[Buddha-l] yoga (TM)

[Stuart Ray Sarbacker]

Erik Hoogcarspel wrote:

>Stuart, thank you for your comment, however I wonder what's so
>fascinating about this modernist bourgeois concept of intellectual
>property. (I hope you'll not charge me for your email ;-) !) It's just
>an attempt to import the structure of the financial field into the
>cultural and religious fields. Since the beginnings of time ideas and
>methods have been spread. Buddhists took meditations, asanas, vidyas,
>kriyas and sadhanas from Hindus and Taoists and vice versa. Later Sufi's
>came and took what they liked. In the West Plotin borrowed from Plato
>and Augustine from Plotin, all for free. Everybody was happy and
>thriving, because there was no selling or buying. Then came Maharishi
>with his mantratrick and now initiations in Tibetan Buddhism have become
>a substantial source of income. I liked the game in the times when you
>were supposed to offer some cakes or fruit to the deity, now I think it
>is totally degenerated. I think anyone who's claiming intellectual
>propery is a fraud because this person is not an intellectual  but a
>mean salesman. For an intellectual ideas and methodes to get inspired or
>elevate your mind are principally open source.

Erik,
I would largely agree with your evaluation here, that the patenting 
of these methods and making them "intellectual property" is in some 
contexts antithetical to the practices themselves. I suggested IP was 
fascinating in that it makes clear the connection to the 
'materialization' of culture as 'property,' a process that may well 
be quite questionable in intent. On the other hand, my point about 
the resonance of initiatory schema with older models is that 
philosophical literature and ascetic/tantric techniques have often 
been the provenance of the materially well-off in the Indo-Tibetan 
context. With respect to yoga and tantra, I think David Gordon 
White's works and Ronald Davidson's present rather compelling 
arguments in this regard. I also would argue that yoga and meditation 
have long been utilized for worldly gain (if not material, then 
spiritual in the form of siddhis), and that some of the more 
'material' forms of yoga today continue to operate on that logic 
(ascetic discipline leading to worldly power/prowess). I would agree 
in principle with the value of 'open source'--and in fact Buddha-L 
might be a good example of just such a thing.
Best Wishes,
Stuart





-- 
Dr. Stuart Sarbacker
Lecturer in Religion
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of Religion
Northwestern University
http://www.religion.northwestern.edu/faculty/sarbacker.html
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