Rethinking 'Classical Yoga' and Buddhism: Meditation, Metaphors and Materiality

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This book revisits the early systemic formation of meditation practices called yoga in South Asia by employing metaphor theory. Karen OBrien-Kop also develops an alternative way of analysing the reception history of yoga that aims to decentre the Eurocentric and imperialist enterprises of the nineteenth-century to reframe the cultural period of the 1st 5th centuries CE using categorical markers from South Asian intellectual history. Buddhist traditions were just as concerned as Hindu traditions with meditative disciplines of yoga. By exploring the intertextuality of the Patanjalayogasastra with texts such as Vasubandhus Abhidharmakosabhasya and Asangas Yogacarabhumisastra, this book highlights and clarifies many ideologically Buddhist concepts and practices in Patanjala yoga. Karen OBrien-Kop demonstrates that classical yoga was co-constructed systemically by both Hindu and Buddhist thinkers who were drawing on the same conceptual metaphors of the period. This analysis demystifies early yoga-meditation as a timeless classical practice and locates it in a specific material context of agrarian and urban economies.

Reviews

Rethinking Classical Yoga and Buddhism offers a new and valuable discussion of the early history of yoga. It brings a careful assessment of metaphor theory into the discussion of early Indian soteriology, and explores the intertwined nature of Indian religious practices that we too easily divide off as Hindu and Buddhist. A wonderful contribution to our understanding of Indian religion, literature and history. * Naomi Appleton, Director of Undergraduate Studies and Senior Lecturer in Asian Religions, University of Edinburgh, UK *
This book is ground-breaking, not only in its recognition and analysis of the Buddhist backdrop to Patanjalis Yoga tradition, but also in the application of cognitive metaphor theory to the study of Indian philosophical texts. In overcoming reified and anachronistic notions of Hindu and Buddhist in the study of contemplative traditions of ancient India, this work is to be highly recommended to anyone wishing to understand the broader intellectual and yogic context out of which Patanjalis Yoga Sutras emerged. * Richard King, Professor Emeritus of Buddhist and Asian Studies, University of Kent, UK *

Author Bio

Karen OBrien-Kop is Lecturer in Asian Religions and Ethics at the University of Roehampton, UK.