Nov 23, 2008

Yoga for All

Yoga is not a religion. Rather, it is a set of techniques and skills that enhance the practice of any religion. A French author named Jean Déchanet discovered this in regard to his Catholic faith and wrote the book ChristianYoga (New York: Harper, 1960). In Malaysia Muslim’s case, I have found that Islamic yoga is a reality. It is possible to employ the skills of yoga to worship god better and to be a better human.

Yoga arose from the matrix of the Hindu world, although according to Mircea Eliade it is of pre-Hindu origin and can be traced back to prehistoric shamanism. Like India's other gifts to world civilization, for example the system of place notation on which all mathematics depends, yoga is not tied to the Hindu religion but has a universal applicability. It helps one to follow one's own religion better whatever that may be. Yoga is no substitute for any Islamic requirement, it just as a valuable addition to the spiritual path of one’s religion.

Vesu (a blogger) commented on my post entitled 'Islam and Yoga' before. He said: yoga plus mantra chanting is a complete exercise. you have a choice -do yoga minus mantra, still apllicable. that is hinduism. hinduism never impose restriction, its the most flexible and approachable teachings. muslims,christians etc can take up yoga without any fear of being converted into hinduism because hindus do not believe in converting people of other believe. enjoy yoga !!!

I totally disagree Yoga banned for Muslims in Malaysia by Fatwa council. Such act is more to the mockery of human rights, definitely not to protect the Islam as official religion. I think it’s nothing wrong if write about Islam although I'm a Hindu.

6 comments:

~sue~ said...

seriously.. it's weird..
out of all this years suddenly its considered haram??
n i find it ridiculous if thy reli did dat..

Anonymous said...

Yes, Yoga for all!

Satish said...

It just shows how insecure they are.

Shows how weak their own akidah is.

Nevermind la..let them ban it among themselves..they only lose out wat.

At least their only banning it for Muslims only and not for the whole of Malaysia.

megat jittendran said...

Not just Sanskrit ... Bahasa Melayu or Malaysia 'hijacked' many words, terms and even culture from Tamil language and Tamil - Hindu culture.
Bumi, Putra, Puja, even the term Malay are all from Tamil.
In Tamil, Malai means hill. Malaikaran means people from the mountain or hill.

What about that ? ? ?

My fatwa is sue them for stealing other people's language.

Megat Jittendran

Anonymous said...

yeah.
even for me as Buddhist, i been praying in hindu temple/ christian@ catholic church.
we're all welcome and all religions are meant to be offering good humanity!

im not saying Islam is bad. don get me wrong. for me, all religions r universal. all r teaching we to be good.

Anonymous said...

hemmm.. apa yang nak risaunya ni... fatwa tu untuk umat islam je pun.. yang bukan islam nak risau kenapa.. tadak sentuh pun yang bukan islam takleh buat yoga... itu jee...

benda senang je nii...

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