yogis/sadhus (4)

as law unto themselves

By Kulamarva Balakrishna

Vienna,Tuesday,January 8,2008:In the body =antaryami=
life,is a current.It has infinite roles as the singular power
ruling the body.As moving mind the current works at a
level and yoga involves itself directing the mind,focusing
it on target culminating in the disappearance of the target
itself.The system is Hindu system.There were Buddhist,
Jaina,Charvaka,Svabhava and other philosophical
schools philosophically interpreting life at the time,
when the Hindu system was elaborated by Patanjali.
Although,he explained the final target of the yoga as
=kaivalya=,which is variously described as =moksha=,
nothingness or emptiness, under zero status,it remained
power with out any assignment.At that time body has no
role whatever,thus it remains dissolved.It is a long way.
A yogi is set on that way.Yoga system is the road map.

It explains first the two variations of the end game.Samadhi
is common for both.First one is subjective in that mind
is targeted and it reflects the target.It is called =savikalpa
samadhi= and the targetless achievement leading to
kaivalya is called =nirvikalpa samadhi=.In Dravidian
Kannada language,therefore yoga is known as the
road of attaining nothingness =shunya sampadaneya
marga=.After providing the definition of yoga, Patanjali
presents the nature of mind before explaining the two
final stages.

Then he sets himself describing eight phases of the
march,known as angas,just as among the sufis they
are known as Dhiqr,I say this because of the similarity
in goal and marching methods as well as the debate
is on who borrowed from who.Some say Sufism is earlier.
Others say yoga is earlier sufis borrowed methodologies
of yoga.Free human spirit,universal love and peace
being the goal common to both.It is because of this
yogis and sufis know no discrimination based on religion,
race,sex etc.That is why we find in India shrines of yogis
or sufis followed by Hindus,Muslims and others.

The examples can be seen in Shirdi,Ajmer,and latest
Arunachalam of Ramana Maharshi.An eye witness
account of Ramana Maharshi has been written by
novelist Somerset Maugham in his Writer´s Notebook.
Ramana Maharshi,when he was a teenage boy
ran away from home with stolen cash to pay his
railway fare.Once he landed in Arunachalam,the
left over cash he sent back.He began to recite a
ten verse poem called =Dakshinamurthi stotra=,
which explains actually the eight facets of the pure
spirit,walking around the hill.It was in the 20th century,
something like two thousand and two hundred odd
years after Patanjali.We have to keep in mind the
time gap.Shirdi Sai Baba was in the 19th Century.
Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti of Arabic and Persian
origin lived almost a thousand years ago at Ajmer,
on the fringes of Thar desert,close to Pushkar lake,
in Rajasthan.

Now we have in India pure secular cash crazy
advertising yogis.We have also thousands and
thousands of established traditional Hindu
monasteries,where mostly uneducated power
hungry men sit in thrones made of silver or gold.
They let themselves to be carried by paid men on
on shoulders on huge cradles,called dholas.
They do not hesitate to use force,preach hatred,
and live as vulgar exhibitionists.They are not
to be emulated since they serve as social
disruption being superstitious and self serving
obscurantists.

There are millions of beggars roaming as hippie
sadhus.More than fifty years ago,Jawahar Lal Nehru´s
cabinet colleague Gulzari Lal Nanda, who was a
bachelor, organized them under Bharat Sadhu Samaj,
society of Indian sadhus to keep them from harms way.
That is because being idle, the men become restless
and disruptive.Since that society is no more
representative,men and women calling themselves
yogis or their cheaper version as sadhus remain
active as outlaws under an evolving tolerant
democratic ruling system.(end)