I don’t normally do book reviews. I do read books, but can only with great effort stir up my imagination to the point that I can envision a reader being interested enough in reading something about something that I’ve read, that that they actually read what I wrote. Book reviews are like conceptual Inception. There’s too many Ukrainian Easter Eggs and a certain point, it all becomes bit ridiculous.
So; fuck it. Here’s a review of Guruji K. Pattabhi Jois’ Yoga Mala. I won’t go too much into who he is, as this article is mostly aimed at those already practicing Ashtanga. Besides, that’s what google is for.
Published first in 2000, and written in Sanskrit, from which it was later translated into English, Yoga Mala is a yoga instructional, despite being judiciously spiced with assertions that it should not, under any circumstances, be used as a yoga instructional, which is exactly what I use it for.
Yoga sits somewhere between the list makers of Samkhya and the scripturally focused Vedantists, with probably a big scoop of Neo-Vedantist Universalists like Ramakrishna, at least in Yoga’s post-Colonialist incarnation. If you think of Samkhya as the mathematics, Vedanta as the physics, Yoga is the engineering. Yogis then, are the hard-working Oompa-Loompas, guided by a mysteriously powerful Guru, actually trying to do something with all this philosophical abstraction.
Yoga Mala attempts to link together ideas from Patangali’s Yoga Sutras, which focus primarily on meditation and ethics, the Bhagavad Gita’s concern for Dharma and Bhakti, Ayruvedic concepts of gross and subtle bodies, chakras, nadis and whatnot, Samkhya’s dualistic arranging of pretty much everything, and Vedanta’s focus on Vedas and their authority as a given.
As a highly detailed instructional reference manual for the Ashtanga practitioner, even one attending regular led or Mysore classes, Yoga Mala is a must have. Given the 1-2 hour blocks yoga is practiced in, and the “as many bodies as we can fit in the room” approach required to survive as a rent-paying Shala or studio, it would be nearly impossible for any teacher to give instructions on vinyasa, drishti, bandhas and especially breath, in the level of detail that is explained in the book. That aspect alone is worth the price of admission.
Epistemologically however, I unavoidably break from Yoga (though not just Yoga) and the Vedantic influence on the yoga of Ashtanga Vinyasa. I can’t possibly recognize revelation as a legitimate source of accurate knowledge, because, well, that’s dumb. Scriptural authority is no authority at all, and many of Vedanta’s six natural ways of knowing are clearly nonsense. Sense Perception, or pratyakṣa and verbal testimony, usually of expert opinion or śabda, to take two examples, are each horrible ways of establishing the truth of a statement. It is with these tools that the authority of the Vedas and Upanishads are built, and these tools are, put simply, build of ash.
So, this is where Yoga Mala kind of loses me. I’m good with the precise explanation of the asana of the Ashtanga Primary Series, and the focus on an exact formula for breath patterns for each asana, and each vinyasa that strings, like a garland of flowers, the whole practice together. Counted Asana within counted vinyasa, vinyasa within asana, moving from the macro to the micro and back out again. Nothing is left to chance in an Ashtanga practice. It’s a bit like coding; one missed bracket or semicolon and the whole thing can start to unravel.
Throughout Yoga Mala, the authority of various Indian scriptures is called upon to ‘prove’ a given statement. I’m not sure what process one needs to go through to buy in to, with such whole-heartedness, the notion that a set of enormously complex, often disparate philosophical and religious writings, only first considered part of a unified cannon in the Middle-ages, are so unquestionably true, that they can be used as proof of themselves. It’s true because it’s in Book X, and we know Book X is true because it’s written in the Book X. Eeesh…
The asana, the pranayama, the beautiful, uncompromising detail at which breathing patterns are dealt with; 100% awesome. The highly Vedantic elements, with an unquestioning embrace of religious texts, and the belief in the veracity of revelation, at least where the Vedas and the Upanishads, are concerned, not for me. Facts need to be a. testable, and b. tested – through the gauntlet of the scientific process.
I still like Yoga though.
- Michael
So; fuck it. Here’s a review of Guruji K. Pattabhi Jois’ Yoga Mala. I won’t go too much into who he is, as this article is mostly aimed at those already practicing Ashtanga. Besides, that’s what google is for.
Published first in 2000, and written in Sanskrit, from which it was later translated into English, Yoga Mala is a yoga instructional, despite being judiciously spiced with assertions that it should not, under any circumstances, be used as a yoga instructional, which is exactly what I use it for.
Yoga sits somewhere between the list makers of Samkhya and the scripturally focused Vedantists, with probably a big scoop of Neo-Vedantist Universalists like Ramakrishna, at least in Yoga’s post-Colonialist incarnation. If you think of Samkhya as the mathematics, Vedanta as the physics, Yoga is the engineering. Yogis then, are the hard-working Oompa-Loompas, guided by a mysteriously powerful Guru, actually trying to do something with all this philosophical abstraction.
Yoga Mala attempts to link together ideas from Patangali’s Yoga Sutras, which focus primarily on meditation and ethics, the Bhagavad Gita’s concern for Dharma and Bhakti, Ayruvedic concepts of gross and subtle bodies, chakras, nadis and whatnot, Samkhya’s dualistic arranging of pretty much everything, and Vedanta’s focus on Vedas and their authority as a given.
As a highly detailed instructional reference manual for the Ashtanga practitioner, even one attending regular led or Mysore classes, Yoga Mala is a must have. Given the 1-2 hour blocks yoga is practiced in, and the “as many bodies as we can fit in the room” approach required to survive as a rent-paying Shala or studio, it would be nearly impossible for any teacher to give instructions on vinyasa, drishti, bandhas and especially breath, in the level of detail that is explained in the book. That aspect alone is worth the price of admission.
Epistemologically however, I unavoidably break from Yoga (though not just Yoga) and the Vedantic influence on the yoga of Ashtanga Vinyasa. I can’t possibly recognize revelation as a legitimate source of accurate knowledge, because, well, that’s dumb. Scriptural authority is no authority at all, and many of Vedanta’s six natural ways of knowing are clearly nonsense. Sense Perception, or pratyakṣa and verbal testimony, usually of expert opinion or śabda, to take two examples, are each horrible ways of establishing the truth of a statement. It is with these tools that the authority of the Vedas and Upanishads are built, and these tools are, put simply, build of ash.
So, this is where Yoga Mala kind of loses me. I’m good with the precise explanation of the asana of the Ashtanga Primary Series, and the focus on an exact formula for breath patterns for each asana, and each vinyasa that strings, like a garland of flowers, the whole practice together. Counted Asana within counted vinyasa, vinyasa within asana, moving from the macro to the micro and back out again. Nothing is left to chance in an Ashtanga practice. It’s a bit like coding; one missed bracket or semicolon and the whole thing can start to unravel.
Throughout Yoga Mala, the authority of various Indian scriptures is called upon to ‘prove’ a given statement. I’m not sure what process one needs to go through to buy in to, with such whole-heartedness, the notion that a set of enormously complex, often disparate philosophical and religious writings, only first considered part of a unified cannon in the Middle-ages, are so unquestionably true, that they can be used as proof of themselves. It’s true because it’s in Book X, and we know Book X is true because it’s written in the Book X. Eeesh…
The asana, the pranayama, the beautiful, uncompromising detail at which breathing patterns are dealt with; 100% awesome. The highly Vedantic elements, with an unquestioning embrace of religious texts, and the belief in the veracity of revelation, at least where the Vedas and the Upanishads, are concerned, not for me. Facts need to be a. testable, and b. tested – through the gauntlet of the scientific process.
I still like Yoga though.
- Michael