
In his note on item #10, Danavir goes so far as to say "Hatha yoga and derivatives are unhealthy for one on the path of Bhakti yoga." At least he qualifies that by including the source text from Srimad Bhagavatam, which points out that it is the desire for perfection of Hatha that is actually unhealthy. But that's not the same as simply practicing Hatha for one's health.
I know of a several notable swamis/gurus of ISKCON fame who practice Hatha yoga postures every day in order to stay healthy. I've seen many of them do it on the roof of the Balarama temple. There's no question that Hatha is a form of exercise that is more in the mode of goodness than many of the Western-style exercises. It's also true that a lot of older ISKCON devotees are unnecessarily becoming ill because of a lack of physical exercise. Upon reading Danavir's website, we note that he is opposed to sports activities, which he calls frivolous and characterizes as being "gambling". Strangely enough, in the very first paragraph of his bio his goes on at some length about his past successes in sports: "he excelled in athletics and was selected the Most Valuable Player of 1970 (indoor volleyball) by the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) and won the international 2-man beach volleyball tournament at Santa Cruz." If it weren't for the concise detail provided here, one would assume Danavir simply wanted to explain what a nonsense he had been in his younger life, before renouncing these gambling activities. But somehow, I don't think that's the intent behind the inclusion of his volleyball successes in this bio.
As Sita Pati prabhu pointed out, our philosophy is based on the principle of nirbanda krsna sambandhe, using everything in Krsna's service. So if one can't use Hatha yoga in Krsna's service, I don't know what we can use. Let's not forget that in the past, ISKCON leaders had us using everything from baseball caps to stickers, flowers, candy, record albums, and bogus sales pitches suggesting that it was all "in Krsna's service".
So Hatha yoga in Krsna's service? I can see it being used as an appropriate means, if properly supervised by an advanced Vaisnava or GBC. Obviously Danavir Goswami is talking to the general devotee populace in terms of his opinion on Hatha yoga, but every temple is supposed to have a GBC and Temple President who would oversee such things. So who is the GBC that's allowing this practice to go on in the way Danavir Goswami is depicting it? This, of course, he doesn't mention.
Danavir's program in Kansas City, as I understand it, is not set-up along the same lines as a regular ISKCON temple in the sense that he calls it the Rupanuga Vedic College. This program runs along the lines of his claim to fame, the Bhakta program. So Danavir Goswami has seen fit to re-design Srila Prabhupada's original preaching program to suit his own personal interests and propensity in preaching. As such, I don't find any fault with that, and I think he has every right to do so. But for him to come down so heavy in the direction of the Hatha yoga practitioners without any real qualification seems to me to be quite hypocritical.
Danavir tells us that Srila Prabhupada had no interest in compromising, but a visit to the Rupanuga Vedic College website indicates that Danavir's program is certainly a compromise. Consider, for example, the music Danavir promotes and even sells on his website. His mantra rock band mixes mrdanga and kartals with drums and guitars, and the band turns out music like this rendition of Sri Isopanisad. Here's a picture of the band performing.
When Srila Prabhupada was here there was a bhakta training program, but the brahmacaries certainly weren't playing tunes like Danavir's mantra band. In fact, at one point the devotees formed a rock mantra band much like this one. Srila Prabhupada shut them down in very short order. If he were here today to listen to Danavir's grunge version of Isopanisad, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he gave the same order to cease and desist. So who's more likely to fall prey to the enticements of women and wealth - Hatha yoga instructors or devotees at the Hard Rock asrama?
The longest and most detailed conclusion presented in Danavir Goswami's article is the pastime of Srila Prabhupada's, which of course Danavir was personally present for, in which Srila Prabhupada was made aware of Siddhaswarupa dasa's adoption of "psychic sleep" meditations as a means to attract people to Krsna Consciousness. Srila Prabhupada naturally rejected it. While the story clearly indicates why Srila Prabhupada would find these activities un-bonafide, I certainly don't think Hatha yoga can be fairly compared to 'psychic sleep'. This pastime story is inappropriately used to bolster Danavir's arguments against using Hatha yoga as a means to attract people to Krsna Consciousness.
While I agree with Danavir to the degree that I stand by the principle that we should be presenting Krsna Consciousness as closely as we can to the way we were doing it during Srila Prabhupada's lila period, I would also like to remind the readers that during this lila period we were using anything and everything in Krsna's service. We were attending rock concerts with the Grateful Dead and Mungo Jerry, and dovetailing the chanting with all sorts of activities as a way to attract people. We were constantly scouring the news for events to see what kind of venues we could show up at and present ourselves as being part of the underground culture. Devotees still attend the Rainbow Gatherings, although we're the antithesis of hippie life. Many scholarly devotees attend academic conferences on all sorts of subject matters in order to present the philosophy and clarify how our Vedic conclusions differ from those of traditional science.
Hatha yoga as it's known in the West, in and of itself, is a rather innocent collection of exercise postures. The yoga instructor has a golden opportunity to present the philosophy, before, during and after the yoga practice. Compared to many other preaching means, I don't see how this is the dreaded phenomenon Danavir Goswami makes it out to be.
ISKCON is facing far more insidious influences than the threat presented by Hatha yoga, and I think our leaders should deal with these issues first, regardless of the fact that they're more controversial than whether or not to allow Hatha yoga on the temple grounds.
Obeisances to Dandavats, and to HH Danavir Goswami.
