International Day of Yoga, June 21 (video)

Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly

(College Humor/Facebook) Typical American yoga class teachers will scare you to your core.

Yoga as an activity at the Wanderlust Festival, which travels around the U.S.

International Yoga Day events in US

(Yoga21.org) HSS (Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh) is working with numerous organizations to organize events on International Yoga Day throughout the USA. HSS is constantly updating this LIST, so check back for events in your area or contact.

(Tato Salad) Ogden creates awkward situations in yoga studios throughout the San Fernando Valley, L.A. But don't worry, folks, he's in the teacher training program. Produced by James McFadden and Tyler McFadden. Directed by Greg Thanos. Starring Avi Rothman and Brittney Kara. Written by Avi Rothman. Special thanks to GardenOfYoga.com!

 

The ultimate goal of yoga is meditative concentration: strength, calm (poise), balance

Sadhus or wandering yogis (usually abusers of sacramental ganja) at Ambubasi Festival with soccer ball, Kamakhya Temple, Gauhati, India June 21, 2014 (Anupam Nath/AP/Yahoo News)

Sacred Science of Yoga: Knock it off! Do yoga pants draw unwanted attention? No, most wearers probably hunger for that attention. Here shoppers mug as they model undergarments at Lululemon then one commits assault or is it "just a joke"? It's ambiguous among the heteroflexible (yogapantsarchive.com).

Yoga makes cover of Time

Yoga has gone mainstream in the US. It is bigger here among lay practitioners than it is in India. The greatest yogis and yoginis may still haunt the Himalayan foothills. But the average practitioner of physical poses (asanas) now resides in the West.

Yoga is the Number One sport discussed on twitter. It is so big among college coeds and housewives that the men had to get on board en masse. Now everyone loves it. But what is "it"?

Patanjali's Yoga Sutras

There are two yogas -- the stretch pants, sticky mats, and consumer-society fashions and something called Integral, Royal, or Eight-Limb Yoga (called Raja or Ashtanga). The eight limbs or angas are analogous to the Buddha's Noble Eightfold Path factors. They are not the same, but with the tremendous success of Buddhism in India and Central Asia, ancient Vedic practices were reformulated in more modern terms. Patanjali (author of Yoga Sutras) is credited with the formulation we now use. The factors in each list are ancient, even timeless/eternal, but how they are presented changes over the epochs and aeons.

NOBLE EIGHTFOLD PATH

1. Right view (sammā-ditthi)

2. Right intention (sankappa)

3. Right speech (vaca)

4. Right action (kammanta, karma)

5. Right livelihood (ajiva)

6. Right effort (vayama)

7. Right mindfulness (sati)

8. Right concentration (samadhi)

YOGA'S EIGHTFOLD PATH

Aum or Om symbol

1. Yama – ethical restraints (what to abandon)
2. Niyama – ethical observances (what to practice)
3. Āsana – a posture that one can hold for a period of time, staying relaxed and steady (sthira-suka), comfortable and motionless
4. Prāṇāyāma – conscious regulation and exercise of breath
5. Pratyāhāra – mastery of sensory organs, withdrawal of the senses from external objects
6. Dhāraṇā – concentration, introspective focus, one-pointedness of mind
7. Dhyāna – successful meditation, absorption, unification of mind
8. Samādhi – quiet states of complete absorption withdrawn from all external distractions of the world and the physical, complete blissful awareness of one's mind and liberated abiding, superconscious states.

Downward Dog: modern US yoga class with guest teacher Maty Ezraty (lansingyoga.com)

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His and Hers: couples yoga (pinterest.com)

"Modern" is relative as Buddhism is now at least 2,600 years old, and the Vedas reach back 5,000-10,000 years to the time of the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC). Other "Buddhisms" existed even before that -- because everything, like knowledge of the Dharma, is cyclical -- with the arising of previous fully enlightened teachers who discovered and established the timeless Teaching.

Human life is billions of years old.

Just so, other non-Vedic shraman teachers have existed alongside the Vedas. This is evident in the history of Jainism, where a tirthankara or "ford finder" arises periodically. The Buddha spoke of previous lives (jatakas) as a Brahmin who memorized the Vedas, suggesting the antiquity of those sacred IVC scriptures. It is contested matter when previous buddhas lived, thousands of years ago or millions. The ancient Theravada tradition insists it was aeons ago and not any time in recent history. Life on this planet being cyclical has had modern humans and other humanoid life for millions of years, as Michael Cremo (mcremo.com) reveals in his studies of Forbidden Archeology.

• Int'l Yoga Day in USA (yoga21.org/upcoming-events)
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• Why limit it to see-through yoga pants; why not tops, too?
• READ: How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali

Kalpas ("aeons") are the standard unit of measuring time in Buddhism and India.