Hatha Yoga; Rishekesh

Well it has been a busy 2 weeks with ups and downs. The days are  filled with new information, new asanas, sore muscle and loads of massage oil. Enjoying the course and the teacher of philosophy is good! He is confirming all my ideas that the philosophy behind Hatha and Astanga yoga practices compliment each other and in turn can enhance my Buddhist meditation practice because up to a certain philosophical point these paths are similar. After all the historical Buddha did study and practice yoga philosophy and was the disciple of many a yogi master before he went off and did his own meditative research. It is funny  though I feel like a Tibetan Buddhist spy in amoung all the Hindu Yogis stealing their practice secrets.
 The only thing that does bug me or not feel right is this idea of a universal consciousness or Atma.  Ok I was born in the 60"s and have a wee bit of hippy to me but this theory  is just not grounded enough for my mind  and  for me the Buddhist  philosophy on Emptiness or Anatma  is much more logical; where as 'univeral conciousness' is just way up there with purple unicorns; i.e. can't be proven.

We have also had some other fun activities related to our studies and this week we have to draw and colour in the chakras. Yes I feel like I am in primary school again complete with getting to 50 other student whom are all mostly in their late 20's. The yoga group also attended a fire puja ceremony on the river Ganga this week which was just beautiful and yesterday we took a walk up the hills to a small temple. Rishekesh is a beautiful place just waiting to be explored. Hope I can find the time to do so.

girls at fire puja

Monkey Mama