[MD] Mind-body practice

[Dwaipayan Lahiri]

On Dec 30, 2007, at 3:17 PM, david buchanan wrote:

>  "American don't have to go to the Orient to learn what this  
> mysticism stuff is about. In the Orient they dress it up with  
> rituals and incense and pagodas and chants and , of course, huge  
> organizational enterprises that bring in the equivalent of millions  
> of dollars every year. American Indians haven't done this. Their  
> way is not to be organized at all. They don't charge anything, they  
> don't make a big fuss, and that's what makes people underrate  
> them.   Phaedrus remembered saying to Dusenberry just after that  
> peyote meeting was over,
>  'The Hindu understanding is just a low-grade imitation of THIS!  
> This is how it must have really been before all the clap-trap got  
> started.'"


Being a practicing Hindu, I can't help but challenge that last  
statement...

I think Pirsig's experience with the "Hindu understanding" is very  
limited in it's scope and perhaps a tad colored by an inherent  
chauvinism (there is a very interesting book on this phenomenon by  
Prof. SN Balagangadhara of Ghent University titled "The Heathen in  
his blindness"?


http://books.google.com/books?id=ad7EaD7fOL8C&dq=heathen+in+his 
+blindness&pg=PP1&ots=TZn0_0drEg&sig=hJhthtgP636kp9aMwbvLxmEaEuw&hl=en&p 
rev=http://www.google.com/search?q=Heathen+in+his 
+blindness&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en- 
US:official&client=firefox-a&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with- 
thumbnail


To understand the Hindu experience, one has to practice what a  
spiritually inclined Hindu practices --  including (but not limited  
to) years of meditation and adherence to Yamas and niyamas and  
possibly accompanied by pranayama and asana practice. I think Pirsig  
(not withstanding his brilliant mind) wasn't anywhere close to this  
direct experiential regimen?

Pratyaksha anumana gamah pramanani (See http://www.dailyreadings.com/ 
ys1-1.htm for more commentary on this (1.7 -- Yoga Sutras of  
Patanjali))...