by Youngbear Roth

Created on: March 20, 2010   Last Updated: November 12, 2010

I have devoted my life to Yoga for over fifty years.  I have studied, taught, and traveled; sat at the feet of the great masters of Hindu Yoga, Zen Buddhist Yoga; written and debated with Western science over Yoga; practiced Yoga as a non-secular, mystic, spiritual experience; looked to Yoga's contemplative tradition for transpersonal psychological change; sculpted and painted Yoga; and after practicing as a Zennist, a Philosophical Taoist, a smanyasin, a renunciant, a swami, and in America as an Integral Yoga therapist and research scientist in mental health, I have come to a few basic conclusions about Yoga.  While the process of learning Yoga holds importance and validity, I can now toss away a large portion of my journey as so much bull feces. This means I have the audacity to believe that I have grasped at least some of the meaning of existence, because Yoga is the whole of existence.

Gautama Buddha's teachings on Hinduism were radical for their time and place, although, he lived and died as a Hindu and a great contemplative Yogi.  Buddhism, as the progeny of Hinduism, came later, and Zen - the enigmatic expression of Buddhism - later than that.  Certainly, when Bodhidharma - the twenty-eighth patriarch, carried Buddha's teachings out of India and over to China, the Hindu hierarchy of India must have been pleased at the annexation by China of a teaching India's Hindu school never truly endorsed.  Yet, Buddha and his sangha or followers, appeared to have a profound understanding of what Yoga is.  At Buddha's 'Flower Sermon' he answered the question, "What is Yoga?" perfectly:  "...the true form of no form, the mysterious gate of dharma. It cannot be expressed through words and letters and is a special transmission outside of all doctrine. ..."  Oh, my.  Speaking out against the religious doctrine of his time and place.  Tsk, tsk, not too good!  

Spoken like a true prophet - completely nonsensical!  After all, everybody knows that 'Yoga' is Sanskrit from the root 'yuj' meaning to, blah, blah, blah, and it is practiced today in the West as a form of physical exercise (asana) to aid in the transcendent meditation beyond the physical by connecting to the mind, body, spirit  - and more bull feces.  Let's take a shortcut from "knowledge," a dead noun, straight to "knowing," a dynamic verb while no one is watching.

The relevant issue of Buddha's answer is that using

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