[lbo-talk] Yoga -- Not as Old as You Think

Fernando Cassia fcassia at gmail.com
Sun Feb 27 04:55:08 PST 2011


On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 8:42 AM, Ira Glazer <ira.glazer at gmail.com> wrote:
> Lately, Hindus in America have started flying the saffron flag over
> American-style yoga, which consists largely of yogic *asanas* and stretches.
> The leading Indo-American lobby, Hindu American Foundation (HAF), has
> recently started a vocal campaign to remind Americans that yoga was made in
> India by Hindus. Not just any ordinary Hindus, but Sanskrit-speaking,
> forest-dwelling Brahmin sages who learned to discipline their bodies in
> order to purify their *atman.

I don´t know why there´s this fixation with India by English speaking westerners. I find very little to like when looking at the country´s stats (other than cheap labor which is what corporations see).

If they are so wise from the beginnings of time, how come they blindly got into the current demographic (and environmental) time bomb?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:India-demography.png

At least China has slowed a bit the curve of their demographic problem... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ChinaDemography.svg

I come across Indian software programmers on mailing lists all the time, many seem a bit rude and "demand" answers to their questions -on a silver platter if possible with very little thinking about the problem on their part- ("I need to know how to do this. I need an answer quickly", and when you answer with links to documentation you hear back "Thanks. But how do I do this?". IMHO they seem to have very little of this ancestral patience and temperance.

Perhaps I only came across the wrong Indians... (and the 30-40 I´ve come across are negligible for statistical purposes;-). They surely seem to be under a lot of pressure to make a lot of money, quick.

Of course, I´m sure there´s interesting indians. I´m only saying I don´t find the country "special" or having this aura of possessing a spiritual higher ground than any other.

Now that I´ve angered a few thousand millon people, I´ll sit and await the backlash...

FC PS: Just because something is "old" doesn´t make it instantly "good", in my book. People have been doing stupid things for thousands of years. Or do I need to remind someone of religions?.



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