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IS YOGA A RELIGION?
Ted Srinathadas Czukor
7/26/02

Yoga practice, meditation, and Vedanta philosophy – all help me to experience my personal relationship to the Power that runs the universe, and to understand my just obligations as a citizen of a global community. This would hold true regardless of whether I were a Humanist or an Agnostic, a Jew or a Catholic, a Baptist or a Mormon, a Jehovah’s Witness or a Muslim, a Bahai or a Sikh, a Hindu or a Jain, a Buddhist or a Taoist, a Shintoist or a Wiccan.

I think a spiritually mature person recognizes that different beliefs work for different people. I also think that our individual paths are of merely secondary importance, compared to the Destination to which they lead. If we are all traveling toward Enlightenment – if, as many of the above groups aver, all sincere seekers eventually find their way Home – then maybe we can afford to relax a bit and not get too disturbed by our differences.

When we finally arrive at that long-sought culmination which we all desire, all differences will be resolved in the light of Divine Knowledge, and will have no power to separate us.

So let’s try as hard as we can, please, to not let our differences separate us now.

Yoga means Union. Rather than being a religion in itself, Yoga offers practices that can help everyone toward that eventual goal – coming Home, or Enlightenment - with greater speed and less wasted time.

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OM SHANTI, SHANTI, SHANTI
[Peace, Peace, Peace]