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A FRANK DISCUSSION OF YOGA AND RELIGION
Ted Srinathadas Czukor
February 3, 2007

I was raised in the Methodist Church, but was a child of the ‘60s and took my first Yoga class in 1971. I began teaching the subject five years later, and have grown in wisdom and understanding as each year brings more experience. Today I am also a minister of the Universal Life Church, available to conduct interfaith weddings.

If you are new to Yoga, you may be unaware of the growing nastiness between those who insist that Yoga is Hinduism (and should only be taught, therefore, by Hindus, Buddhists or Sikhs) and those who believe that Yoga is a universal philosophy designed for the betterment of everyone regardless of religion, because over the last 5,000 years it has spread to every continent in the world and been adapted by every faith and culture.

This is not a tempest in a teacup; it actually has the potential for developing into a Hurricane Katrina. It was a non-issue in the 1970’s when Yoga was merely a fad practiced by the few in America – but today it has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry, and most (not all) of the faces controlling these fortunes are white. To an Indian Hindu, a white face means a Christian face.

So fierce and adamant has the Hindu faction grown recently, that there has been a counter-movement to design a form of Yoga that can be claimed 100% by Christianity!

A representative website for the Hindu perspective is www.classicalyoga.org.

The official website for Christian Yoga is www.yahwehyoga.net.

The underlying reason why Hindus are so vocal on this subject is that they see – with some justification – our Western appropriation of Yoga as a lack of respect for their ancient culture and traditions. Although no Yoga teacher of my acquaintance feels such disrespect (rather, we are grateful to our Hindu Gurus for their wonderful gifts of teaching and inspiration), I still say that the Hindus have some justification for their paranoia. It goes all the way back to the Muslim invasion of India, and extends through the indignities of the Christian British Raj, and up to the present day when Muslim violence against Hindus includes setting trainloads of men, women and children on fire. (Americans hardly ever hear of these things; you have to subscribe to Hinduism Today to read of daily atrocities on the sub-continent.) Given these acts, and the tendency of conquering nations to appropriate for themselves the riches and wisdom of the conquered, one cannot blame certain Hindus for crying foul. If you are Jewish, you will understand this even better. How do you feel when someone tries to tell you that the Holocaust never happened?

I was trained in the Yoga Sutras by Rama Jyoti Vernon, founder of the International Yoga College. This fabulous teacher – herself a product of many great Gurus – taught me, with much authority, that Yoga is not a religion; it is one of the six original philosophical systems of ancient India. And yet, it would be a little disingenuous for either of us to insist that Yoga bears no trappings of Hinduism whatsoever. After all, the main Guru who influenced us both gave us Sanskrit (i.e., Hindu) names, which we proudly display! Srinathadas means, loosely translated, “servant of Lakshmi-Vishnu.” (It’s an approximation of my given name Theodore, which is Greek for “servant of God.”)

Like so many new devotees, I confess that I spent money purchasing Indian clothes to wear and acquiring murtis (devotional statues) of the major Hindu gods. I wore malas, or prayer beads. I recited mantras and prayers to Ganesha, Lakshmi, Siva and Krishna.

Much of this was prompted by my disappointment with Christianity (at least the dry, doctrinaire Christianity that I had found in most churches). So it is true that I actively pursued Hinduism, for a time, as an alternate faith……until the day came when an irate Hindu sent me a series of emails telling me to leave his faith alone and stop teaching Yoga. On that day I woke up to the fact that all religions have their bigots, who will separate themselves from you and exclude you from their midst. I know Western women who married Indian Hindu men and converted, body and soul, to their husbands’ faith - only to be banned from entering his childhood temple when they went back to India to visit his family, because some Hindu sects hold that no one can be a pure Hindu unless they were born one.

But it’s not only Hindus who believe that Yoga is Hinduism. About fifteen years ago I tried to get Grand Canyon University, here in Phoenix, to hire me as a Yoga teacher. I only knew where the school was located – not that it was an institution of the Southern Baptist Church. I was told, very politely but very clearly, that no subject would ever be allowed there which might encourage people to convert to Hinduism. No argument I gave could change their mind. When I expressed my opinion that I, too, was a Christian, I was given to understand – again in the most courteous of terms – that, on the contrary, I was only a Methodist.

The Gurus who came to the west were more inclusive than either the narrow-minded Hindus or the narrow-minded Christians; Sant Keshavadas used to include Moses and Jesus in his invocations. Though a Hindu himself, he – like Swami Satchidananda – preached the universality of God, and therefore the interconnectedness and universality of all faiths that believe in God. It didn't matter to these Gurus what form the devotee chose to worship. The message was not the form, but the love; regardless of our personal preferences or conceptions, we should learn to love God more and more. So why, I ask, should a Christian construe Yoga as an attempt to dissuade him from his faith? And why should a Hindu think that Yoga can only be taught by Hindus? It is true that our Yoga Gurus never dissuaded their followers from wearing Indian clothes and decorating their homes with Hindu gods - but I never heard of any who ordered them to do so, either. They lovingly and patiently allowed each follower to follow the path in his own way, gradually developing his understanding through different stages of maturation.

But the questions still remain: Is Yoga a religion? And, if so, which one?

In his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul wrote: There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all.

Many Christians take “one faith” to mean that only Christianity – usually their version – was ordained by God, and that all other religions are at the very least errors, and at the worst Satan-inspired blasphemies. But the residents in the house of this world look out upon reality from many different windows; and there are those of us who take “one faith” to mean that every religion brings us to God, and that as long as you love the “Lord” (either God Himself – the “Father of us all” - or whichever of His representatives you admire in human form, such as Jesus, Rama or Krishna) then you are on the right path and blessed by His grace. After all, if there really is just “one faith, one body and one Spirit,” then how could any human concept of the Divine lie outside that all-encompassing majesty? How could there be any real difference between Saint Francis and Ramakrishna? (“There is nothing else besides me, Arjuna. Everything you see is strung on me, like pearls upon a thread.” – Bhagavad Gita)

My purpose in writing this essay was to inform and explain – to let you know what’s being fought over out there, and to suggest what the motivations might be. If you continue in Yoga, you are bound to encounter some reference to this argument at some point.

Now that you have the outline of the conflict, and two websites to explore in more detail, you’ll need to decide for yourself where you stand on the subject. As another inspired teacher - Gautama Buddha - said, “Be your own master in whatever you do, say and think. Be free.”

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