Tag: Yoga
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What Is Karma Yoga For The Jnana Yogi?
Karma yoga has as its central realm that of action. It is not, as is commonly believed, concerned chiefly with trying to do good on behalf of others. Instead, it’s the arena in which one seeks to transcend certain ego conceptions–two in particular. First, karma marga invites one to become detached from any results–good, bad,…
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What Is The Yoga Of Relaxation?
What is the yoga of relaxation? The answer comes in this beautiful and astonishingly hard-to-find book entitled Yoga: Art of Relaxation (1979) by Wolter Keers et al. A preliminary and only very partial answer follows: 1. The first suggestion the authors make is that we open to tensions. While the latter remains undefined, we could say…
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Should I Curb The Mental Chatter?
Question: During my self-observation, I’ve noticed what strikes me as needless mental chatter. Should I try to curb it? What I learned from Zen was to really sit with whatever was arising. My Zen teacher would suggest that I sit without a timer. Just sit for as long as possible. No doubt he had many reasons…
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There Is Only The Plenum That Is Silence
The Bhagavad Gita happily suggests that there are many paths to the Truth; those discussed in the Gita, as you’d expect, include raja yoga, karma yoga, bhakti yoga, and (yes) jnana yoga. Turn to raja yoga and, in particular, to one meditation technique: concentration on and thus absorption in the Self. 1. You know that…
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A Yogi in Central Park
The man claimed to be a Yogi. We were in Central Park when he said this, and we were on our way to meditate beneath a crooked tree. The Yogi asked us questions, all of the “do you know…” form and told anecdotes largely of the folk wisdom variety. Are we yoga practitioners? Do we…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 