Talk by Dr. Werner, The Buddhist Society; Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
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| Scythian Buddha, Gandhara |
Patanjali collected and tried to summarize inscrutable aphorisms (not sutras or "discourses") as an attempt to explain and build a systematic approach to yoga or "union" with the divine, following the general framework of the outsider Buddha's super successful Noble Eightfold Path teachings then sweeping through the Indian empire.
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| Hey, can I do this yoga asana thing myself? |
The Buddha expounded The Path (magga) he realized across many sutras (whole discourses with through lines or sutures connecting them) in the wider context of his revolutionary Dharma or Teaching, as preserved today in the language of the Pali canon.
But it was not given a systematic shape comparable to the text of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, which was codified centuries after the Buddha’s discourses on the basis of his previous practices as a wandering ascetic, like the hermits with whom the Buddha himself mingled as a seeker for six years leading up to his enlightenment.
Both systems contain elements of bodily awareness as important bases for spiritual practice, although not fully spelled out. The talk will explore this aspect as it may have been evolving from early times until it was given textual expression in specialized treatises in medieval times.
It is compared to the speaker Prof. Werner’s discovery of both Buddhism and Yoga while living in isolation under the Communist regime behind the Iron Curtain.
SPEAKER: Prof. Karel Werner, Ph.D., was born in 1925 in Czechoslovakia and studied philosophy, history, Indology (study of India), and Sinology (study of China) in the Masaryk University of Brno and Palacky University of Olomouc.
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