Reconciling Yogas

Download or read book Reconciling Yogas written by Christopher Key Chapple and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reconciling Yogas explores five approaches to the accomplishment of Yoga from a variety of religious perspectives: Jaina, Hindu, and Buddhist. Haribhadra, a prolific Jaina scholar who espoused a universal view of religion, proclaimed that truth can be found in all faiths and sought to elucidate differences between various schools of thought. In Yoga, he discovered a form of spiritual practice common to many faiths and juxtaposed their paths to demonstrate the common goal of liberation. Utilizing the structure of Patañjali's advanced eightfold path of Yoga in the Yoga Sutra, Haribhadra formulates his own eight stages of Yoga to which he assigns titles in the feminine gender that echo the names of goddesses. Discussed are the Jaina stages of spiritual ascent and two forms of Yoga for which there is no other account. Also included is a new translation of the Yogadṛṣṭisamuccaya, an eighth-century text by Haribhadra.