Yoga Classes at the Snowpea City Recreation Center - Speech or Presentation Example

Letter to The Editor Table of Contents Yoga es at the Snowpea Recreation Center Works Cited Yoga es at the Snowpea RecreationCenter We have to stop the teaching of yoga at the Snowpea City Recreation Center because teaching yoga amounts to endorsing the Hindu religion in a public arena, and violates the sacred doctrine of the separation of the state and the church. America is founded on this sacred doctrine, which has ever protected the religious rights of all, and which has resulted in a country where the state rules by law and for the good of all rather than by a specific religious doctrine for the benefit of a single religion or sect. The separation of church and state is threatened by this seemingly harmless act, and as experience will show, the violation can have serious and far-reaching consequences on our social and private lives (Prem; Kremer; Palitsky; Miller; Roy). There are those who will argue that yoga is popular in America, and has been embraced by mainstream society as something that is part of American culture. Its representatives in America are not Hindus, but rather white Americans for instance, who are intelligent and attractive, and are able to tout the health and spiritual benefits of the practice of yoga, without explicit mention of Hinduism. Yoga has become American, some will say, in the same way that pizza has become American, though pizza had been imported from Italy initially. Same as with pizza, yoga has been morphed and changed to such a degree, as it has been practiced and as it has evolved in America, so that it can no longer be called Hindu, or Buddhist, or Eastern even. Yoga in America has been stripped of its religious aspects, the proponents will say, and made to conform to the unique spiritual, social and cultural values of America. Those values no longer contrast or pose a threat to the very basic values of freedom and the sanctity of the individual social rights of all Americans as those have been enshrined in our Constitution. The proponents will say that because yoga has been stripped of its religious connotations, then it can no longer be called a spiritual practice. Therefore promoting yoga in public arenas, using public funds, does not amount to government getting in the act of promoting a religion, and therefore does not violate the sacred doctrine of the separation of the state and of religion. Look, they are saying, yoga is now as American as pizza, and no longer religious in its connotations, but merely physical and social. Even where there are religious aspects that are incorporated, those aspects are not strictly Hindu, but relate to those aspects of American spirituality that are ingrained in popular culture (Miller; Kremer; Palitsky). I argue that the core of yoga is Hinduism and the two cannot be separated. The gist of the arguments of the proponents of yoga in the US, and in the recreation center at Snowpea City, is that yoga and Hinduism can exist apart. What they are bringing to the table, so to speak, are the physical poses and the mental discipline, but not the religion. On the other hand, one can see too that in the way yoga teachers make references to Hindu texts, recite Hindu prayers, wear Hindu clothing, and make use of Hindu names for yoga poses, which are themselves derived from the names of Hindu gods, that in fact the separation is only on the surface. Try as they might, the Hindu roots of yoga emerge in small and large aspects of yoga practice. Even the reciting of mantras, the wearing of beads, the use of bowing, the exhortations to eat certain kinds of foods and to avoid other kinds of food, have either overt or hidden ties to Hindu religious practices. Getting at the root of the matter, though outwardly yoga practitioners claim that yoga in the United States is anything but Hindu, in the small and large details of their practice yoga shows its deep and unbreakable ties with the Hindu religion. As such the proponents of yoga practice at the recreation center are wrong in saying that yoga has nothing to do with Hinduism. In fact to practice yoga is to espouse Hinduism, and therefore to promote yoga classes at the recreation center amounts to endorsing a religion in a public arena, using government funds. Therefore this violates the doctrine of the separation of the state and of the church (Rao; Shah; Shukla). The proponents of yoga will say to counter that of course while the names and some remaining remnants of Hinduism remain in their practice and teaching of yoga to the American public, they have been stripped of their religious connotations altogether. Moreover, the fact that they incorporate other religious names from other religions, other practices and prayers that are not strictly Hindu, means that yoga has evolved away from Hinduism and has come to embrace world religion and a more evolved consciousness so to speak. Proponents will say moreover that as far as ordinary Hindus are concerned, yoga is not part of their ordinary practice of their religion, and in fact ordinary Hindus even in India will say that yoga as it is practiced in the west is alien to them. In other words, something as foreign to ordinary Hindus as yoga surely cannot be considered as something iconic and something that cannot be taken apart from the Hindu religion. They will say that in fact the way yoga has evolved in the US, including the way its religious and philosophical doctrines have evolved, do not bear resemblance to yoga as it is known and practiced in India, among the Hindus. In the US yoga stands for new age and popular culture, Deepak Chopra and Oprah rather than some tree-dwelling guru in the forests of India, they will say (Rao; Shah; Shukla). If only things were this simple. A simple hypothetical scenario will debunk the argument implicit in the line of thinking above. Say a Christian sect gains power in the US government, and starts prescribing a sanitized version of one of their religious practices at the recreation center at Snowpea City. The proponents will retain the prayers and the references to Jesus, but will make some cosmetic changes to the practices and the prayers to make it appear that they are something other than the overt promotion of their religion. Will this pass the scrutiny of the American public? Say a Muslim sect gains power in the White House or in state government, and starts prescribing the teaching of some Sufi dance in the public arenas and recreation centers around the country, making use of public funds. Or some influential group successfully lobbies Congress to include such dances as part of the curriculum in the US. How would the American public react? Would they say that something foreign has been imported and made American, and made part of the culture, so that therefore such acts cannot be regarded as violating the doctrine of the separation of the state and of the church? What would happen then? Of course one can reasonably foresee that such events would trigger massive debates and public outcries and denunciations. Yet when one looks at what has been happening with yoga in the US, with aspects of Hinduism permeating yoga practices and teachings no matter how hard they try to sanitize it for Americans, one can see that the yoga reality is not different from the hypothetical examples/scenarios explored above. The reality is that the line of thinking espoused by those who are trying to promote yoga and to argue down Hindus who insist on the religious roots of yoga cannot be made universal. The arguments of the proponents of yoga are inconsistent and cannot be made applicable to all times and to all similar scenarios involving other religions and religious practices. The heart of the matter is that because of the distinctly Hindu character of yoga, it cannot be separated from Hinduism. Teaching yoga at the recreation center really amounts to promoting Hinduism on government grounds and using government money, violating a sacred public contract against such promotion of religion by the state (Rao; Shah; Shukla). From another vantage point, that Hinduism and yoga cannot be separated and treated in isolation is seen from the way Hindus in America, as represented by the Hindu American Foundation for instance, insists on America and the world recognizing the Hindu origins and character of yoga once and for all. Yes the naysayers may be winning the battle of public opinion, and practitioners in the US insist on ignoring that yoga is Hindu, but this does not take away the fact that the two cannot be separated. By endorsing yoga, the state is also endorsing its context, which is religious and Hindu, thereby violating the mandate for the religion and the government to be separate. I therefore object to the teaching of yoga at the Snowpea City Recreation Center for these reasons (Rao; Shah; Shukla; Miller). Word Count: 1498 1 Works Cited Kremer, William. “Does doing yoga make you a Hindu?” BBC News Magazine. 21 November 2013. Web. 20 October 2014. Miller, Lisa. “Do Yoga’s Hindu Roots Matter?” Newsweek. 15 May 2010. Web. 20 October 2014. Palitsky, Roman. “Is Yoga Hindu?” Religion Dispatches. 14 January 2011. Web. 20 October 2014. Prem, Yogi Baba. “There is No Christian Yoga”. Sulekha Creative. 2006. Web. 20 October 2014. Rao, Ramesh. “From the Guardian: It is Wrong To Deny That Yoga Has Its Origins in Hinduism”. The Guardian/ Hindu American Foundation. 2 December 2010. Web. 20 October 2014. Roy, Sandip. “Yoga: A Positively Un-Indian Experience”. NPR. 29 December 2010. Web. 20 October 2014. Shah, Sheetai. “Yoga- It’s Not About Ownership, it’s About Origins”. Treehugger/Hindu American Foundation. 7 December 2010. Web. 20 October 2014. Shukla, Suhag. “The Origins and Ownership of Yoga”. The Huffington Post/Hindu American Foundation. 3 December 2010. Web. 20 October 2014. Read More