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August 8, 2013

Transparency Papers: introduction, and growing up Catholic (part one)

By being clear about our subjectivities, we can begin to dialogue openly with the subjectivities of others, fostering “intersubjectivity”. If we don’t allow ourselves to be transparent, both writers and readers of yoga philosophy can get sucked into the quagmire of projecting and assessing objective authority, rather than sharing experience. And yoga philosophy is nothing if not the language we use to share the ineffable experiences of practice, regardless of who we are, who we’ve studied with, or what our goals may be.
July 28, 2013

śruti and smṛti: intertextu-orality, phenomenology, and the so-ham behind the swan

Sensation is given, something we discover ourselves within, something we have been thrown-into: it is śruti. Thought follows, in language that extends through time backwards into memory, and forward into expectations built upon memory. Thought is smṛti.
July 21, 2013

Between the academic rock and the traditionalist hard place: finding the open source for yoga philosophy today

The feeling that yoga philosophy is an inaccessible practice is not only fostered by the current structural limitations of Modern Postural Yoga trainings (max. 20 hrs. within 200!), but by two deeper forces: the abstract academic study of yoga that seems to turn it into a lifeless artifact, and traditionalist teaching structures that demand faithful allegiance as the price of transmission.
June 15, 2013

Yoga at the Threshold: abstracts for feedback

I'm putting together a collection of essays entitled Yoga at the Threshold: Critical Meditations, for release in early 2014. It The 2012 publication of Threads of Yoga benefited immensely from crowdsourced feedback, so I thought I'd present the following abstracts publicly at this time to begin this process again. I'd be most appreciative of any comments -- confrontative or tangential -- that you might have to offer on any of the subjects below. Those abstracts that are in quotations are from essays that have already evolved through several drafts.