Comparative study of fundamentals of Yoga according to Patañjali and Nātha sect.

On concept of doctrine of Bhakti according to Chaitanya sect.

Radical doubt about the truths that govern life has posed a problem for thinkers in many different cultures and periods. This study uncovers the solutions offered by a postmodern Western thinker, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and an early modern Indian thinker, Rupa Gosvami, each of whom offers a renewed postskeptical vision of a revitalized life that is firmly rooted in the transcendental truths of reality.

Radical doubt about the truths that govern life has posed a problem for thinkers in many different cultures and periods. This study uncovers the solutions offered by a postmodern Western thinker, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and an early modern Indian thinker, Rupa Gosvami, each of whom offers a renewed postskeptical vision of a revitalized life that is firmly rooted in the transcendental truths of reality.

In various philosophical, religious and mystical traditions, beauty is often related to intellectual upliftment and spiritual ascent, which suggests that besides its common aesthetic value it may also acquire an epistemic, metaphysical and spiritual meaning or value. I will examine in detail three accounts in which beauty, at times inseparable from desire and love, mediates between physical, intellectual and spiritual levels of existence. Since beauty, in all three accounts, takes on a mediatory role or function,1 I will name these mediations (...) as follows: ancient Greek Eros-mediation or Beauty-mediation (Plato: ca. 429-347 BCE), late medieval Italian Beauty and Love-mediation (Dante Alighieri: 1265-1321) and pre-modern Indian Beauty and Love-mediation (Rūpa Gosvāmi: 1470/90-1564 CE).2 In the first section, I will analyse the stages of Eros or Beauty mediation in Plato; in the second section, I will turn to Dante’s Beauty and Love-mediation and compare it with Plato’s account. In the third section, I will analyse Rūpa’s account of Beauty and Love-mediation in comparison with both Plato and Dante. I will argue that there are certain patterns of mediation mutually shared if not between all three accounts, then at least between two of them. While Plato’s account clearly influenced Dante and was well integrated into Dante’s account, there is no mention or evidence of a pre-modern Bengali theologian influenced by ancient Greek and medieval Italian philosophy and mysticism. However, a strong convergence of elements of Beauty-mediations in Plato and Dante, as well as Beauty and Love-mediations in Dante and Rūpa Gosvāmi, confirms the universality of certain features of Beauty and Love-mediation and speaks in support of an all-inclusive account of them.3 -/- 1 By Beauty-mediation I mean an aesthetic, intellectual or spiritual reconciliation between opposites, such as human and divine, mortal and immortal, particular and universal, sexual and sacred and so on. 2 Rūpa Gosvāmi was an Indian theologian. More information about him is provided in section 3. 3 I am here applying transitivity: if Plato’s account (A) shares elements with Dante’s account (B) and if Dante’s account (B) shares those same elements with Rūpa’s account (C), then Plato’s (A) and Rūpa’s (C) accounts share some elements as well. Obviously, all accounts have some different elements not mutually shared, but I will not deal with them here. (shrink)

From Physical World to Transcendent God(s): Mediatory Functions of Beauty in Plato, Dante and Rupa Gosvami -/- Dragana Jagušić -/- In various philosophical, religious and mystical traditions, beauty is often related to intellectual upliftment and spiritual ascent, which suggests that besides its common aesthetic value it may also acquire an epistemic, metaphysical and spiritual meaning or value. I will examine in detail three accounts in which beauty, at times inseparable from desire and love, mediates between physical, intellectual and spiritual levels (...) of existence. Since beauty, in all three accounts, takes on a mediatory role or function,1 I will name these mediations as follows: ancient Greek Eros-mediation or Beauty-mediation (Plato: ca. 429-347 BCE), late medieval Italian Beauty and Love-mediation (Dante Alighieri: 1265-1321) and pre-modern Indian Beauty and Love-mediation (Rūpa Gosvāmi: 1470/90-1564 CE).2 In the first section, I will analyse the stages of Eros or Beauty mediation in Plato; in the second section, I will turn to Dante’s Beauty and Love-mediation and compare it with Plato’s account. In the third section, I will analyse Rūpa’s account of Beauty and Love-mediation in comparison with both Plato and Dante. I will argue that there are certain patterns of mediation mutually shared if not between all three accounts, then at least between two of them. While Plato’s account clearly influenced Dante and was well integrated into Dante’s account, there is no mention or evidence of a pre-modern Bengali theologian influenced by ancient Greek and medieval Italian philosophy and mysticism. However, a strong convergence of elements of Beauty-mediations in Plato and Dante, as well as Beauty and Love-mediations in Dante and Rūpa Gosvāmi, confirms the universality of certain features of Beauty and Love-mediation and speaks in support of an all-inclusive account of them.3 -/- 1 By Beauty-mediation I mean an aesthetic, intellectual or spiritual reconciliation between opposites, such as human and divine, mortal and immortal, particular and universal, sexual and sacred and so on. 2 Rūpa Gosvāmi was an Indian theologian. More information about him is provided in section 3. 3 I am here applying transitivity: if Plato’s account (A) shares elements with Dante’s account (B) and if Dante’s account (B) shares those same elements with Rūpa’s account (C), then Plato’s (A) and Rūpa’s (C) accounts share some elements as well. Obviously, all accounts have some different elements not mutually shared, but I will not deal with them here. (shrink)

Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas frequently assimilate and recast ancient and established ideas and practices to suit and justify their own theology and goals. The final aim of this strategy is to promote their version of mature emotional bhakti, as devotional participation. Their depictions of mature divine interactions are often mapped by way of rasa theory, originating as ancient poetic and dramatic aesthetic theory. Although only explicitly used to map aspects of mature religious experience, this paper explores an often-neglected side of the tradition’s (...) pedagogy, namely its tacit appeal to rasa theory to explain practices meant primarily for ordinary practitioners. An example of this strategy appears in the sixteenth century Gauḍīya treatise, Ṣaṭ-sandarbha. The author, Jīva Gosvāmī, offers a reformulated account of a typical set of Pāñcarātra meditation rituals. However, although the rituals are necessarily performed in the imagination, he paradoxically warns that the generated mental images should not be considered imaginative. By correlating his explanations of these ritual visualisations with elements of his yet to be depicted rasa theory, a consistent and non-problematic role of ritual imagination can be revealed. Since Jīva offers nothing explicit to arrive at this conclusion, this paper infers how a prominent Gauḍīya seems to be reformulating even ordinary ritual by way of rasa theory. This analysis acts as an individual example of a broader strategy in Gauḍīya texts. (shrink)

The article considers each case of using words with the stem ‘yoga’, as well as other yogic vocabulary found in the first part of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. In total, there are the following ten words: yoga, bhaktiyoga, yogin, yogeśvara, mahāyogin, kuyogin, yoganidrā, kriyāyogа, viyoga and yama. They are used 30 times altogether. This vocabulary forms not only the yoga glossary of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, but also the Vaiṣṇava understanding of yogic teaching. The analysis of these terms takes into account several (...) contexts, in particular: compositional, linguistic, religious and philosophical, and statistical. It has been found out that the whole vocabulary is somehow subordinated to the semantic vertical yogeśvara → mahāyogin → yogin and in various ways forms the Vaiṣṇava understanding of yoga, i.e. bhakti-yoga. The last is believed to be a human response to the challenges of the Highest reality (Heaven). This semantic vertical is conceived of as set by the Lord, who in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa appears under various names, including Viṣṇu, Kṛṣṇa, Adhokṣaja, as well as Yogeśvara, and Mahāyogin. Extraordinary people, who are called mahāyogins (Śukadeva Gosvāmī), and also yogins (Vyāsa, Śukadeva Gosvāmī, nameless yogins), are able to accept the challenge of Heaven. They are those who can achieve the highest goal of human life; they practice bhaktiyoga. The context of bhaktiyoga is present in most cases of the word yoga, and in all cases of the words yoganidra, kriyayoga, viyoga, as well as other friendly vocabulary (for example, seva), whereas the word yama does not apply to bhaktiyoga. The use of the rare word kuyogin reflects the fact that bad yogins are also mentioned in the text. The term yoga might be also considered to be a gender marker, as the yogins are exclusively men in the first part. The compositional peculiarities of the use of this yogic vocabulary include the fact that the first part begins and ends with chapters containing terms which are derived from the stem yoga (Is this some kind of semantic framing?). Moreover, the first chapter ends with the śloka, that contains the important word yogeśvara (Is it a kind of summarizing semantic marker?). (shrink)