YSP 42 Samuel M. Grimes | Newar Buddhism, Nepal, and Yoga

[Music] All right, welcome everyone to the Yogic Studies podcast. I'm your host, Seth Powell. This is episode 42. Today, we are joined by Dr. Samuel Grimes, who is currently the Shinjo ETO post-doctoral fellow in Buddhist studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Sam, welcome to Yogic Studies. Great to have you here.

Thank you for the invitation.

Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, are you, you're in Berkeley right now?

Yes, I'm in California, in Berkeley, on a sunny November day. Beautiful.

Yeah, well, I'm just a couple hours north of you, as we were just discussing, but, uh, we probably will meet not in California for the first time, but all the way in San Antonio, it sounds like, at the upcoming A conference.

Um, so yeah, we haven't met yet, but I think we were introduced by a mutual friend and colleague in Ben Williams.

Um, remind me, how do you know Ben?

Um, I first met Ben actually over the phone maybe 10 years ago. I called and asked him some questions about Abhinavagupta, but we were introduced through, uh, our friend John Nimi, who is my adviser at Virginia. We read, um, some Shyex together and then Ben came and gave a talk at Virginia where I met him.

Nice.

Yeah, well, Ben and I overlapped at Harvard and have become good friends and colleagues, and he of course taught for us, uh, at Yogic Studies on Shyat Tantra, so, um, that was a great connection for us and, uh, yeah, it's been nice to connect and to learn more about your, your work.

I had, I had actually seen, I think, that article that you wrote on, um, looking at Sanskritic Buddhist texts in relationship to the Am City, right?

Yeah, which I hope to talk about with you here today.

Um, so I was, I was familiar a bit with your work through that, um, but I think you, as you know it Yogic Studies, um, you know, we previously had two different platforms, Yogic Studies and then Buddhist Studies Online, and we decided to merge them together to create one happy holistic platform, um, looking broadly at really South Asian religious traditions.

Um, but at the core, you know, we're looking at, you know, at yoga, um, and then we have, you know, a full curriculum in Buddhist studies developing as well. So I was excited when we, you know, kind of broached the topic of this course because it's obviously the most happy medium between yoga studies and Buddhist studies, which is Yoga in Buddhism, right?

Um, and we have had some courses looking at that from different angles previously. We had Karen O'Brien Cop teach a course on classical yoga of Patanjali and Yogachara Buddhism, kind of looking at, um, what is classical yoga philosophy and looking at Sankhya and Buddhist philosophy.

Uh, and then we also had Ian Baker come on and look at, um, yoga through some of those Tibetan, uh, tantric materials, which I imagine there's some overlap with the kind of work that you do, um, but also probably distinct in other ways as well.

Um, so tell us a little bit about, uh, your background and the work and, and research that you do.

Um, yeah, I mean, I can, let me give you an abridged version. Um, I first became interested in Buddhism when I was an undergrad and I went to Thailand and ordained as a novice monk for a very short period of time in a program called Monk for a Month that existed for, I don't know, not even a year. And then, um, I went to University of Hawaii where I was, I first encountered Sanskrit and I did an MA there and it was there that I was first exposed to, um, Abhinavagupta and Tantra and, um, Pratyabhijna and I wanted to keep studying that and I was told that Kashmir Shaivism was Alexis Sanderson, so I went to Oxford, but, um, he was retiring in a year, so I didn't infill there. I worked with him and then once he was gone, I started working with Peter Santo and sort of like transitioned more back in the Buddhism direction and I ended up editing a portion of a text with Peter which was a, or is a commentary on the Chandamahar Ruan Tantra called the P Babati.

And, um, I was, uh, for like two or three years, cycle years, every PhD program that I applied to rejected me, so, um, I went and lived in Nepal and I had already established a relationship with the, um, Chric priesthood in Nepal, the Vajras and the Shakas, and I just continued that relationship. I requested initiation and ritual training and, um, I was very graciously granted ritual training followed by some necessary initiations to perform some of the rituals that I was doing publicly.

And, um, so that's sort of a very abridged version of how I got in the Vajrayana direction. And then as far as yoga goes, that is far more, um, I don't know, karmic, shall we say, when Jim Mson started reading Am City with Peter at Oxford, I just happened to be there and I asked Peter, can I come when Jim comes? And Jim said, yes, sure, come. So I just sat in when they went through the text, um, and Vincat Christian would come sometimes, Paul Garis Meer, um, Jason Bur, some other people, but that's really how I was introduced to Hut yoga and then in, in like a serious way. And, um, also how I found out that the University of Virginia had a lot of Sanskrit at because Jim went and gave a talk there that spring and Anand went there for a job interview the same spring and indicated to me that there were four or five Sanskrit there. I thought it was a Tibetan studies place and now it's become like a pretty, pretty substantial South Asian studies place. And so I applied to work there with John Nimk, who's a textualist, and did my PhD there and now I'm at, um, UC Berkeley working on late Indic Vajrayana and Nyer Buddhism, especially with Alex F Rash who works on Nyer Buddhism.

Wow, okay, so there was a lot there and you did a great job of abridging many years of arduous travels and practice and study.

Yeah, yeah. So I want to just follow up on two, you know, kind of main threads there. One is that you've received, um, kind of traditional philological training, it sounds like mostly in Sanskrit. Or what languages do you, do you work with? Sanskrit and Nyer?

Um, and then some classical Tibetan, but I would not claim strong proficiency in Tibetan by any means.

Okay, we'll come back to Nyer because I want to hear more about that. Um, but then the other part of it which I'm sure listeners would, would, would be fascinated to hear a little bit more about is that you've actually received some initiation by these Vajra priests, uh, you said in, in Nepal?

Yes.

Um, so I was going to ask you about this later, but since it came up now, just tell us a little bit more about how that time on the ground working with living tantric Buddhist traditions in Nepal, how that kind of informs your scholarship and, and, um, and your understanding of the tradition and just actually maybe you can just start by just telling us a little bit about that living tradition.

Yeah, so Nyer Buddhism is, um, the Buddhism which is practiced by the indigenous people of the Sindhu Valley of Nal, the Nyers, and it's the only form of Mahayana Buddhism that still exists in its unbroken tradition that conducts all liturgy in Sanskrit and all rituals are done in Sanskrit. So if one was to call something Indian Buddhism, although I would be hesitant to do that, Nyer Buddhism is the only, um, sort of living unbroken tradition of Indian Buddhism and it's in Nepal, it's not in India. So that's why I would be hesitant to call it Indian Buddhism. Maybe Sanskritic Buddhism is why the article you mentioned I, I called it that.

Um, and so my experience with Nyers is that, um, versus a kind of philological perspective is that in a philological, I don't want to get myself in trouble here, but in a philological way of doing things, the testimony of living practitioners today is not really regarded as particularly valuable when evaluating texts from the medieval period, for example, or from, from even earlier than that. But, um, I found that the, the Buddhism that I encountered from my Nyer teachers was exactly the same as the Buddhism in premodern text that I was looking at. And so much so is this the case that just to give an anecdote, a year ago at Cal we were reading through a a Tibetan ritual booklet from Dunhuang, um, in what's in now China from the 9th or 10th...

but since it came up now just tell us a little bit more about how that time on the ground working with living tantric Buddhist traditions in Nepal how that kind of informs your scholarship and and um and your

understanding of the tradition and just actually maybe you can just start by just telling us a little bit about that living tradition yeah so nir Buddhism is um the Buddhism which is practiced by the the indigenous people of the cindu valley of

Nal the neirs and it's the only form of Mahayana Buddhism that still exists in its unbroken tradition that conducts all liturgy in Sanskrit and all rituals are done in Sanskrit so if one was to call something Indian Buddhism although I

would be hesitant to do that nir Buddhism is the only um sort of living unbroken tradition of Indian Buddhism and it's in Nepal it's not in India so that's why I would be hesitant to call it Indian Buddhism maybe s critic

Buddhism is why the article you mentioned I I called it that um and so my experience with nirs is that um versus a kind of philological perspective is that in a Phil I don't want to get myself in trouble here but in a

philological uh way of doing things the testimony of living practitioners today is not really regarded as particular ly valuable when evaluating texts from the medieval period for example or from from even earlier than that but um I found that

the the Buddhism that I encountered from my neir teachers was exactly the same as the Buddhism in premodern text that I was looking at and so much so is this the case that just to give an anecdote a

year ago at Cal we were reading through a a Tibetan ritual booklet from dun Wang um in what's in now China from the 9th or 10th century and we were trying to figure out the mudras that were being

described and we couldn't really figure them out and so I just brought in a video that I had of a neir girl doing dances and she did all those mudras and we would watch her do the mudras and

then read the description and we could tell what the mudras were supposed to be based on watching a modern video of someone dancing and doing it so it's really like unbroken tradition for more than a thousand years wow that's that's pretty

incredible um so you mentioned it's the only sanskritic Buddhist tradition that is still living today can you say a little bit more about what that means like compared to compared to other forms of of Buddhism right right people

might be more familiar with right Buddhism originated you know in South Asia and it FL is there for quite a long time um but it sort of ceased to exist as an effective institutional religion by like roughly the year 1200 CE I mean

there's Buddhism still carried on in what's now India for into at least the 16th century but as far as like a viable robust institution that was gone by 1200 CE and a lot of the um very prominent monastics basically fled into the C

Valley as refugees and you know why do they do that well um the death of Buddhism in India is kind of a 500 year death um that ended around 1200 but it really starts in in the 8th Century in my opinion this is my

theory um and it's because it so heavily was driven by money by by Mercantile uh trade routes and money that would go through Central Asia especially especially through the city of balk which is now in Afghanistan which formed a kind of like te balk at

the top and then going down into South Asia all this money flowed into South Asia and the Tibetan and Tong Empires were at war with one another in that Corridor in the 8th century and that caused major disruptions to cash flow

and also the Abbasid caliphate was founded in um in bulk in in the 8th Century as well and once so like the kind of main Buddhist City in the 8th Century early 8th Century in Central Asia became the site of where

the abasa calipat started and they just redirected all the money to Baghdad and so the Buddhism just kind of got weaker and weaker and weaker in India and by um the late uh 11th century just kind of dried up and so there was no safe viable

Institution for these monastics so they fled up into the Nepal Valley and there was already robust TC tradition there and through lots of negotiations in the 13th century they would eventually produce what's now nir Buddhism yeah I know it's a somewhat

contested topic right about why Buddhism declined or or died in India um so that that's a really interesting Theory I actually hadn't heard it described in that exact way before um yeah and it was also one important thing is that the Loc

of these major Buddhist institutions like nand and Vicor michila were basically in a frontier between what would eventually become the Delhi sultanate and um the paa and then eventually the SAA domains and so when armies were going back and forth or when

Bandits were moving back and forth these institutions were just in like the worst possible place so it just wasn't possible to run a kind of you know you can't have a university in the middle of a war zone it just doesn't really work

too well and so that that also led to a lot of people leaving with I think the expectation that they would one day return and they just simply never did and so it's around this time that then this type of indic or sanskritic

Buddhism begins to flourish in Nepal or was there already do you think institutionalized forms of Buddhism there in Nepal we should we should acknowledge that actually the the historical sites surrounding what we think of as the historical Buddha are are in the cat

menu Valley is that right no so they're in Nepal but they're not in the Kat menu Valley so that would be lumini where the buo was born and um couple of us do where he lived and grew up um which

actually now are in Nepal but until the early 19th century that would have been um it would Nepal was really only the kundu valley and it was conquered by the Gorka King pritan sha in 17 in the late 1700s

and um all of his kingdoms kind of came together and he called it Nepal um but yeah you do have a lot of sites in um in Neal that are said to have been frequented by different Buddhas just not shakuni

Buddha yeah and so when when does this nir Buddhism then really begin to take off that's a good question and we're having a conference here in Berkeley actually in March to start to kind of explore this question um based on the

information that I currently have I would say that it starts to come around in the first Decades of the 13th century and if you you really want to Mark out the birth of nir Buddhism it's in a text

called the cria Samaya by jagad darpana which is basically a ritual encyclopedia um and it's mostly not original it's mostly things he's pulled in and he's he's put together this text with some new things um added but but more or less it's a

large compendium of existing vajana rights for like installing temples installing images giving initiation to people um all kinds of practical things and and I would say that the camaya which is still of critical importance um in nir Buddhism is really kind of like

the foundational text for nir Buddhism it's in Sanskrit it's entirely in Sanskrit um Jaga darpana was from Nepal did he speak a naric language who knows but the the text really marks is kind of like a watershed moment because it

involves a lot of negotiation with monks that have come up from India recently so most of the core texts as you've mentioned uh are in Sanskrit but you've also mentioned you work with nari language and materials tell us a bit

about that language is that is it the same as what is contemporary you know modern spoken Nepali or is uh what's the relationship there so Nepali and nir um are not the same uh Nepali is an Indo-European language derived from

Sanskrit um whereas nir is has been class as a Sino Tibetan language there's been arguments about its classification I'm not qualified to comment on what language family it's in but um napali was not called Nepali until the 1970s it

was previously called gorali or cus or CIA um which is uh originated in the west of what's now Nepal uh it was renamed Nepali in the 1970s as part of an explicit campaign to eliminate all other languages in Nepal by the

government um and to Outlaw teaching them in schools and things like that so they renamed it Nepali as a attempt to kind of flatten out other languages um neir is called Neal basa you know like the N the Nepal language and the word

nir um which is spelled nah in and how it's pronounced and they are probably derives from Nepal which is of course the place so it's a good question and it's a very convoluted answer in situation but in a nutshell it's called

Nepali because the government started calling that in the 70s and it's a different language from nir I do not know Nepali but I do know nir which is a a shock to many people in Nepal they can't they can't wrap their heads around

why would you why would you want to learn nir and not Nepali but so what kind of materials are in nir is it nir or nari you can um that's another okay thing nari is often seen as kind of like

an anglicisation of it and so a lot of young nirs prefer to call it neir um some call it Nea and they write a colon like to represent of aara because mayir actually uses faaras um but um yeah nir is fine or nari I mean I say

nir but there's not like a a governing body out there that's saying which is which but there is a lot in nir um the nir culture is a very literature heavy culture um there's lots of Buddhist literature in Nair there's newspapers in

nir nir was actually banned in Nepal it was illegal to print in NE nir for about 50 years in the early uh from the end of the 19th century until about 1940s um and so there's all these like

secretly printed nir poems and plays and stories and things that were printed on presses in people's homes and and so you may have also gathered the nirs have been rather marginalized in recent history um basically since the kingdom

was overthrown in the in the late 18th century and why is that that is because the um New Kingdom the the goras the Saha Kings um very much wanted to kind of established their Hindu credentials and they very strongly emphasized the Hindu

identity of their kingdom and there's Myriad of reasons for why they did that but one of the effects was that the Buddhist institution lost a lot of resources and um a lot of patrons actually who would previously go to Buddhist priests for

their rituals and they were made to go to brahans and then in the um the mid 19th century the um ra oligarchy began which was set the Kings as kind of puppet leaders and the RAS were these dictators that took over and they

further emphasized the Hindu identity of the Kingdom they're the ones that banned Printing and nir um and so it just kind of got worse and worse and worse and worse until the 50s when the RAS abdicated um but then a regime began in

the late 50s the pchat regime which was also overtly Hindu which didn't end until um the Civil War in the early 1990s so nir Buddhism has been under the gun figuratively and literally for nearly 200 years or more than 200 years

I guess and it's but very recently there's been a huge Revival in neir Buddhism fascinating well I mean I'd love to keep talking about Nar Buddhism but I do want to get to our broader topic uh today which is the subject of

your upcoming online course at yoga studies which is Yoga in Buddhism um I believe you'll be looking at these nir Buddhist traditions in the course yes in one of the modules yes yeah so we'll we'll we will'll get more

into that perhaps as this pertains to as yoga in neir Buddhism but let's think uh more broadly now about this topic of yoga and Buddhism needless to say this is a huge topic uh we could spend many many hours discussing uh these

terms um and of course the question of the relationship between you know or the role of yoga in Buddhism really depends on how we understand the term uh yoga so just maybe briefly to get us started here how how does the early

Buddhist tradition understand yoga was the Buddha a yogi um I can't speak to the PO but certainly the later tradition he's there's the famous yay daru schloka where he's the mahash Sham so he's coming out of the Shram movement um

which is what yoga arguably came out of as well um would he be called a yogi in the earliest tradition I can't answer that question um but I can say that yoga by the beginning of the first Millennium would be

meditation contemplation meditation which I'll look at um in the first module because there's there's so many different methods of meditation and and um kind of benchmarks that a person can reach in meditation and goals to head towards um and I am going to briefly

talk about that but I really want to zero in on visualization forms of meditation because that is the form of meditation that becomes so prevalent in Tantra and that eventually the current theories that Hut yoga in many ways is a

kind of rebellion against that um a kind of meditation purely contemplative practice purely mental practice versus a kind of like physical practice so um that is not a great answer the answer being I don't know if the Buddha was

called a yogan or a yogi in the earliest period but certainly the practices that he advocated and and pushed um in the earliest period would be called bavana meditation or Diana would be considered yoga right I think you hit on some key

points there which is that he he's typically associated with this early shrina movement which is sort of seen as um kind of extra vadic or beyond the kind of uh emergent binal Traditions um but of course you know still very much a part

of that dominant cultural millu but these aesthetic and renunciate traditions that were emerging outside of that you know around 2500 years ago um the poly texts might not use the term yoga or Yogi but if we understand yoga

to be some sort of aesthetic or renunciate Body Mind disciplining or contemplation meditation I think as as you said probably the the terms Diana or Jana in poly are probably more relevant than yoga uh at that time um but in those ways if you understand

yoga and yogis as those Aesthetics who are engaging in that those bodily forms of you know self-regulation and discipline then then maybe then maybe the Buddha was well there's also um you know there's there's the historical period when let's say that the Buddha

was alive and if we want to get as close as we can to determining what terminology was used at that time but there's also later Traditions who are looking back themselves and they're putting terminology on a situation that

may not have used that terminology um and so certainly later Traditions would call and especially in in like the late vajana text in the in the tantas themselves the discourses of various Buddhas uh shakim Muni Buddha is certainly engaged in

yoga um and especially comes to mind like um the first this kind of transitional Tantra into yoga Tantra the Sera begins with shakim Muni Buddha uh although there I think he's um serve as serve arst sers I think he's serve Artic

City there but he's doing all this yoga and it's it's a it's a new Twist on the life story of the Buddha where he's this great yogan so the later tradition has its own views on this as well

yeah yeah I think a big theme that's emerged in yoga studies I would really say in the last decade although this has been known for a century or more in in in indology but it's really I think come

to light even more so um is that I think in several key moments of yoga's history Buddhism plays a really foundational role in what is oftentimes thought of as a more Shiva or Hindu you know yoga tradition two kind of key historical

moments and moments of textual codification I'm I'm thinking of is the yoga sutras of pangali uh which we know are heavily indebted to Shram Traditions like Buddhism yogachara Buddhism and particular but also jism um the yamas and Nas for

example um very patali is very much um engaged with Buddhist philosophical discourse um uh and debate frankly especially in in the bashia if we accept pangali as the author of the bashia um but nonetheless that that tradition very much engaged um with with

Buddhism um and so there this this kind of key codification of yoga philosophy uh fourth fifth century there's a key moment where Buddhism is very much involved uh and then later with hat yoga um we know from the work of malanson and

Santo which he brought up uh before uh the importance of a text like the AM city which they identify as the earliest text to teach the methods of hat yoga uh teaching these bundas and and pranayama even though it doesn't use the term hat

yoga that would be introduced you know slightly later uh but nonetheless this this key tantric Buddhist text um so both yoga of patan and later medieval hat yoga both being very very influenced um you know by by these different

streams of Buddhism um so yeah I wonder if you just have any general thoughts about you know because yeah just in general I think the the the common Narrative of the history of yoga is that it is a more

Hindu focused tradition or depending on how you Define Hinduism um more brahminical um and yet in these really two key moments of classical yoga of patanjali and medieval hat yoga uh Buddhism is is right there um right yeah I mean one thing that

that is critical to bear in mind when you're looking at something that is arguably On The Fringe of mainstream religious practice is that you're seeing a tiny fraction of of this of the tradition of the situation that when you're when a lot of things

when you're looking at text especially in in a language like Sanskrit you're really looking at the literature of the elite um why was the AM city even composed you know what's why would someone who's rejecting this Elite culture and this

these ritual practices take the time to compose a text in sunkit why would they not just talk amongst themselves maybe they had been talking amongst themselves for a century before someone decided to write it down um and so that's where you

can't track these these kind of sectarian identities is in in the Middle where we just frankly we don't have any evidence for for what happened and there's ways to to try and uncover that evidence um whether it's archaeological evidence whether it's

looking at things in texts that are kind of incidental to the text that the author is mentioning because it's just part of everyday life and it's not really of interest to the audience at the time but then when we're looking at

it now it's like wow that's a quite interesting interesting thing about everyday life uh that's why I have some I have a comedy as one of the readings for the course because there's all these descriptions of a female practitioner of

yoga but that's not the funny part so that's setting up other situations which then tells you okay well that means that there were female practitioners of yoga who were doing yoga on their own um but all the texts that we have are written

by men they're largely written for men and they're produced out of a very elite environment I mean the the percentage of people who could read and write Sanskrit must have been a hundredth of a percent or something like

that so um we're we're only scratching the surface and we will only ever be able to scratch the surface uh as far as looking at these various interactions and trying to determine why these practices came about and and the development that was

necessary for that to happen yeah you raised good points there you know especially as Buddhism becomes more institutionalized um you have these great monastic centers of learning and I think where a lot of these texts were likely produced um talk

a little bit about um within the history of India and and maybe into Nepal um just this divide between kind of monastic um institutional Buddhism and then what we might call a house holder or lay Buddhism and in particular

thinking about this question of monastics versus lay practitioners in regards to the to the place of yoga within Buddhism um who you're describing how the the texts especially in Sanskrit are written by you know Elite Highly Educated probably Buddhist monks

um we're generalizing here but um if yoga is being discussed you know who who is that yoga for do you do you think on the ground that there was uh Yoga practices that were being uh taught to say you know householders or or lay

Buddhists so um how do you yeah how do we approach that's a good question I mean the best I'll just also say while it's on my mind that the the best thing written on this to date is a pH or defil

dissertation by is onan's um tantric Buddhist apologetics but um yeah it's so there are a lot of elite monastic texts that take a very long time and go really far to explain how you can get the highest tantric initiations without actually

doing any sexual practices and why are they spending such a long time to make this point well what that would imply that there were people who were doing these sexual practices and that these monks were in competition with them and you know what does that

mean that they're in competition with them that means that like what you're saying these lay people are perhaps seeking out the audience of um of these kind of Fringe tantric yogin rather than the monks um we also are starting to

very slowly get evidence of um texts that seem to be guides for giving sermons in Sanskrit um Peter Santo published some things on a text he tentatively called Sarma parata which is seems to be um like I said just

sermons and Sanskrit notes for how to give you know ideas for giving a sermon very similar to today in a Protestant Church um ministers have books that are have ideas for sermons and kind of guide to give different sermons and well who

you know who was giving that was it a monk probably it was a monk but the situation was very Dynamic and very complex and as far as you know you could compare it maybe to Tibet today where there's lots of people that are monks

but do they adhere to all the rules of their vinia tradition not necessarily um then there's people like nakas who are initiated non- lay people but they're not monks but they're also not lay people then you have lay people

um and in Neal you have a very complex situation where there are no celibate SAS but there are every Temple is called a Viara and the members of that Temple periodically will become monks to take offerings and and they'll shave their

heads at certain times and they get certain initiations and so um this is a very long-winded say way of saying that that is not a question that's really possible to answer but we can definitely speculate about it and

kind of explore which always irritates undergraduate students because they want an answer not like to kind of muse about history but but I hope that that's some kind of answer yeah can you tell us just a little bit more and maybe this will take

us into the content of the course but you know what what does yoga look like uh in terms of you know conception of yoga and and yoga practice within these texts and and and traditions yeah I mean in the the first module that I'll I'll

do yoga as visualization yoga um I'll start talking about meditation but I'll quickly transition into looking at these tantric visualization practices in that case the yoga is the um the the practitioner visualizing him or herself as a Buddha and they become

that Buddha and that's the yoga that's the kind of like Union the connection um and so we'll explore you know where did that come from why would people start internalizing ritual why would they start visualizing ritual um and then why

would they visualize you know like the H sacrifice the fire sacrifice and all these things um but before they do any of these rituals what's the yoga part about it is that they themselves turn themselves into a Buddha and and so the

tantas are called the the first instructs I want to do this are called yoga tantas which is a a class of of Buddhist Tunas so I've pulled up the course website here for those who are are watching uh on YouTube um so module one

as Sam's describing yoga as visualization um yeah I like I like how you've set up the course with these four different categories yoga as visualization yoga as ritual yoga as Behavior yoga as posture practice so tell us a little bit about module 2 then

yoga as ritual yeah and I also want to say that I took care to make sure that there was as little overlap as possible with other um courses you have you mentioned Karen O'Brien cops course I have a reading from her but but we'll

try to avoid overlap with hers and then also things on om to City so I I also want to stress that I'm I'm trying as best I can to give new information um but so for yoga as ritual

in the yoga's visualization we will look at this sort of like internalization of ritual um where ritual is is purely sublimated into a kind of mental event and then for yoga as ritual we will kind of move out of that into physical ritual

we'll look at what nir Buddhists do um who do both physical ritual and the sort of sublimated visualized ritual um we'll consider Mandela offerings and the importance of the Mandola and how a person kind of identif the Mandela and

with themselves and this Union um with oneself and the Mandela and the Buddha vaja um and this kind of nonu way of of looking at things um and I I just want to bring that in not not just to emphasize the importance

of ritual in these yogic practices um but also to to shed a light on a on a living tradition that's still doing all this that unfortunately very little is known about their tradition so I think this would be a nice place to

shed a light on that and show this this sort of unbroken lineage into the present of this particular kind of yoga um this will then kind of shoot back in time but I wanted to look at these characters who are so important in

the vajana tradition the sidas the Maha sidas who are legendary figures who develop cies that say magical powers through their yoga accomplishments and I want to explore um or well I will explore why their behavior constitutes a form of yoga a kind of form of practice

that gets them closer to Awakening that gets them closer to the goal of Nirvana um and that often includes transgressor behavior that includes um rejecting social norms in favor of a um sort of non-dual worldview and that's really at

the core of that yoga as Behavior first half of the unit um sorry the second half of the unit but I also want to look at sexual practices because sexual yoga is a is a really critical part of vajana

it's been interpreted in many different ways historically and today um as far as I can tell there's never been a time where this is how you do it and this is this is wrong everyone is somewhere on this spectrum of you should do these

practices for real or you should visualize these practices and so I want to look both at the debates surrounding that and then also look at the two kind of extremes and the theories behind them you know why should you do it for real

versus why is it entirely sublimated why should you um not do it for real yeah and so lastly I will transition into looking at yoga as postural practice and rather than situate this around the OM de City I

want to look at the um or again I will look at the period that seems to lead up to the umta city which is a period of increased complexity in vajana the subtle body uh and subtle Anatomy are

becoming more and more complex more and more convoluted you could say especially in text like the kala chakra Tantra and the City seems to be a rejection not just of um tantric ritual rights and and um certain commitments and vs but also a

rejection of this very complicated social B uh um subtle body because the amidi the subtle Anatomy is quite simple and um then of course in ha yoga later on it becomes quite complex quite complicated so it's the AM city

represents kind of this middle in The Hourglass it's ironically it's attempt to become de complicated eventually it just becomes as complicated as it was before but I want to look at this transitional period and explore the ideas of um not just

turning all of these mental practices into somatic practices but also to question you know like what would have happened totally speculative but what would have happened if if um if the Buddhist institution remained in India you know would this have advanced

further would it have um just sort of distilled out into the Hinterlands like it kind of did especially with the not yogan and so we'll explore all those ideas fantastic so these are the four modules of the upcoming course yoga and

Buddhism uh it's going to run live from November 27th through December 22nd 2023 but if you're watching this later everything has been recorded and is available for self-study so thank you uh Sam for that wonderful uh preview of the course yeah

thank you for having um before before you go though um maybe um just say a few words of you know about the course in general what are you hoping you know that students will take away from such a

course I my primary goal is to equip people with the um tools and information necessary to really dive deeper into an exploration of this subject because it is an incredibly complex subject I mean we have there's so many yogas that are

just not it's just not possible to fit them in I mean there's uh philosophical exegetical schools on the gasa Tantra for example that would be really interesting to look at but um due to the constraints of time what I want to do is

really equip people with the tools terminology and knowledge that they would need to make a deeper more informed dive into information on their own yeah fantastic well and I think this is a such a wonderful subject but you're

also giving us such a unique perspective I think because of your expertise in nir Buddhism and and your connections to these Living Traditions in Nepal So for anybody who uh is interested in these topics topics that we've covered and

just scratched the surface on really in this conversation uh we hope that you can join us for this course uh feel free to leave a comment here on YouTube or reach out via email um and hopefully we'll see you in

class soon so thanks again so much Sam uh for your time and and for offering uh this great course at yogic studies you're welcome thanks for having me all right