Yoga and Religion--Time to Weigh In

Robert Mapplethorpe once wrote in a letter to Patti Smith a confession--Smith's word--about what it felt like to create his art. "I stand naked when I draw. God holds my hand and we sing together." You see, to me Mapplethorpe's "confession" sounds like an act of prayer. Drawing was his religion. When the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh says that our life is a work of art, I think he is saying what Mapplethorpe saw clearly, that our life--what we do with it--is a never-ending prayer. This is why we try to write poems or paint pictures or take photographs or bake cookies or sew clothing or raise children who then want to create crayon-colored pictures of their own. Every act is an act of prayer because our actions, all of them, if practiced mindfully are that beautiful, that powerful, that divine.

"Your daily life is your temple and your religion," said The Prophet to the people of Orphalese in Kahlil Gibran's book by the same title. So says many a good book--the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, the Bhagavad Gita, Moby Dick: Everything is a spiritual act. For young Henry Skrimshander, the protagonist of the good book I have most recently finished reading--The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach--baseball is the art, the religion, the medium used for fumbling toward the divine. And while Skrimshander's dedication and effort to this art on one hand may seem pointless, the characters who ultimately find some comfort, some small deliverance from the agony and ecstasies of daily life do so as a result of participating with him in the temple of this summer game.

For weeks now, I have been following with some regularity, the stories about the yoga curriculum introduced this year in the Encinitas School District and the controversy that has arisen as a result. No longer merely controversy, the dispute has most recently taken the form of a civil lawsuit brought against the school district by a couple who has children attending one of its schools. At issue is the claim that yoga is a religion, and, as such, has no rightful place in the district's curriculum. Many of my fellow ashtangis have joined the debate, insisting that yoga is not a religion, and that the generous grant--some $500,000 worth--donated by the late ashtanga guru Sri K. Pattabhi Jois was intended to continue Jois's lifelong research into the physical and mental benefits of a routine yoga practice.

I would have to agree that Jois had no ulterior motive when he established this grant for the Encinitas School district. Jois did not bequeath this money to the school district as a means of extending the reach of Hinduism, Buddhism or any "ism," for that matter. I do believe his gift was given, rather, as a means of enhancing the physical, mental, and emotional health of the children who attend the district schools. However, I am not afraid to admit that yoga is a religion. It is not a religion in the same way we've come to recognize religious affiliation or participation by saying, "I'm a Christian, or a Catholic, or a Muslim, or a Jew." Yoga is a religion in the same way that being nice to your neighbor is a religion. It is a religion in the same way Mapplethorpe wrote of practicing his art.

My husband is a secularist or a humanist, a quasi-atheist. He is quick to bristle at all of the hypocrisy carried out in the name of God. And I do not blame him or others who share his convictions. I have experienced my share of hypocrisy in the name of religion. For my part, I was raised a Catholic, and thereby was baptized and received the sacraments of penance, communion and confirmation. I attended church, religiously, every Sunday until I reached my mid-twenties; and I graduated from both Catholic elementary and high schools. While my default religion tends toward the traditions I learned as a child and young woman, my true religion borrows from all that I have learned and experienced outside of the lens narrowed by adherence to any one dogma. I am, therefore, grateful to Thoreau and Emerson, Melville and Darwin in the same way that I am grateful to Merton, and King, Mother Theresa and Gandhi.

My daughters were brought up without any formal religious indoctrination. My oldest hung out with many born-again Christians, their moniker, not hers. Or mine. She had a difficult time, many times, squaring their behaviors with their professed beliefs. My youngest daughter will sometimes complain that she feels like the only kid at school who doesn't go to church. Sometimes I feel bad about this, in the way I learned to feel bad about no longer practicing the religion I grew up with. And yet, my youngest talks frequently to God. She tells me all the time how she prays to God when she walks the dog or goes off on one of her essential solitary strolls. I see her like Mapplethorpe, going out into the world to hold God's hand and sing with him.

And yet, she will also ask me from time to time to let her join her classmates at one of the local Christian youth groups. I tell her, and I mean it, that I will see what is involved in letting her join. But I am afraid. Maybe I am afraid in the same way that some of the parents in Encinitas seem to be afraid for their children. I am afraid my daughter will really want to join, meaning she'll want to get baptized in this religion that seems so alien to me. My real fear, and let's be honest, fear is what we're talking about here, is that my daughter will be influenced by the more strident forces of evangelism. You know, the voices that teach that only those who believe in Christ will be saved. The Catholics can be strident in the same way, only I could never accept this teaching as truth. Even as a very young girl, it made no sense to me.

Sometimes it is difficult to make sense of religion. Because what is done in the name of religion is not always blessed or divine, generous or beautiful. God's imprimatur has been misused many times over, in my humble opinion. While I do not believe that Jois's grant to the Encinitas public schools for the establishment of a yoga curriculum came attached with its own brand of beatific vision, I suppose that for the parents there, it will come down to a question of faith. Me, I will have to allow my daughter to follow her path even if it leads her into a religion I might ultimately question. Still, I have heard my daughter singing when she returns from one of her walks, and I have to believe she understands something beautiful about her God: S/He'll hold hands and sing with anyone.