endnotes
[1] Promporn Pramualaratana, "Confronting Life's Problems Through Yoga," Bangkok Post, Sunday supplement (12 July 1987). [2] In fact according to a Sanskrit dictionary, yoga has no less than seventeen subsidiary meanings. Theos Bernard in Heaven Lies Within Us (New York, 1940) lists the seventeen varied definitions of yoga as follows: [3] "...having seen that the Isi had entered...." See I.B. Horner, trans., Mahavagga (I, 15, 6), The Pali Text Society (1951), 34. [4] Suan Mokh, literally suan, "garden" of mokh (Skt.: moksha) "release," "liberation." The monastery (wat) is in Chaiya district, Surat Thani province, southern Thailand. [5] Emile Senart, "Bouddhism et Yoga" (1900). [6] Kanjitsu Iijima, Buddhist Yoga (1975), 21. [7] Ananda Guruge, The Society of the Rāmāyana (1991), 289, brackets mine [8] Erich Frauwallner, History of Indian Philosophy (1973), 1:321. [9] Lama Anāgārika Govinda, Creative Meditation and Multi-Dimensional Consciousness (1976). [10] Nalinaksha Dutt, The Spread of Buddhism and The Buddhist Schools (1980), 10, brackets mine. [11] Having elsewhere discussed the etymology of "Hindu" and arrived to the conclusion that is simply means "Indian," my current usage is obviously rhetorical. For the very idea of "Hinduism" existing at the remotely historic period of the Buddha would be, as Gombrich rightly states, "wildly anachronistic." We should therefore not be bothered by it. See Richard F. Gombrich, How Buddhism Began (The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings) (1997), 15. [12] The four Indian social castes, or varnas, are brāhmana, kshatriya, vaishya and sūdra. [13] Āshrama literally means "stage" or "station" and refers to the recognized stages of life that affect Indian males of the three higher castes. There are four such āshrama. They are brahmācharya-āshrama (student-stage), grihastha-āsrama (householder-stage), vanaprastha-āshrama (forest-dweller stage) and sannyāsa-āshrama (surrender-stage). [14] In the Pāli language rāhula means "fetter." [15] Parivrājaka is the broad designation for early Indian "wandering ascetic." [16] See John Burnet, "Sceptics," Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (1920). [17] Scholarly debate is actually not settled over which of these two schools, Gāndhāra or Mathurā, was the first to fashion the anthropomorphic Buddha. Leaving this question to future research, we can certainly remark that each school evolved its own independent artistic mode of rendering of the image of the Buddha. See E. Dale Saunders, Mudra (A Study of Symbolic Gestures in Japanese Buddhist Sculpture) (1960), 13. [18] Ibid. [19] Ernest Wood, Great Systems of Yoga (1967), 25. [20] See I.B. Horner, trans., Gradual Sayings III (Anguttara-nikāya) (1994), II, 206. The equation here implied is, "He who sees Buddha, sees the Truth," or Buddha = Brahmā = Dharma. In this way, the Buddha is not like Brahmā, but is Brahmā, "the Lord of the World" the omniscient master of Dharma, "Natural Law." The Vedic term dharma means, "to hold" or "support" – it is that which forms a foundation and upholds. Dharma thus represents the Universal form or infrastructure. Dharma is the interpreted order of the world. In theological parlance, Dharma equals God. Epistemologically, dharma indicates the scaffolding of human thought and conception intent on the knowledge of ultimate things. The knower thus becomes the incorporation of the knowable, "a self-enlightened being" (samma-sambuddha). [21] This is also known as the axis mundi, the primordial symbol that is always placed at the centre of the world, and which supports and connects the three cosmic spheres of heaven, earth and underworld. As a "pillar" it insures support of the universal order. It is also identified with the spinal column so that the center of the universe is located as a point located at the center of the heart, or as an axis traversing the chakras. [22] The vertebral bones are piled one upon the other thus forming a pillar for the support of the cranium and trunk. They are connected together by spinous, traverse and articular processes and by pads of fibro-cartilage between the bones. The arches of the vertebrae form the hollow cylinder of a bony covering for the passage of the spinal cord (Swami Sivananda, MD). [23] Wibke Lobo, "The Figure of Hevajra and Tantric Buddhism" (1997), brackets mine. [24] How else are we to interpret the story of the Buddha returning to his native city, Kapilavastu, the first time after his Grand Illumination? He is said to have demonstrated "miraculous powers" in order to win his kinsmen over. Before the eyes of his astonished audience, he rose into the air and cut his body to pieces. All of the pieces fell to the ground, and then he put them back together. Linguistically, "shaman" seems to have entered our European lexicons by way of Russian, but only subsequently as received from the language of the Tungus, a Mongolian people widely spread across Eastern Siberia. But associations with the word may be derived from the Āryan languages of Northern India where the Sanskrit term shrāmana pertains to a movement of ascetic wanders that developed in India from the 6th century BCE. See Mircea Eliade, Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (1964), 311-41. According to the distinguished Indologist George Thompson: It appears that Sanskrit shrāmana is an old Indo-European word that developed in India a novel semantics to convey a novel cultural institution, that of the monk. This is not to say that similar notions did not precede this one. Shrāmana as 'monk' became a much-traveled culture-word, accompanying the Buddhist migrations. The Greeks knew the word [Samanaioi, Sarmanoi, etc]. It shows up in Buddhist Sogdian texts, in Khotanese, as well as in Modern Persian. It is found in Tocharian, Chinese, and Altaic [Tungusic]. It eventually turns up quite early in the languages of Europe... I am about to publish [in the Journal of the American Oriental Society] a paper on an old Indo-Iranian word *drigu, 'poor, dependent, faithful' [a term of self-designation used by Zoroastrians, including Zarathustra himself], from which eventually emerged the word which in English surfaces as 'dervish.' In fact, in some Iranian languages, derivatives of *drigu were used to gloss the term shramana. See George Thompson, "Re: zramaNa," email, Indology (Yahoo Group), an academic list for the discussion of classical India, msg # 1917, 12 Feb. 2002 [editing and modified transliteration mine.] [25] Cf. Mircea Eliade, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (1964), 216: "In the tantric conception, the cosmos appears as a vast fabric of magical forces; and the same forces can be awakened or organized in the human body, through the techniques of mystical physiology." [26] Alchemy is an Arabic/Egyptian word: al, "the" + chemy, "transformation." Indian alchemy is known as rasavāda or rasāyāna. Its science centers on performing certain operations and concocting drugs, most of which are taken from plants, in order to obtain the "elixir of life." Its practical aims are restoring health, regaining youth, and extending longevity. See Edward C. Sachau, trans., Alberuni's India (1910): I, 188-89, cited in Eliade, Yoga, 278, n. [27] Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). [28] Compare. Latin teneo with English ex-tend and with Vedic feminine form tanti, 'a string made of tendon,' and with Sanskrit tantri (Thai, dontri), which means "music," hence the clear allusion to stretching the lute strings. Compare also sūtra. [29] Angi means "limb" or "body." Rāsa lends itself to broad interpretation and is variously translated as 'essence,' 'brilliance,' 'fluid,' 'semen,' 'sap,' 'living water,' 'ambrosia,' 'seed of life,' 'Shiva's essence (semen).' In Indian aesthetics rāsa alludes to beauty, flavor and taste, to 'that which distinguishes a work of art from mere statement.' See Thomas Merton, The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (1973), 396, n. [30] Angato rasiyo samaranti. See discussion in Edward J. Thomas, The Life of Buddha as Legend and History (1952), 22. [31] This is my interpretive translation of Majjhima-nikāya (I, 244). The text clearly speaks of the magical "heat" produced by holding the breath. Here we see the ancient and widespread notion of "magical sweating" and "inner light" that was found among various shamanic peoples. Among Tibetan yogins, the equivalent to this "psychic heat" is gtūm-mö (pronounced "toumo"). See I.B. Horner, trans., The Book of the Discipline (Vinaya-Pitaka), vol. 4, and Mahāvagga, 35, n. See also his trans. of Gradual Sayings III (Anguttara-nikāya), 175: "Lo! See Angirasa, illuminant/As the midday sun, all radiant." For the Buddha "burning," see also Eliade, Yoga, 331. [32] I.B. Horner, trans. The Collection of Middle Length Sayings (Majjhima-nikāya) I, 244 (1954-59). [33] The Dhammapada, verse 387, trans. Juan Mascaro (1973). For more on the subject of 'psychic heat' or tapas, see N.J. Allen, "The Indo-European Prehistory of Yoga" (1998): 1-20. In his article, Allen approaches the subject of tapas from the standpoint of an 'Indo-European cultural comparativist.' He compares the heroic ordeals of Odysseus with ascetics from pre-historic Indian traditions. Hence when "he sleeps in his pile of leaves, the Greek hero is likened to a firebrand (dalon) carefully kept alight under a heap of ashes (5.487)." Allen then points out a series of Svetāmbara Jain scriptural stories where a king that becomes an ascetic similarly "undertakes intense austerities and is likened to 'fire confined within a heap of ashes.' If accepted, writes Allen, "the rapprochement has bearing on the history of the notion of tapas (literally 'heat')," n. 12. [34] See my "Anuloma Viloma Prānāyāma (Alternate Breathing)." [35] A draft of the present article first appeared in German translation as "Buddhismus und Yoga," Der Mittlere Weg (Hannover, Autumn 1997).Though the verbal root shrām- appears to have good Indo-European roots [cf. Greek kremamai, kremnos; Old German hirmen, and discussion in Mayrhofer, EWA II.664], shrāmana itself is unattested in Old Vedic [although Rig Veda hasashrāmana, but in the sense 'untiring,' not 'monk']. First attestation of the meaning 'monk' is the middle-Vedic text Shatapatha Brāhamana.
