In Yoga, Author Says, Ethical Positions Are Important, Too

c. 2007 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Yoga has lost its moral compass as a result of its rapid rise in popularity in North America, says a book by one of the world’s leading yoga scholars. Georg Feuerstein, author of “Yoga Morality: Ancient Teachings at a Time of Global Crisis,” is worried that, in the process […]

c. 2007 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Yoga has lost its moral compass as a result of its rapid rise in popularity in North America, says a book by one of the world’s leading yoga scholars.

Georg Feuerstein, author of “Yoga Morality: Ancient Teachings at a Time of Global Crisis,” is worried that, in the process of becoming so many things to so many people, yoga has lost its ethical, philosophical and spiritual roots.


Confined just four decades ago to the hippie or ethnic fringes of North American culture, yoga has become, especially in the past five years, thoroughly mainstream.

Yoga now forms the heart of a $4 billion-a-year industry and is practiced by almost 10 percent of North Americans, with much higher participation rates on the West Coast, according to a poll by Yoga Magazine.

Feuerstein says most of today’s yoga practitioners don’t care about, or don’t understand, the tradition’s moral teachings, which could offer guidance on sexuality, war, corporate greed, racism, politeness, gluttony, financial debt and pollution.

When tens of millions of North Americans find their identities in saying they “do yoga,” Feuerstein says, widespread ignorance about yoga’s ethical traditions represents a tragic lost opportunity.

For most of those who try yoga, the ancient practice is more about physical fitness than spiritual discipline, Feuerstein says. Some may see it as a way to increase sex appeal.

What would a traditional Hindu yoga teacher, steeped in modesty, think of those revealing outfits women and men wear to classes, Feuerstein asks.

He worries that many yoga practitioners focus obsessively on mere physical health.

“It should not require much imagination to appreciate that a person can be superbly fit but mentally lethargic, emotionally insensitive, morally corrupt and spiritually bankrupt,” he writes.


Not one for pulling his punches, Feuerstein notes that Nazi Germany placed great emphasis on physical fitness to bolster pride and military strength.

“It is certainly desirable to have a fit and healthy body,” he says, “but we could profit from a stable and perceptive mind combined with a loving, caring heart. Yoga is primarily about the latter ideals.”

Feuerstein, author of “The Shambhala Encyclopedia of Yoga” and dozens of other books, loosely structures “Yoga Morality” around the five virtues taught by Patanjali, a pseudonym given to the early authors of the Yogasutras. He translates Patanjali’s ethical values as “non-harming,” “truthfulness,” “non-stealing,” “greedlessness” and “chastity.”

He shows how crucial they could be in a world he feels lacks a moral center.

He places the five virtues under the umbrella Hindu principle of “interconnectedness,” which teaches that we need to develop a sense of kinship with all human beings, as well as with nature.

Regarding the virtue of “non-harming,” Feuerstein talks about how yoga opposes all violence.

That includes rejecting unjust wars, which is how he views the invasion of Iraq, and violent speech, including calling people “stupid” or “losers.”


Highlighting the virtue of “truthfulness,” Feuerstein says we live in a world saturated with lies and spin, with deception coming from the highest places. People who lie, he says, contribute to their own ruin, and that of others.

“Non-stealing” is a crucial ethic from yoga tradition, according to Feuerstein, who recently moved to Saskatchewan, the home of his wife, Brenda, after decades living in the U.S.

He considers the growing gap between rich and poor a form of theft, as CEOs make in a few hours what a minimum-wage earner receives in a year. He says sweatshops and child labor also are forms of institutionalized theft.

Then there is “greedlessness,” or “non-grasping.” He says the U.S. national debt of nearly $9 trillion, a portion of it funding the war in Iraq, is a form of greed, which does not recognize limits. He also associates greed with gluttony.

Some of Feuerstein’s most challenging thoughts center on the virtue of “chastity.”

He says the average person is exposed to 300 sexual images a day, and people are succumbing to “shallow body narcissism.”

Decrying all the “sexy outfits” and the “fashion parade” in yoga classes, he laments how “modesty, once a highly valued yogic virtue, is considered old-fashioned.”


He is especially appalled at the concept of nude yoga classes. And he says ancient Tantric Yoga, which often deals with sexual energy, has been abused by superficial, exploitative teachers. It’s a criticism he shares with Buddhism’s Dalai Lama.

Feuerstein does not interpret chastity as total abstinence from sex, but he does warn that “we cannot indulge in sex and hope to liberate ourselves from the shackles of the unconscious and the instinctual habits it favors.”

He ultimately calls for raising the libido “above the genitals” so that it can fuel spiritual transformation.

Feuerstein contends, “Ethics is the foundation of yoga.” Virtue, he maintains, can open the gateway to spiritual liberation.

DSB/RB END TODD900 words

A photo of Georg (CQ) Feuerstein is available via https://religionnews.com.

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