How the Buddha transformed Yoga

Dharma Teacher Seven, edited by Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly

The Buddha in Mountain Pose with Mudra (missing hand)

Buddhist practitioners in Southeast Asia are typically called "yogis" (even the yoginis), but there's nothing about Brahminical or Hindu about it. A yogi is a striver, not a Brahmin (temple priest) or pundit. The wandering ascetics (shramanas or shamans) of the time under many doctrines (dharmas) and disciplines were after one thing -- direct experience of moksha or liberation.

Priests (ceremony conductors) want to mediate the spiritual experience. Those out to experience spirituality for themselves need to meditate or cultivate calm and insight, serenity and awakening.

Prince Siddhartha Gautama (Pali Sidhdattha Gotama) began his quest as a yogi under the tutelage of wandering ascetic yogis, Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta. He then set off on his own, following his own reasoning or intuition about how to reach the answer he sought: "Why do we suffer, and what can be done to bring an end to suffering?"

He not only transformed yoga, he essentially gave us the modern definition of it. For he set out a Doctrine and Discipline (Dharma Vinaya) for the attainment of liberation in this very life. This is just what all yogis were after.

Today we say "yogi" and "yoga," not because we understand what Brahmins and the Vedas had to say so much as what Patanjali condensed in the Yoga Sutras, more "aphorisms" than sutras. These are saying full of meaning. They set out an eightfold path. Why eight? It is because of the massive popularity of the Buddha's Dharma, the Noble Eightfold Path.

Patanjali followed the Buddha's popular blueprint and gave the non-Brahminical view of the path to "union" (yoga) with Brahma or BRAHMAN, what Brahmins and their Vedas ("Knowledge Books") considered "salvation" and "liberation" (moksha). There was no Hinduism at the time of Patanjali; that systematized presentation came with Sri Sankara many centuries later.

Hinduism points to the ancient Vedas and says, "That's what we teach and, therefore, our religion goes back thousands of years." It's just like Judaism claiming any ancient Semitic thing as the starting point for their sacred texts, ignoring how much is appropriated from the Sumerians.

The Buddha, in a past life, spoke of being a Brahmin well versed in the Vedas. They are very old. And he rejected them as the Buddha. No one should say that what the Buddha taught is Hinduism, as Mahayana Buddhism seems to think. The historical Buddha knew what the Vedas said and what they taught, and he did not teach that. He taught a Dharma (Doctrine) not previously heard.

There were buddhas in the past, the Buddha taught, and they taught essentially the same thing as he was teaching. They were not teaching the Vedas either. So clearly buddhas do not teach Hinduism, Brahminical Vedic teachings, or any other pre-existing doctrine. They rediscover and reveal Truth, as communicated by very special self-awakened teachers (samma-sam-buddhas).

You, too, can be a buddha. Three kinds

There are, we can say, three kinds of buddhas -- the supremely enlightened teaching Awakened Ones, the non-teaching Awakened Ones (who did not lay down the karma to have all the faculties, abilities, and powers of a Supremely Awakened One), and arhats (arahants) or fully enlightened disciples of the first kind. (Therefore, a bodhisattva or "being bent on enlightenment" could be any of these three kinds, even if sticklers say only those bent on supreme enlightenment should think of themselves as "real" bodhisattvas).

All three experience the same awakening (bodhi) to ultimate Truth (prajna or panna) and the same liberation or direct experience of nirvana, which is the real liberation -- the end of all rebirth (samsara) and ALL suffering. Other things -- like rebirth in heaven or at the feet of Brahma/God or as a brahma ("divinity") or a deva ("deity," "angel") -- get called moksha by other yogis. But Buddhist yogis understand that only nirvana is the ultimate goal of the Buddha Dharma.

Other dharmas teach other things with other ambitions, other ultimate goals, but that is not what the historical Buddha taught. To follow his teaching is to reach what he taught as "ultimate."

The Path is not the same as the path of yoga. The Buddha transformed that. Ask a yoga teacher, a Brahmin, a pundit, or Hindu: "What is the goal?" They may use the same words -- moksha, nirvana, advaita, anything -- but they won't mean the same things.

Each dharma says, "This is moksha," just like the wandering ascetic yogi Siddhartha when he began his quest and his yogi teachers taught him, "This meditative attainment is the ultimate." Siddhartha knew those were not the ultimate, not the solution to the problem of rebirth and suffering (samsara), not the end of this endless cycle.

The final cessation of suffering comes about only with insight, only awakening (bodhi) as the historical Buddha and supremely enlightened buddhas of the past (confirmed by all three kinds of buddhas in the past, present, and future).

So yoga from a Buddhist sense does not mean the same thing as popular Hatha Yoga, Hinduism, or doing poses and wearing cool tight stretchy pants.

BOTH eightfold paths are useful. Certainly, doing all the things Raja Yoga (Eight Limb Yoga) teaches are good and useful for keeping and progressing along the Buddha's Ennobling (making-Noble, Arya or "making-Enlightened") Eightfold Path.

Set them side by side and see how different they are. They cannot be reconciled to be "saying the same thing" as so many of us believe without checking. They DO NOT lead to the same goal, even if learned teachers all call that ultimate goal moksha ("liberation").

Set an ultimate goal, and then set off on that path. If one has chosen what the Buddha Siddhartha Gautama or "Shakyamuni" taught and experienced, then that Path will be one thing. If one simply chooses to do "yoga," then one is likely to get some instruction on posing, breathing, and an optimum diet. If one is really fortunate and has a good learned teacher then one may also get instruction on the five other limbs or angas ("factors") of Asht-anga Yoga.

Then in the end one may be reborn in a heaven or with Brahma or for a moment see BRAHMAN and go around making advaita (non-dualism) jokes. But it won't be nirvana. It won't be anything the historical Buddha taught as "salvation," "emancipation," "deliverance," or "liberation." That is only nirvana as the Buddha, who was not a Hindu (as there was no "Hinduism" at that time, nor even an "India"), taught.

And what is "nirvana" (nibbana, the "unconditioned element," amata, the "deathless state," the real amrita or ambrosia of the deathless which, paradoxically, is not eternal life or immortality, but that's a detail for another time, close enough)?

Nirvana is the end of all rebirth (samsara). Nirvana is the end of ALL suffering (dukkha). It is the result of fully awakening (enlightenment, bodhi) and therefore in that sense the end of all ignorance. (It's not really the end of all ignorance in the mundane sense, only in the supramundane sense of fully understanding and penetrating the Four Noble Truths, not intellectually but by direct experience.

What is nirvana NOT? It is not nothingness. It is not emptiness (shunyata, which really means or originally meant understanding that all things are impersonal, anatta, not-self). Things are impersonal, are empty, and there is a void, a nothingness. But these two are not the same thing, not synonyms for one another. There is a Sphere of Nothingness. One can attain it in meditation. It is not emptiness, Emptiness (shunya) is an insight as to the nature of all things. What's a "thing"? It's a composite, coming to be by Dependent Origination.

There's one thing that's not a "thing" -- which is to say, there is one element (dhatu) that is not dependent for its existence on supporting causes and conditions. Fortunately, there is only one thing that is not a "thing." (In English we are allowed to abuse the term thing to mean "anything" even the one thing that is not a thing, so there's no need for confusion or the thought that what is being said is a contradiction). And that thing (element) that is not a "thing" (because it is not dependent on anything else) is nirvana. Therefore, it is called the "unconditioned element." Everything else is a composite, whereas nirvana is a compact or unity.

So maybe, speaking loosely, the "union" one seeks by the Buddha's transformation of "yoga" is not "union with Brahma" or "union with the breath (prana)" or even "unity with the 'reality behind all illusion' (BRAHMAN)" but rather the unity of nirvana, which is not united with anything but is peaceful, blissful, the highest good, deathless, perfect.

And that, if yogis of the past think about it, is what we always wanted -- that ONE thing not coupled with suffering (disappointment, pain, stress, rebirth, old age, sickness, death, redeath, woe, ill, lamentation, etc.)

The Buddha really did transform "yoga," bringing it back to what we can hope and imagine it originally meant in a golden age or sattva yuga, an epoch or Age of Truth.