Ever since an article appeared on the sports pages in the newspaper last week about Americans turning yoga into a competitive sport (even hoping to bring it to the Olympics as a medal event!), I am at a loss for words. Although I don’t practice yoga, I have rarely heard of something so absurd as this. And yet I can’t say I’m surprised; it’s just America doing what it always does, making everything into « material » for consumption.
Consuming yoga?
About the Author: zenscribe
Enseignante Zen et poète, Sensei Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell est née et a grandi à Minneapolis, aux Etats-Unis. Arrivée en France en 1981 pour étudier la littérature et l’histoire, elle y est restée, s’installant à Paris, où elle élève ses deux enfants et gagne sa vie en tant que journaliste.
The Zen teacher and poet Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell Sensei was born and raised in Minneapolis, but came to France in 1981 to study literature and history and has lived in Paris ever since, raising her two children and making a living as a journalist.
Thanks, Adriano. Nicely put.
I, for one, am not going to the MacDojo, although it presents its dangers at every turn!
That also occurs in Martial Arts in general… each and every old tradition of Man that involves in any way the use of the physical Body to express Mind and/or Spirit is today under the threat of becoming a recreation sport and later a professional sport, so it can carve its way into the Olimpics…
Sadly, though this may in some ways, benefit practicioners leading them to achieve greater physical standards, (stronger, faster, higher). As well as it can help to spread the Practice…
One question must arise, is that what we love to do, be put into a Test against fellow practitioners? Must all that that we do or aspire to, give place to an award/medal?
The martial practice has no enemy but the self, in that way becoming a sport may be devious and can withdraw the practitioner from the balanced path.
As Yoga now, Karate, Taekwondo and other martial arts have suffered severe damage in its course to become sports, This took its toll in losing its identity and tradition.
Are we walking to the "Way of the MacDojo"?
Indeed, Jesus got a bit fed up with all the wheeling and dealing. More than 2000 years later, not much has changed.
No, greed, anger and ignorance — the roots of all "materialism" — are not exclusively American; these are the characteristics of a life lived in thrall to separation, rather than wholeness and unity. Such "delusion," as the Buddha called it, knows no bounds except its own. America has simply perfected it (extravagantly) as a way of life.
It was Jezus himself who threw out all the commerce people out of the temple – wasn’t it?
for the price of one lesson of yoga you get a cola for free…
could we see competition maybe just is a superform of the doing-modus
instead of the being modus?
Is action-man American too?
I guess in art we have this too? Making objects.
Could we compare that?
This week i heard an art-teacher replying to a last year student that suddenly discovered that someone else is making exactly the same works then she does:
"Now you have to look at the small differences – and you have to focus on them – to make them bigger – so your work gets more different from his…"
This is the real way…
This was her recepy to a student who is more then a year trying to go inside and find out …
in homeopathy there are 3 major categories of remedies. One of them is the animal remedy: comparing, concurence – jalousy – wanting to be the best…
so i guess maybe not just American?