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Today, I do have the immense pleasure of talking to one of the great authorities in different areas of knowledge like Buddhism, Asian medicine, and is no other than Professor Geoffrey Samuel.
Professor Geoffrey Samuel discusses Tibetan Buddhism, yoga, tantra, and the medicalization of mindfulness in modern society.
Key Takeaways
- Mindfulness and meditation practices should be understood within their original cultural and philosophical contexts.
- Tibetan Buddhism and tantra are deeply embedded in complex social and historical frameworks.
- The medicalization of mindfulness risks oversimplifying and misrepresenting traditional practices.
- Interdisciplinary research is essential to grasp the full scope of Asian spiritual and healing traditions.
- Modern science, including neuroscience, has limitations in explaining holistic mind-body connections.
What the video covers
- Professor Geoffrey Samuel, an expert in Tibetan Buddhism, Asian medicine, and anthropology, shares his academic journey from physics to social anthropology.
- He explains his personal and intellectual interest in Tibetan Buddhism and tantric practices, emphasizing their cultural and social contexts.
- Samuel highlights the complexity of Tibetan society and the origins of tantra primarily from India.
- He discusses the growing interest in Asian medicine, particularly Tibetan medicine, through collaborative research projects.
- The conversation touches on the modern medicalization and popularization of mindfulness, cautioning against its decontextualization.
- Samuel critiques the oversimplification of Buddhist practices like mindfulness as universal solutions.
- He stresses the importance of understanding meditation and yogic practices within their broader philosophical and cultural frameworks.
- The dialogue explores the challenges and limitations of neuroscience in fully capturing the mind-body-spirit connection.
- Samuel reflects on the political and historical aspects influencing the study and interpretation of yoga, tantra, and Indian religions.
- He underscores the ongoing need for interdisciplinary research to deepen understanding of Asian spiritual and healing traditions.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction to Professor Geoffrey Samuel
- 03:19Academic Background and Early Interests
- 06:35Studying Tibetan Buddhism and Society
- 10:09Overview of Career and Research Focus
- 13:52Medicalization and Popularization of Mindfulness
- 17:18Philosophical and Practical Implications of Meditation
- 24:26Challenges in Neuroscience and Spirituality
- 29:14Political and Historical Contexts of Yoga and Tantra
- 31:59Future Directions in Research on Asian Traditions
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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Professor Samuel is Emeritus Professor in the School of History, Archaeology, and Religion at Cardiff University.
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And also is an honorary associate of the Department of Indian Subcontinental Studies at the University of Sydney.
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Professor Samuel is or has been a visiting professor to different universities. His academic background is in physics and social anthropology.
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And he is very interesting as he's an expert on Tibetan religion and society.
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He researches with Tibetans, Nepalese, and Indians. He is very well-recognized for his work.
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He is the author of different books, among which are Mind, Body, and Culture: Anthropology and the Biological Interface.
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Another book, a very interesting one, is Introducing Tibetan Buddhism.
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And one of the main books I have read of Professor Geoffrey Samuel is The Origins of Yoga and Tantra, a very specialized book, very interesting and very recommendable to everybody interested in this field of yoga, tantra, and Indian religions.
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Professor Geoffrey Samuel, thank you very much indeed for accepting my invitation to talk with you. It's for me a pleasure and an honor to have you in these conversations.
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So, would you mind starting by telling me how your interest arose in these Asian philosophies like yoga, tantrism, Buddhism, and also ancient medicine?
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Well, first I'd really like to thank you, Madan, for inviting me to be here. It's a great pleasure to take part in an occasion like this.
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I'm quite honored, too. And how did I first become interested in this?
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You mentioned that my initial qualifications were in physics, which seems somewhat away from what we're talking about here.
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Social anthropology, which maybe is a little bit closer.
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In some ways, they both feed into what happened later.
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But around the time when I became involved in these things, I suppose this was back in the late '60s.
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1960s. I was a young person who was becoming interested in meditation and Asian forms of practice, Tai Chi, whatever.
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Beginning to learn about Buddhism. And at the same time, I was also feeling, well, do I actually want to spend the rest of my life as a physicist? Is this quite the right direction?
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And somehow this all came together in the idea of doing anthropological research on Buddhism.
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And specifically on Tibetan Buddhism. And so that's where I started off.
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But there was always a level of personal involvement in the practice side as well as an intellectual and academic involvement in trying to understand what was going on.
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Primarily within an anthropological framework, though I think also in other ways as well. I think there's always a kind of philosophical interest too.
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And certainly practical interest. So I think what that means in part is, and to some extent that comes through in the Origins of Yoga and Tantra book,
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that I was always trying to understand why people are doing these things, how they fit into the wider social, cultural, intellectual context of their times.
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And that particular book in some ways is a kind of, I used to think of it as a kind of prequel, you know, in the sense of a film prequel, to my writings on Tibet.
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Because I started studying Tibetan Buddhism. A lot of the first part of my career was really just trying to work out enough to get some kind of picture of what was going on in Tibet.
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And Tibet is a pretty complicated place. There's a lot of variation, a lot of things which are not very obvious at first sight.
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And so I found I had to get a picture of Tibetan society, the variation in Tibetan society, the different kinds of places where Tibetan Buddhism took root in Tibet and what it was doing for different groups of people and why.
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And then I began to make some sense of Tantra. But of course, Tantra didn't come from Tibet. It came primarily from India as far as the Tibetans were concerned.
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And at the same time, I was also becoming involved to some extent in some level of Tantric practice. This is very interesting and strange stuff, and I wanted to know where it came from.
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And so that led me to becoming interested more in the Indian material or South Asian material.
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And so in writing the Yoga and Tantra book, the interest in health and medicine kind of grew up along the same time as all this was happening.
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Like a lot of things in my academic life, it came out of an encounter with one of my students who wanted to work on Tibetan medicine and Tibetan healing.
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This is Elise Datsbury, who actually died a couple of years ago, but was really interested in Tibetan medicine.
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And one way or another, along with another colleague in Australia, at that stage I was living in Australia, we got involved in a research project on Tibetan medicine.
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And then that developed in different ways, and that got me involved with the wider field of Asian medicine and so on.
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And then I think tying all these together perhaps is just trying to understand how these complex processes of mind and body and consciousness and reality and connection with the wider world that we're part of operate.
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So, that perhaps is the more philosophical or intellectual basis of all of this.
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Well, that's a quick glance, maybe.
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Yeah, that makes it extremely highly interesting.
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So, now let's see. Nowadays, as we know, there is a lot of interest in our society about meditation. Basically, most people know about mindfulness.
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So, it's very much related to Buddhism. Now, in my opinion, it's out of the context of the deep philosophy that Buddhism teaches.
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We have in our modern society medicalized all these types of techniques, and I'd like to know your opinion about this.
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How, you know, it's being inserted in our society in such a way that it looks like a panacea.
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It reminds me in a sense of when the TM Transcendental Meditation, you know, the initiation to the mantras with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, that it seemed was going to save the whole world from every bad situation and so forth.
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So, I'd like to know your opinion about this.
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Yes. Well, I think a lot of us have been rather concerned about the way in which mindfulness became a panacea and mindfulness was appearing all around the place and in all sorts of different contexts without very much understanding of what it meant in its original context or without much understanding either of its complexity.
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And I think the mindfulness practices are only part of a wider spectrum of yogic meditation or mind-transformative mind-body transformative practices.
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They're suitable for some people and some situations, and maybe less for others and other situations.
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One point, I got involved in a research project on people on the autism spectrum, for example, and mindfulness seemed to be quite a problematic approach, and many of them were, whereas other sorts of meditation might have been more helpful.
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We were in the middle of the mindfulness epidemic, if you like, or craze, and so they were being given mindfulness too.
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So, yes. I mean, I think I'm very concerned, again, like many of us, with the medicalization of these processes, but it's a two-way process too because
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many of, well, firstly, the influence is going both directions, I think. The kind of serious encounter with...
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don't seem to have a great deal of um wisdom to face it with, at least not built into the system that we're operating by.
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And um so, while I I I think it's it's it's unwise and it's ultimately not really helpful to to take some bit of Asian wisdom and say, "This is the solution." Um there is a lot to be gained if we can
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open ourselves up to other ways of looking at who we are in the world, um and we relate to each other, to the to the planet, and um uh to other life on the planet.
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Um and um uh so I I don't really see Buddhism as the solution, but I I and I don't see Hindu thought as the solution, but I I do see elements of both of them as things that could be
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um very helpfully integrated into what's an increasingly global situation anyway. Um I don't know whether whether that's clear but that's kind of the way I I I tend to see things, which is these there is there is a lot here of very great
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potential value that can help the world if it allows it to happen to um to uh to meet what is happening uh in a a more I don't know.
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Um graceful, human, less sensitive less destructive way. And um which I I come to that point of view. I very much value it, but uh but we do have to to watch out for all these processes of assimilation and appropriation and
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medicalization and and reworking. So, you know, um meditation just becomes a way to keep the the machinery of of uh um global capitalism and exploitation working a bit more smoothly, you know.
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And obviously people have written quite a bit about that and and um and I think I'm very much on side with that with that agenda as as something that we we need to to worry about, but I don't
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think that's a reason to um to abandon the whole project and I I don't think that most of the people who are um who are objecting to what's going on would would want that anyway.
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Um Yeah, because because as you said, it seems to be quite right to me.
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And um and emphasis in our society seems to be the well-being of the body-mind mechanisms that we have devoted so much attention to. However, I do remember myself being young.
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I I was fascinated by the Asian countries and India because all these countries, all these philosophies of liberation, salvific philosophies, or whatever you want to call them. Or the perennial philosophy was like um having the chance, the opportunity
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to have a different state of mind. Of course, I'm not going to We're not going to go to aspire to nirvana, nirvana, samadhi, or or any other state, you know, as the Upanishads can talk about mukti or moksha, for instance.
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But in in in in in a sense, all of these methods, all these techniques, all these philosophies seems to be now divided like in our society as Tagore used to say, we are looking at outwards. I mean, we are in
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the physical world, the material world in order to try to control it and feel better ourselves within, you know, this scheme.
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However, in the oriental world, it's like closing the eyes to go inside and to discover and explore more deeply yourself. Now, here we come across with a difficulty with the is the problem of consciousness or the body-mind problem. So, according
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to your studies, investigations, and research in the world of meditation, Buddhism yoga tantrism. What do What is your opinion about consciousness? Consciousness is the product of the evolution.
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And it comes all the way up to where we are. Often does consciousness in a sense exist already and expresses through, you know, different things in the world we're living in.
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I know the the the question is not easy, but we can give any opinion like everybody else.
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I think Jeffrey, in other words, what I'm trying to say in a sense that at least, you know, you see all these because all these great lamas and monks and yogis in a sense they're looking for something beyond the body-mind mechanisms.
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But in a sense, we just trying just to stop all age to be fully healthy the the years we have to live. But it seems to be we do not aspire to anything beyond our egoism or whatever our ego or whatever
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you want to call it. To enrich ourselves as well as spiritually, that is the the the the main point of these philosophies from Asia that that they're having offering us all these type of things. And through this meditation from Theravada or the
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great the great masters and that you I I heard you mentioning in in some of your videos, you know, like Uba King or Waykan Mahasi Sayadaw or any other, okay, or even the great teachers and lamas from Tibet. So,
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do do you think that in our society we are expert in in, you know, in social anthropology and this type of things, we do aspire really to to get this type of experiences that the Indic religions are offering us
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in a sense? I think maybe we can learn to uh to get closer to to uh uh to what these practices are in their in a their Asian context. I remember thinking about the difference between a um Tibetan monastery and a Western
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Dharma center, you know, in the Buddhist world. Um and um in the Tibetan monastery you maybe have um quite a large monastery and you have uh a relatively small people small group of people who might be advanced yogic
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practitioners. Um in fact, the advanced yogic practitioners might be up in some small hermitage up the valley, but you know.
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Um and and you have lots of people who are basically just keeping the place going.
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Um maybe doing the cooking and the cleaning and and and maintaining the the the outward direction of the the institution, which is helping the local community. And um and this is okay because there is a sense of the monastery as a as a
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collective undertaking. That is something that's happening on behalf of the society as a whole. It was often very closely linked to the local village community or town or whatever. Um now, if you move to the Western Dharma center,
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everybody wants to get enlightenment, Nirvana, whatever, Buddha-hood, as soon as possible, of course. And and and nobody's necessarily that interested in doing the the cooking and the magic.
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Um and um uh it's a much more egotistic at one level approach to the whole thing. But the uh the thing there is that in a way that doesn't actually work. And um because the practices are not really
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um detached from their uh their emotional context and their moral context. And they only really work, I think, and and in ways this this is very clear in the Tibetan context of the teachings on bodhicitta, you know, on on um the
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underlying motivation of compassion that that is how you get to Buddha-hood, you know. Um it's um and and I think that's something that people are uh are gradually realizing.
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I I think you know, when Buddhism went to Tibet, it arrived maybe in the early 7th century. It's a little bit hazy.
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Um it probably took about four or five centuries for things to really start settling down.
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Um and um uh well, I mean, things you know, the first Westerners to be ordained as Buddhist monks were in around 1900. So, I mean, things have been happening for a while. Um um but um but nevertheless, I mean,
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these are processes that um that can't really be rushed too much. Um and um so I I I'm I'm not pessimistic that uh more and more people will come to a a deeper understanding of what these practices are really about.
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Um maybe to a certain extent that also answers the question about consciousness. Because I think um if we think of consciousness as something that's going on in our personal mind or even worse brain, you know, um then that that's quite limiting.
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Um if we think of ourselves as as um you know, one node, one point in a in a much more complex field which which is, you know, one level includes all life on the planet, you know.
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Um then it's a bit different. And um I mean, I don't I I have, I suppose, guesses and intuitions about the relationship between consciousness and and um and the uh the body and the material level. Um And um but I don't think they're more
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than that. I I I and I don't want to to push them too far. Um one of the things I've been doing quite recently was that I've been involved in a um some joint work with a a um a neuroscientist, um
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Mariuca Shapkina, who who work does very interesting experimental work on Buddhist tantra. Um and um quite sensitive to the wider processes that are involved in it. But um a and like all of these kind of interdisciplinary projects, I mean, just
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getting to the point where you understand the other person and what they're doing enough to to be able to say anything takes quite a long time. It was quite a challenging experience.
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But um at one level that um, it's very positive to see how far Maria was able to get in terms of, um, understanding some of the specific processes, uh, of tantric practice as opposed to, uh, say the mindfulness type practices.
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And, uh, she sees them, and I think it's showing this quite effectively as as very different. And, you know, it's engaging the, um, the nervous system in very different ways um and um uh, and as and also as,
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um, which I think is important as part of an an ongoing process. So, you it you can't, I think, understand a tantric practice in terms of, um, doing a single thing. You're doing a series of things that is moving you or
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transforming you in various ways. And, both on the occasion of a a particular, um, say meditation session, um, uh, or a particular application because, uh, these are also things that might be used in terms of health or in in terms
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of of, uh, the other positive impacts on on on the wider group. Um, you're not simply, um, moving into this. You're This is part of a sequence of practices and events, uh, a wider connection to the world that you're part
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of. Now, um, neuroscience can capture some of that, but only a very limited part of this this stage. So, the the, in a sense, the negative part of that that project was realizing how limited science still is on that particular
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version of science. And, of course, neuroscience is really uh, it's a big thing at the moment. It's one of the main languages we talk about ourselves in. Um realizing how limited that actually is in capturing what we're talking about.
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Um so um yeah, I I I think we're we're still beginning to to encounter some of these problems and issues and to take them to take the role of consciousness more seriously and in different ways.
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Um and there's there's a tradition of thought which you may be familiar with because it it has a um um some at least in it has has has uh has had important con- contributions from the uh Hispanic context that which
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is um uh the uh the mode of thought that goes back to people like Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela and the the enactive approach to to meditation and and to consciousness more generally.
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I mean, that already sees consciousness as part of a much wider and more total context and and um to me that's is a very promising way to go.
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Um but I don't think we're anywhere near there yet and I'm I'm not sure we're ever going to get there in quite that sense, you know.
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Um So, you know, it comes to my mind the Greeks used to say that the theory has to have a basis or the practice should have also a good basis in theory. That we have what you are trying to explain to me and to all
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the people who are going to see us in this video. So, from the practical point of view, do you just uh you know, like say a few words or lead or mention like a short meditation from the from
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the Tibetan Buddhist techniques in order for people to be able to follow or to practice or understand it.
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You know, because I I know there are so many techniques, such a variety of techniques. But you are an expert in this matter, this subject.
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So, you are so kind just, you know, to say a few tips, a few points, just just to give some hints, some some explanations, instruction how to do, you know, evil searching or many other, you know, different techniques over there or
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or using a mandala or using a yantra or visualizing something or even the the that we later on we can you can say something about the subtle body and the different chakras and so on and so forth.
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Yes. Um I I'm I'm not It's It's quite difficult to um to do something quickly, I think of that kind. Um and um uh What what I I I think uh What I I think for me is interesting in
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the uh in the way Tibetan tantric practice works. And I think it's one of the keys perhaps to a lot of these practices is um uh It is the the sense that you are using the um deity or the image of the deity within
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the mandala as a a way to shape what how your mind and body might operate.
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Uh and again there is a kind of of um flow that ideally is set up.
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Um at the moment I'm I'm um working through material on uh long life meditation and my tantric practices into that.
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And um so I think one of the interesting things about um medicine and health in our society is that um uh is the issue that in a way has kind of grown up around the the concept of the
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placebo, although I think a placebo is a very limiting way to look at it, is uh that a large part of the process of healing um isn't something that medical science can really do much about, you know, people.
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Um you you can intervene in all sorts of ways, but it's also true that you can you can't be sure why or how um people recover or don't recover.
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Um and um uh the more you move from the statistical level to the individual level, the less the less you can say about that.
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Uh and I think looking at Tibetan medicine part of what is going on is that the the Tibetan doctor um attends a much more subtle and individual approach to to the balances or imbalances in the individual, but but
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to move to the the context of of tantric practice and um one of the things a Tibetan doctor might do is is to in a sense prescribe tantric practice, you know, and because there tends to be a backwards and forwards process between
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them. I What What does What does the the tantric practice consist of generally? Well, I'm coming to that.
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Um So, you might, for example, be be looking at a a deity like Amitabha, um who is one of the primary deities of long life, um or rather isn't by Tara, but anyway, we'll stay with it.
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And um so, you can see Amitabha as as a um figure that has, well, obviously, at some level he or he and she, if it's a male and female version, um and often is, um uh uh and our um
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have a positive relationship to the energies of the universe around them. They, uh and there's a kind of um uh both an outward flow of contact and an inward flow of energy, which is which is based on an idea of the the universe as
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being fundamentally positive. Um is being motivated, if you like, by love and compassion. And um so, if you are somebody who maybe is uh is sick, is not feeling very good about it, and the world seems threatening, um
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in old Tibet, you might see this in terms of possibilities of spirit attacking. In our days, you might see it in different ways.
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Um but if you set up a relationship with this image, and with and so the image may be in a mandala with a whole series of positive surrounding figures as reinforcing it in various ways, um your consciously um
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moving between where you are and another possibility of being, which perhaps enables you to um to adjust and and here I think not consciously, but much more through the ongoing process, um your mind-body consciousness environment interactions um to a healthier and more positive form.
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Um So, I mean, what looks like um you know, these rather weird deities with several arms and all sorts of attributes and and in strange colors, which normally hidden beings aren't quite like, you know, um and um what are you supposed to be doing
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with them and and why can't we do something kind of simple and straightforward like um the personal mindfulness practice, um it it's there's actually a a quite subtle and quite complex process going on here, um which in some ways
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actually goes back to early Buddhism. Um so, the the idea of of the Buddha as as a a model that you're emulating in various ways, but but now in a more complex and subtle way.
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Um and um I think to look at some of the the the more complex Tibetan practices in that way makes a lot of sense. Um I'm not all that sure often how useful it is to to get more directly into the more
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philosophical side of the practices um until you have some kind of grounding in the the whole world that they are part of.
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Um you know, I think to uh I'm not saying that one should not try to gain an understanding of how the world is viewed in Buddhism, but I think it's also possible to to try too hard to get there too fast to
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kind of shortcut the process development that's involved. It's a bit like the Tibetan preliminary practices like you do your 100,000 prostrations and 100,000 recitations of this mantra and and the mandala offerings and so on and and uh if you come from our cultures and um
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desire to just get on with the process, you know, kind of really But in your sense it may be it's holistic as well.
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In your sense, right? Just to to to to just in order to transform your state of being, your state of body, mind, glory.
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But as you said, we we we belong to the philosophy of the immediacy. We just want things right now. You plant the seed and you already want the fruit. So we don't have any time just to to water
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it properly. So it seems to me, you know, very very interesting. So we need to develop patience and dedication at the same time.
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So going for a moment back to what is your opinion about yoga? Yoga and tantrism because yoga is based at some part of it, at least part of the hatha yoga is basic on tantrism.
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There is a tantric Buddhism and then there appear later on different texts. I think to remember from the 10th century uh onwards about, you know, different techniques of hatha yoga. So, uh we use tantric methods here like from
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the sexual point of view. I mean, in in in the West, I mean. But, what is that movement consist of?
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Obviously, that they speak about a subtle invisible body. The the the invisible, you know, uh body mechanism, you know, like the astral body, like the chakras, like all these type of, you know, hidden mechanisms that we do not accept here.
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And at the same time, you know, this pranic system just to wake up the famous kundalini.
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Is Is it really so? Does it exist or not? We see it a lot of literature about that. I mean, you know, but what is your opinion? Because you are this I think the book I showed it before, but you are a lovely book. I
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tried to remind it out the time about people. Um I I I'm edited and I didn't write. I co-edited a a book a a few years after that, which was was specific about the subtle body. And I was in What What I was trying to do
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there and um Jay Johnson, who I wrote it edited it with, they were What we were trying to do really was to say, "Look, there This is a mode of thinking which you can find over very many human cultures and
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um it wouldn't be there if there wasn't something behind it. Um So, um yeah, I I think the subtle body is and I'm using subtle body in a quite wide sense here because there you know, there there are more
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specific ways of using it than there are wider ones. But um I think um for me what is interesting here is is in part that you have a level of a way of looking at things which is somewhere in between the physical and
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the the um the mental and psychic. Um and um contains elements of both. So, um of course I I mean that's not entirely alien to Western thought. I I think it's very much part of what Jung was getting
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at, for example. Um and um both with the the archetypes and later on with the the idea of the cycle and it, but um the um I think again um it's maybe important not to get too fixated on the
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um the language and to see it more in terms of process. Uh for me the the point about the the chakras and the nadis and the inner flow of prana and so on is not so much that this is
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um uh a set of things going on. It It's not that this is a an accurate map of processes in the body.
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Um it's more that it's a guide to reshaping processes within the body. Um and um I I tried to write about that a bit in a couple of recent things and I I hope to write a bit more about it, but
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um uh I think this is one of the areas which is quite difficult to handle scientifically.
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And partly because there's a there's a kind of tendency to jump to oh well, this is all about process is the nervous system or something, And the chakras are really equivalent to particular locations in the body. Um I think if you look at different
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uh sets of ideas in um within the various Hindu tantric systems uh within the various Buddhist tantric systems uh within the Daoist practices which again use very similar kinds of languages, within some Sufi practices which also have uh subtle centers in the body. Um
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then you begin um you begin to sense that this is less about um this is what the body is really like and we dumb Westerners can't see it. Um and it's more about how do we um again reshape ourselves in a more
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positive and healthy and productive way. And um so you know, some of the ways in which they uh Tibetan practices link together um the emotional, the bodily um the sexual um some flows of sexual substances and uh sexual arousal and so on are part of
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the picture. And and link them all to uh to the bodhicitta, to the idea of compassion and and um and this becomes a way of harnessing quite uh very strong and powerful human impulses and directing them towards a particular goal which is the this case
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of Buddhist enlightenment or some subsidiary goal in relation to that. Um and um so I I tend to see these things more in that way I think I think in some ways that also goes more naturally together together with
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the way in which they're approached within uh certainly within Tibetan society. Um that uh and I mean I think there's no doubt that you can do things with the subtle body if you like and um my friend Maria the neuroscientist I
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mentioned before um has done quite a lot of work on tummo. These are the practices that one that will generate heat within the body and they're they're very closely related I think to uh to the kundalini practices. They use
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similar breathing techniques and again there is there is a goddess at the the base of the spine who is being awakened um uh tend only tummo.
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Um and um uh it's certainly possible to use the visualization to gain a level of control over the autonomic nervous system and other bodily processes which we don't normally have.
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I think um um but the the real issue and I think this is something that Maria is also very clear about um is where does it take you in the longer term um in terms of human development. It's
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not so much can you raise the temperature in your armpits by 3° C, you know.
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Which you can but you know it's um uh uh can you go around at night on a freezing cold winter's night in Tibet drying off wet blankets or something, you know.
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Yeah, that was designed in in Dr. Herbert Benson uh documentary where he went there to Tibet to see all all the lamas doing this tummo meditation right?
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Well I I well I think I think um uh yeah, uh Benson did some early work on this. I I think I think have moved on a bit since then, but but I suppose you get the the basic point.
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The The point isn't isn't really so much to generate heat. The point obviously that has a certain What's How can I put it? Publicity value. If you're living in country lights that's Um it's um And and and of course that's also part
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of the the way these things operate. I mean, just as um in the West, we have our ways of selling what we produce. I think I think there's a certain amount of a showmanship about quite a bit of Tibetan practice, too.
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Um But the real point is that this is a way uh to move along a certain path of human development that allows the achievement of of like of higher levels of um human functioning and human relating to each other and to the the wider
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world. And that's the point about the chakras and and these languages ultimately. Yeah, because even nowadays in our society too, there's you know, a big interest in chakras and meditation, manipulating the chakras, waking up the energy and all these type of things.
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So uh in in tantrism, uh okay, we got basically these left and right hand movements.
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So, as far as sex is concerned, you know, all these um the five Ms, I think to remember in in the left hand tantrism, maithuna. So, wait.
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Is that real? Is that connection, sexual connection? It was it part of the instructions, part of the teachings in tantrism?
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You mean in the Buddhist context? In the Buddhism that I I think the Indic and the Indian tantric actually first of all, I think was developed by Buddhism and then was taken by by the the Hindu tantrism.
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If that is Well, I I I I really don't know. I think maybe it was happening across all of across the the various Hindu traditions, across the Buddhists, across the Jains, um maybe in contact with the Chinese, too,
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you know. Um I I don't know. I mean, my feeling is that if um and I put it if you you're an Hindu yogic practitioner in the 8th century and you run into some Buddhist guy who's doing some
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things similar but a bit different. Yeah. Um you probably ask him for a few hints, you know, you try to understand what they're doing.
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You you see this, you know, you're less interested uh just like people like the Bauls today in Bengal, you know, you're less interested in what they find similar than the fact that you're you're kind of in the same game and you can learn from
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each other, you know. Right. Um So, uh so I I mean, obviously uh Buddhism um as an institution um developed stories about how um our way of doing things is better than their way of doing things, you know. And
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vice versa. Um I think as far as as uh sexual practice is concerned, um uh you can both overestimate and underestimate its significance, you know.
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Um it's symbolically quite important, certainly in terms of the whole question of male-female balance and and within the individual as well as a wider contact.
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Um it's also uh there still is a quite real practice tradition with the Tibetans and using um sexual practice as part of the process of um meditative development.
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Um at the same time most Tibetans and practitioners don't use it. Um and um for one thing of course a lot of them are monks and are ordained and supposed to be celibate. So that creates a problem.
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Um and um so it's one of a series of methods, a series of techniques by now. I think there was a period when it was probably somewhat more important.
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Um but I think also I mean Tibet is a very different place from India.
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Um and um I think um sexuality and celibacy and these issues in the Indian context certainly in the you know sort of relatively contemporary Indian context that I know and perhaps you you you know fair amount about too.
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Um has a certain value um you know in the the sort of uh in a society that has high demands of purity and and um moral behavior of a particular kind.
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Yeah, it has to do with it has to do with the to do as you mentioned in your book it has to do with asceticism in the beginning and sannyasa and renunciation. I mean that fighting between the the the family people and
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those who who renounce in the world and therefore there was that type of controversy between those let's say two groups. So, I I want to take you to love.
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So, I I become to to ask you a last question. What is your opinion about yoga? I mean, your book you you you come all the way from the Indus Valley, you know, until the 13th century more or less.
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Uh this way you treat all these and different techniques and the study. Yoga and tracing Buddhism and Jainism.
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So, uh many people say, "Okay, yoga started in the Indus Valley." Of course, with those figurines, with those seals, but it seems to be this idea has been dismissed by the the erudites nowadays nowadays.
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So mhm where does according to your thought, yoga start? You know, because nowadays, also if we come all the way from there to our present moment with a contemporary or modern yoga, we also see a big difference, you know, you you got in
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this modern yoga context the different teachers, different traditions like Sivananda tradition, like Krishnamacharya and so on and so forth.
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So, everything has changed so much. Um but uh from the tradition itself, could you give like a very short short survey, you know, from that moment, let's say, a few minutes, we are going to go through 3,000 years or something like that. The
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way up to here. How How you say? How How is your perspective about What is your vision about all these yoga practices and movements and and and and the shamanas in those moments where everything is started with asceticism and purification and you know
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the different texts that nowadays are being studied and published according to the Hatha Project which I managed with Mark Singleton and some other very highly interested people.
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Yes. Um I I I think they've been doing some very interesting work. Um a lot of it is kind of a since it's kind of post-tantric.
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Um And um I think I think it's pretty clear that a lot of the uh the tradition of what we might call postural yoga now, the the the asanas and and and uh did grow up in the as a kind of accessory to tantric
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practice. But but um prehistory of yoga before that. Um I I in the the Origins of Yoga and Tantra book, I'm you know, I'm I suppose probably fairly conventionally by now I was saying in the there's this period in about 7th, 8th, 9th century
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when when all this new stuff comes in and and it at least it comes to the surface. It becomes visible very quickly. Um and it happens within Buddhism, within Jainism, within the different Hindu traditions, particularly Shaivism. Um and um
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that's when the elaborate systems of chakras and nadis and internal flows get uh become significant. That's when the Is it in the 7th or 8th century or something like that more or less or Yeah. Yeah. Um and um
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Now, I mean the there is a prehistory in India certainly before that. Um and it's um see yogic type perhaps is being used in various ways, but we don't seem to see the the the more complex postural procedures and the breathing
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practices. Use of breath seems to be simpler. The all this is a bit arguable and debatable. Um I I think we always need to remember with India that um there's an awful lot going on and we only have a fairly small part of
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it that's come down through particular lines and traditions. I mean, this is particularly so when you move back to the Vedic uh period, I think. Uh which is why I was trying to um to fit together as much as possible of
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the archaeology and the iconog- iconography and so on to to to get some sense of a wider picture. So, you know, like you get all those wonderful terracotta images from um Chandraketugarh in Bengal and and areas around there, which seem to be about
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something quite a bit different from our picture of the religion at the time. Um and you seem to have different things again going on in the south and we have a bit of information about that. Um but um
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So, uh I mean, as I say, probably picked up from the book I'm I'm I'm one of the people who's rather cynical about what we can know about Indus Valley religion.
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Um I don't I think all those those seal images are wonderful, but I have no idea what they mean. And and it's pretty clear that people have read a lot of different things into them.
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Um And of course, at the moment also all this is terribly political because of the you know the the um desire of of the contemporary Indian state to to see a particular sort of Hindu history of as being part of that you
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know that state building project. Um and um which means as it's actually quite difficult for a lot of people in India who maybe know more about what's going on to talk about it.
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Um and um uh but I think it's clear that there are meditative processes of different kinds that people were experimenting with certainly back to the time of the Shramana traditions you know and and I also think it's quite clear there that
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this is a kind of shared milieu of um Hindu or pre-Hindu groups and Buddhist groups and Jain groups and whatever that that they're talking to each other they're sharing material.
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Um and I one of the things I was trying to do in the in the origins of yoga and tantra was to to make the case that that is strong as possible because I think it's an important case to understand how
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far those religions share things how those traditions share things and and um and I think that undercuts also this sense of you know one is better than another and one is is more significant than another one you know I don't think it's quite I think
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they're developing at the together in many ways and in relation to each other. Um so uh that that would be at least part of my answer there. Um I don't think we can say anything about the Indus Valley and
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and uh as I said I in terms of yogic practice, I just don't don't think the the material we have allows us to say that.
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And this controversy about the Aryans came over or else the Dravidians were already there and it started in Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa you know, they mixed together you know, all this big debate keeps going on and on with different authors talking about you
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know, different ways of looking at it. Yeah. Well I'd I'd love to know more but I don't think we do at this stage and and I I think There is this problem as I said our evidence is quite limited so you look at
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early Sanskrit early Sanskrit of the Vedas and and then you discover that okay, we've got something similar but different going on in Iran and then you discover well, you know, we've got a closely related language and some many of the same concepts and so on
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and and then you find that some are over in in what's now Turkey you know, with the the In the Mitanni people you have some group of people wandering around who seem to have what we'd recognize as Brahmanical gods,
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you know, writing about them in cuneiform and and then you get people like I mean Asko Parpola in some ways is one of my heroes as he's wonderfully creative mind but it seems to me that that um You know, by the time you try to fit all
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these things together into some kind of consistent picture that it has become so speculative that it's really not telling you anything very useful and there are technical reasons about the arc, you know, about the archaeology and about the
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dating that make it rather difficult to to tie things down much more. Well, you know, I'm sure we'll find out some more um but it and particularly if and when we get to the stage when um you know, serious archaeology becomes
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possible through a lot of the region. And of course, it things are bad in India, they're worse in in places like Afghanistan, you know.
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Um or uh So okay but just just to end up our conversation here, very very enriching and interesting from your side.
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Uh if we are coming back to our modern times, we see, you know, all these methods and techniques like yoga, but basically the emphasis is put in the asanas.
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Basically, you know, that is what when we talk about yoga, you we speak about that. When we speak about meditation, when we speak about basically mindfulness.
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So, the In my opinion, the essence, what is behind all these methods, all these systems, as I mentioned previously, is is being put aside in a corner.
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So, those who devote our service in a sense to teach yoga, meditation, sometimes we come across with the difficult things.
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You also, if you go back, for instance, to the as I mentioned before as well, uh to the Upanishads, okay? You got the the word, you know, what yoga. And they say it appears in the Katha Upanishad, for
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instance, in in in the beginning, you know? But but um this textual sources in the Hatha Yoga Project are putting the emphasis in a very highly interested way in in in in the texts itself. What they contain, what
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they teach, how they used to teach in those, you know, 11th century, 12th century.
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But I suppose before the appearance of these written texts in in these traditions used to be a way of moving, a way of living, a way of practicing that we are not able to trace.
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Therefore, if we put it also the emphasis just to look at the systems from the 10th century, 11th century, we are losing a lot of the background that we are not able to trace it, just to find it, just to follow it, just to
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discover it. So, I mean by this probably that we still have a long way to go in order to research and then analyze what all these, you know, uh countries like India, like many Asian countries, and uh and Tibet and Nepal and Bhutan
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and uh you know, Myanmar and uh and Thailand and uh Sri Lanka, I mean from the Buddhist perspective, from the Buddhist knowledge and also the yogic knowledge.
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So, uh I think uh yourself you you have synthesized very nicely, you know, everything you were saying about this these traditions or methods.
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And um I very deeply recognize your knowledge and and you know, um your kindness to be with me during this day, during this morning here in Spain, light or night there in Australia.
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And uh I have you in high esteem I can see ratio. And really thank you very much indeed for your time that you have spent with me.
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And I am sure that all your knowledge and your experience in the different fields, Buddhism meditation uh Asian medicine and so and so forth is going to be of great interest to all the viewers of our video.
Speaker A
So, Professor Samuel, Geoffrey Samuel, I really very much indeed thank you very indeed. I show you want to show you my gratitude for, you know, this moment that you have spent with me today.
Speaker A
Well, thank you. Thank you very much. So, that's um uh I feel that um I've I've tended to give rather complicated answers to your questions and maybe that's um inevitable from where I am at the moment, but I I hope maybe there are
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some That is what That is what we need, just to to go deep into the subject because as we mentioned before, people want simple things and very quick answers. I'm trying to clarify every doubt. And we know that is is not easy at all. We
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need, you know, experts like yourself who know the topic so deeply and we need to go there just in order to understand, you know, and and shed some light upon these difficult topics, actually, I I I would say.
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Well, I hope so. Anyway, look, thank you very much for having me on on the the program. And it's it's been a pleasure for me, too. And I I've really enjoyed myself, actually.
Speaker A
Been good to meet you, too. Okay. Okay, Professor. So, we'll be We'll be in touch, okay? Thank you very much, indeed. Thank you very much.
Speaker A
All the best.
Topics:Geoffrey SamuelTibetan BuddhismYogaTantraAsian medicineMindfulnessMeditationAnthropologyTibetan medicineSpirituality
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