Contemporary Yoga and Sacred Texts

Susanne Scholz · Caroline Vander Stichele

Sep 2024 · Taylor & Francis

Ebook

216

Pages

Eligible

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About this ebook

This book explores the textual traditions that authorize the history, legitimacy, and authenticity of today’s physical posture practice. The volume focuses on why and how yoga communities have adopted various texts that they consider sacred or spiritually meaningful. Among the texts discussed are Yogananda‘s Autobiography, Sri Aurobindo's Savitri, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, the Bhagavad Gita, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the Upanishads, the Vedas, and the Yoginī Tantra. Famous thinkers included are Aurobindo, Yogananda, Osho-Rajneesh, Sogyal Rimpoche, Charles Johnston, and Howard Thurman. Offering a starting point, the ten chapters address the nature, selection, and function of various ancient and contemporary texts read in contemporary yoga settings. The attention centers on how and why texts are read and for whom they are read. As yoga is practiced in ashrams, yoga studios, gyms, meeting rooms, and even private living rooms, scholarly approaches to investigate the connections between yoga and texts are necessarily diverse.

This volume aims to inspire further scholarship on the reading of texts in past and present yoga communities. The collection demonstrates that textual tradions deserve to be an important part of contemporary yoga scholarship. The volume will, therefore, be of great interest to scholars of religious studies, yoga studies, and Asian studies, as well as those studying sacred texts.

About the author

Susanne Scholz is Professor of Old Testament at SMU Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, Texas, United States. Her research focuses on the cultural study of sacred texts, especially the Hebrew Bible.

Caroline Vander Stichele is Professor of New Testament and Cultural Impact of the Bible in Western Culture at the Tilburg School of Catholic Theology, Tilburg University, The Netherlands.

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