Don’t ignore spiritual dimension: Hindus urge yoga ‘merchants’

Chaitra Amawasya

Hindus have urged those engaged in yoga business world over not to neglect its spiritual dimension.

Nevada (USA): Acclaimed Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, said that in view of explosive growth and popularity of yoga, mercantile greed had prompted many of those involved in yoga trade to reformulate it to satisfy the popular needs of their clientele. Thus yoga had now come to be just seen as ‘modern postural yoga’, while actually it was a mental and physical discipline through which the human soul (jivatman) united with universal soul (parmatman).

Photo: Rajan Zed (center) with Joshua C. Smith (right) and Rachelle M. Lanning (left), partners of yoga studio called Vajra Temple in Reno (Nevada, USA).
  
Zed, who is president of Universal Society of Hinduism, argued that in this rat race, the piety from yoga appeared to be getting lost. In view of the high popularity of physical Hatha Yoga, many teachers did not attempt to touch its other aspects. Actually yoga was supposed to direct the practitioner from external awareness to a focus on the inner, leading to the realization of Self.
 
Rajan Zed pointed out that Patanjali, who codified yoga (whose traces go back to around 2,000 BCE) in Yoga-sutra around 300 BCE after being founded by Yajnavalkya, described it as a methodical effort to attain perfection, through the control of the different elements of human nature, physical and psychical.
 
Zed stressed that it would be wonderful if yoga enthusiasts included various forms of yoga in their lifestyles, like karma-yoga, bhakti-yoga, jnana-yoga, mantra-yoga, laya-yoga, hatha-yoga, and raja-yoga. And as yoga, referred as “a living fossil”, was one of the six systems of orthodox Hindu philosophy, explore other five schools also, Zed suggested.
 
Rajan Zed also urged the organizations, which provide accreditation to various yoga teachers training courses world over, to include substantial spiritual and philosophical dimension of yoga in the curriculum of these courses in consultation with Hindu scholars.

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