Daily message

Goodevening!
From the book on faith, 40 insights into hinduism...
We must be careful of arguments presented by Right wing and Left wing thinkers, both of whom are outliers in all cultures, but tend to dominate discourse and take away nuance.The Right wing, especially the Hindu supremacists among them, tend to believe that yoga emerged in its perfect pristine form within Hinduism somewhere in the distant past, even before the Indus valley civilization. THe Left wing has contempt for all things ancient, religious or traditional. These two wings feed off each other as they spend all their time arguing against each other's ideas, rather than appreciating that history is neither simple nor linear.
To deny that yoga has no special relationship with India, with Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, is like saying America has nothing to do with Native Americans ( except being built on their corpses). At the same time, to accuse the West of stealing yoga is unfair; ideas do transform following cultural exchange. The idea of ''purity'' that many religious and academic folk cling to is dangerous as it ultimately ends up establishing''untouchablity''.
Therefore, to answer the question, one needs to agree that yoga is Hindu. But more appropriately, it is Indic, for the idea was also developed by Buddhists, Jains, and a whole bunch of people who lived in the Indian subcontinent. And now it is becoming global.
From the book on ""Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do""by Robert H.Schullet
For Patty Wilson, the arresting phase came when she hurt her foot. Her parents took her to the emergency room of the hospital, praying that her injury wouldn't be serious. Doctors X-rayed her and concluded that she had, in fact, fractured her foot. One doctor told her,"" You better not run. If you do, you risk permanent damage.""
Patty knew there were thousands of people who were expecting her to run and complete the trip."Doctor"" she said, if you wrapped it very tightly, don't you think I could keep running?""Yes, you might be able to run with the fracture if it were tightly bound,""he explained. But he added,"" You'll get blisters, and you can't run with blisters.""
""But ablister is nothing more than water under the skin,""Patty answered.""My mother's a nurse. Couldn't she just take a syringe and slip the needle into the blister and draw the water out?""
The doctor looked surprised, but said,""Yes, I suppose that might be possible."" And with that, Patty had the doctor show her mother how it was to be wrapped every morning.
The arresting phase was only that. It was not terminal. It was an arresting condition. She went on and kept running-five hundred, six-hundred, seven hundred, eight hundred, nine hundred, and one thousand miles. She decided to take the coastal route, not realizing that it was three hundred miles farther. She only thought that it would be far more scenic- and it was- but one thousand miles went into eleven hundred and eleven hundred to twelve hundred, and finally thirteen hundred miles brought her to the outskirts of Portland, Oregon. The governor of the state got his running suit on, joined her, and ran the last mile with her! The entire town was out to greet her. What a welcome she got! She had endured the pain. She had paid the price. She had survived the arresting period and had succeeded. She had learned that faith has incredible mountain-moving power if you will hang on and not give up when you seem to be surrounded by impossibilities.
Have a blessed day!
image courtesy: Charles Alphonse