The East and the West, to a certain extent, use breathing for orienting the human towards the Divine.
Dr Mathew Chandrankunnel CMI
India and Greece were two of the very ancient civilizations which had so much in common. Philosophy, love for wisdom was generated in Greece while yoga, spirituality became the symbol of India. The philosophical traditions, namely the six systems in Hinduism and the three main turnings of Buddhism, namely, Hinayana, Mahayana and Vajrayana composed of innumerable philosophical positions by different schools and the logical argumentations in
Jainism exhibit the ethos and heritage of India. Thus, the philosophy evolved in Greece has a counterpart in India. Greek philosophy became the bulwark of the Western development of philosophy, theology and later science and ultimately the renaissance spirit that gave rise to the integrated effect of the Western Culture. The Indian philosophical systems and religions also traversed in time and transcended geography and became the foundation for the Eastern Culture. So an integration of the West and the East would be beneficial for the progress of humanity in a globalized world driven by science, technology and market forces. These driving forces are mostly from the West and gradually a recent phenomenon that is being woven into the globalized context is that of spirituality.
This spirituality could definitely generate
a deeper theology that will be more holistic
and leading to wellness and holiness. It will also be capable of achieving the stillness and awareness which the ancient Indian sages where practicing through yoga while the Greek saints from Mount Athos practiced through hesychasm and spilled over to the Slavic region such as Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Belarus and
at present gripping all over the world. Today yoga and hesychasm is spread like wildfire in all over the globe, leading the practitioners to awareness and de-stressing themselves and find meaning in life. So I am trying to integrate these two foundational traditions, through
the love of yoga or philo-yoga, fusing the best contributions from the West and the East. This is only a primal attempt and much has to go for a better integration and fusion. So I request the critiques to be sympathetic to my intention and also the following attempt in integrating them.
Yoga
Yoga is very popular and spread all over the world, because of its ability to transform a human person. The Medical Profession is promoting Yoga because of its power to calm the human mind, eliminate stress, keep the body agile with a vibrant brain. With enthusiasm, the corporate world embraced Yoga because of its ability to refresh the worn out mind and body.
The Spiritual world from time immemorial experienced the Yogic power to bind the
body, mind and soul into a continuum of consciousness and its power to transcend from the natural to supernatural, from the mundane to the ethereal. It is a powerful tool to raise
the body to a higher dimension of experience, to a level of transcendence, towards a higher state of consciousness. Yoga is holistic, binding the body, mind and soul into a continuum of consciousness; physical matter, the plant life, animal life, human life and the Divine fused into an inextricable intertwining. Yoga
is one of the greatest contributions of India towards the humanity, just like Ayurveda, number zero and the Indo-Arabic Numerals etc. One may find a young woman squatting on a mat as an advertisement, placed at the Time Square in New York in a conspicuous way so that everybody can see it, as if trumpeting the importance of Yoga and a call to everyone, all over the world to practice yoga and become and adept of yoga. Yoga is spreading like wild fire all over the world, as a spiritual practice, relaxing technique and for heightened consciousness, eliminating stress, toxicities from body and mind. It has the unique quality to integrate the body, mind and soul into a holistic
whole and transcend from the natural to the supernatural. Thus, both science and religion, now promote Yoga because of its healing power, as a transformation technique and as a unique means of transcendence towards an integral whole, the mundane, human and the divine, matter, life and mind into an inextricable intertwining singularity.
In the religious landscape of India, Yoga has a conspicuous role to play and is indeed deeply rooted in the cultural matrix. From time immemorial, even from the proto-history of India, that is, from the Indus Valley civilization onwards, the influence of Yoga is visible. In Mohenjodaro and Harappa, the prominent cities of the Indus civilization, archaeological excavations unearthed sculptures imitating animal forms. Figures of men, with wide open mouth and bulging eyes, that looks almost
like a roaring lion, an imposing meditating person, sitting cross legged and austere which is popularly known as Pasupati which became popular in the later cultural periods of India and found in many temples, amulets depicting women who came to be called yogins all show how the yogic tradition became a template for the cultural heritage of India, transcending the time and space linking the past, present and the future. This fact has been acknowledged by many thinkers like the prominent philosopher of religion Mircea Eliade.
The eight-fold path of yoga is indeed successive eight steps starting with an attitudinal form, internal and external cleansing, a moderate life vision endowed with ethical and spiritual principles, deeply founded on a spiritual template with physical exercises leading to concentration on the breath. This path gradually shifts its focus on the ethical, spiritual dimensions and exponentially progresses and ascends towards the apex of happiness or ecstasy synthesizing the body, mind and soul into an integral whole unified with the absolute or the ultimate which is kept as undefined in order to escape from the narrow divisions that may emerge from the mundane hair splitting rational explanations
of the society. The individual has the right to interpret the ultimate in his own terms and thus any religious follower can practice yoga without any mental conflict or guilt and it is not against his or her religious tradition. Jain, Buddhist and Hindu religious philosophies
can easily be visible in the spiritual foundation of yoga. It can also be seen that Jina, Buddha and other leading religious exponents were
the practitioners of yoga and have contributed to the propagation of yoga. So therefore, it is important to elucidate the eight fold limb of yoga. They are Yama (code of ethics), Niyama (code of discipline), Asana (set of physical exercises), Pranayama (breathing techniques), Pratyahara (sense of withdrawal or control of the senses), Dharana (concentration or awareness), Dhyana (meditation) and Samadhi (bliss or ecstasy experienced because of the union with the divine).
Tibetan Buddhist Meditation
Meditation has become now popular in the West and to some extent it was due to the spread of the Tibetan Buddhism through His Holiness Dalai Lama. Earlier the Japanese Zen Buddhism was a special interest to many in the
West and now because of the influence of Dalai Lama and the spread of the Tibetan Meditation practices, it is also spreading widely in the West.
The Tibetan meditation is based on visualization. The present neuro-biology speaks about the firing of neurons even when we are simply visualizing things. As we are lifting the hand, certain neurons will be fired in our brain and the same neurons will be firing even when are merely imagining to raise our hands even though we are not really raising the hand. So visualization is a very powerful meditative technique and this has now evolved into the psychological treatment such as Mindfullness for correcting illnesses and behavioural phobia and neurosis etc. Buddhist meditations like Tummo is practiced in generating inner heat and even conducted as a meditation. During cold winter in the Himalayas, Buddhist monks are asked to get wet themselves and dry as many wet clothes as possible through their body heat. There are many who could dry
more than five and the one who dry highest number of clothes are given awards. So all these meditative styles are now spreading all over
the west and people are now turning towards meditation. These meditative practices could help someone who is meditating to transform oneself.
Philokalia
The prominent hesychasm method is that
of Jesus Prayer and it is given through
the illustrious spiritual classic known as Philokalia. It’s the love of beauty. Philokalia
is the collection of spiritual exhortation from the monks from fifth century to 15th century who were deep into the search for awareness, steadfastness in prayer, wellness and happiness in life. It is strange to find that in the first volume, there is a section written by St. John of Karpathos for the Indian monks. Perhaps, it is observed that these Indian monks mentioned here might be from Ethiopia rather than real Indians. However, the connections between the ancient Greece and India in terms of philosophy and spirituality seem to be deeply rooted.
The spiritual classic Philokalia was compiled by the monks of Mount Athos, namely, Nikodemos
and Makarios and was
used as a means for the
spiritual transformation
in the monasteries. This
book later translated into
Russian and it became a
household name through
the book, The Way of the Pilgrim, a pilgrim who makes pilgrimage from one spiritual centre to another while he was reading the Philokalia. Several translations were made in Russian and later in English and many other foreign languages and became a bestseller. Those who want to follow the spiritual path, it became a must read book. Its fame spread in to the West and many renounced their jobs and went in search of meaning and spiritual wholeness to Mount Athos.
In the Orthodox Christianity, the prayer method of Jesus prayer incorporates the control of the breath. They use the Jesus prayer in a rhythmic way while inhaling and exhaling. The fifth book of the Philokalia describes how this prayer method is to be synchronized with the breath. Thus prayer could also be synchronized with the breathing and Pranayama could induce initial conditions for meditation. In Indian tradition, mantra yoga is another method just like the Jesus prayer that can integrate with the breathing to form a meditative practice. Thus East and West to a certain extent use breathing for orienting the human towards the Divine.
Christayan
Integrating the yoga awareness, Buddhist meditative techniques and the hesychasm of the Jesus Prayer can help
us to transform ourselves into
the consciousness of Christ
as St. Paul had shown us. In
his epistles, especially that of Philippians, Paul’s consciousness has totally transformed, fused and merged into the consciousness of Christ. He was able to say that for me to live is Christ. These diverse, spiritual techniques can enable a seeker to transform oneself into the consciousness of Christ who could be encountered through the Gospels and the epistles as an embodiment of compassionate love. For Christians, Lord, Christ Jesus is the embodiment of the divine in whose footsteps every Christian should follow. Christayan is the turning of one’s own self into the mindfulness of Christ, in terms of the yoga (Phili: 2). It is a process or a Sadhana by integrating the spiritual elements of both, the West and the East. Yoga, one of the greatest contributions of India, through its eight-way path leads one to concentrate and fall oneself into the union with God. Creating attitudes of physical and mental cleanliness, being truthful, non-possessiveness and surrendering totally to God, one journeys towards and attains the highest union with God. The Buddhist meditation techniques employ the art of mindfulness in raising oneself to the highest form of consciousness. Both Yoga and Hesichasm (Jesus Prayer of the Orthodox Christianity - Philokalia) employ control of the breath and synchronizing the breath with chanting the name of God in attaining stillness or Samadhi.
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