re: Christist yoga

sept 1

time ran a 16-page cover story on yoga in 2004 without mentioning the words 'india' or 'hindu' even once.

here we have christists using microsoft tactics as usual: 'embrace, extend, exterminate'.

this is exactly how the christist west appropriated a lot of things like greek, roman, druidic, buddhist, indic ideas: much as the susan caldwells and courtrights and clooneys do under our very noses today.

and that somewhat biased mexican nobel-prize winner octavio paz compared hinduism to a metaphysical boa constrictor. what would christism be then? a python, that swallows other cultures wholesale without a trace?

the west gets all upset about the chinese appropriating *their* intellectual property. what about the west happily expropriating *our* intellectual property?

the back-royalties from the indian numbering system alone would pay off india's national debt many times over. we should be making noise about and perhaps taking show-cases to the WIPO for royalties for calculus, various areas of astronomy, medicine, etc. enough of wholesale theft of ideas!

the theft continues today: it's increasingly bio-diversity theft these days; as they come in and steal genetic strains.

i think india should completely ignore western patenting mechanisms. it has not been shown that patents are of any use to anybody other than monopoly profiteers. the data is ambivalent about whether patenting encourages innovation. the pharma process patent idea that india had was a good one: and we should find other ways of weasel-wording and sliming our way out of WIPO and TRIPS treaty obligations.

ps. moment of black humor: i find myself in agreement with ratzinger for perhaps the first and only time ever: we concur that yoga has nothing to do with christism, whatsoever.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Srinivasan Kalyanaraman <kalyan97@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 31, 2005 6:06 PM
Subject: Christist yoga
To: "Srinivasan Kalyanaraman (GMail)" <kalyan97@gmail.com>

Time Magazine, Monday, Aug. 29, 2005
Stretching for Jesus
Christian yoga is gaining a devout following--upsetting purists,
Hindus and some Christians
By LISA TAKEUCHI CULLEN/MAHTOMEDI

The yoga teacher sits in a lotus position atop a polished wooden
platform. Behind her, verdant woods are visible through panoramic
windows. Gentle music tinkles from overhead speakers. Two dozen
students in spandex outfits, most of them women, settle onto purple
and blue mats to begin the class with ujjayi, a breathing exercise.
Their instructor, Cindy Senarighi, recommends today's mantra.
"'Yahweh' is a great breath prayer," she says. "The Jesus Prayer also
works. Now lift your arms in praise to the Lord."

The platform is an altar, the tinkly tune is praise music, and the
practice is Christian yoga. Senarighi's class, called Yogadevotion and
taught in the main chapel of St. Andrew's Lutheran Church in
Mahtomedi, Minn., is part of a fast-growing movement that seeks to
retool the 5,000-year-old practice of yoga to fit Christ's teachings.

...

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1098937,00.html