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How Hinduism Seeped into American Soil
Dana Sawyer American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation—How Indian Spirituality Changed the West
Philip Goldberg Harmony Books, 2010 416 pp.; $26.00 cloth With the exception of the Hare Krishnas, he points out, most Americans haven’t been attracted to India’s ornate temples, complex mythologies, colorful rituals, and pantheon of gods and goddesses. American Veda focuses on that aspect of Hinduism that Americans have gravitated toward: Vedanta philosophy and the meditation and yoga practices it advocates, a combination Goldberg refers to as “Vedanta-Yoga.” Derived from the ancient sacred texts collectively known as the Vedas, Vedanta is founded, he explains, on the belief that underlying the phenomenal world that both Hindus and Buddhists call samsara there is an unmanifest, eternal, limitless “Ground of Being.” This formless absolute, known as Brahman, is both the root of our individual existence and the root of all existence, and experiencing it directly culminates in moksha, or enlightenment—spiritual liberation through perception of the “world soul” at the core of everything. Like Buddhists, Vedantists make clear that merely studying philosophy isn’t enough to wake you up; some practice is necessary, and for most Americans that has meant some form of meditation or yoga. According to Goldberg, when yoga teachers in the U.S. are asked what philosophy underlies their practice, most point to Vedanta.
インド系の宗教のどこにアメリカ人は惹かれるのか。
それは、華美な寺院でもなく、複雑な神話でもなく、カラフルな儀式でもなく、神々の神殿でもなく、ヴェダーンタの哲学と瞑想とヨーガを組み合わせた、ヴェーダンタヨーガともいうべきものなのである。
ヴェーダンタの哲学とは、サムサーラと呼ばれているこの現象世界の奥に、隠れている、永遠の、無限の「存在の根源」ともいうべきものが存在している、という思想である。 この、形のない、ブラフマンと呼ばれる絶対者は、個人の存在の根源であると共に、すべての存在の根源でもあり、これを直接的に体験することによって、モクシャという覚りを得られるのである。直接的に体験するとは、万物の核の「世界の魂」を認識することであり、この認識によって、霊的開放が成し遂げられるのである。
仏教徒と同じように、ヴェーダンタ教徒も霊的覚醒のためには、単に哲学を勉強するだけではダメで、なんらかの修行が求められるのであり、アメリカ人にとって、その修行とは瞑想とヨーガを意味する。著者であるGoldbergによると、ヨーガの先生方はヨガの実践の奥の哲学は何かと問われるとほとんどがヴェーダンタと答えるという。
ここら辺の分析はなるほどと思いますね。
ヴェーダンタヨーガという言葉も上手いと思います。
頭を使うと共に身体も使いながら、全身で真理を体得し魂の向上を図っていく、というところが魅力のあるものになっているのでしょう。
Vedanta, one of the six orthodox systems (darshans) of Indian philosophy and the one that forms the basis of most modern schools of Hinduism. The term Vedanta means in Sanskrit the “conclusion” (anta) of the Vedas, the earliest sacred literature of India; it applies to the Upanishads, which were elaborations of the Vedas, and to the school that arose out of the “study” (mimamsa) of the Upanishads. Thus, Vedanta is also referred to as Vedanta-Mimamsa (“Reflection on Vedanta”), Uttara-Mimamsa (“Reflection on the Latter Part of the Vedas”), and Brahma-Mimamsa (“Reflection on Brahman”).
The three fundamental Vedanta texts are: the Upanishads (the most favoured being the longer and older ones such as the Brihadaranyaka, the Chandogya, the Taittiriya, and the Katha); the Brahma-sutras (also called Vedanta-sutras), which are very brief, even one-word interpretations of the doctrine of the Upanishads; and the famous poetic dialogue, the Bhagavadgita (“Song of the Lord”), which, because of its immense popularity, was drawn upon for support of the doctrines found in the Upanishads. No single interpretation of the texts emerged, and several schools of Vedanta developed, differentiated by their conceptions of the nature of the relationship and the degree of identity between the eternal core of the individual self (atman) and the absolute (brahman). These range from the nondualism (Advaita) of the 8th-century philosopher Shankara to the theism (Vishishtadvaita; literally “Qualified Nondualism”) of the 11th–12th-century thinker Ramanuja and the dualism (Dvaita) of the 13th-century thinker Madhva. The Vedanta schools do, however, hold in common a number of beliefs; transmigration of the self (samsara) and the desirability of release from the cycle of rebirths; the authority of the Veda on the means of release; that brahman is both the material (upadana) and the instrumental (nimitta) cause of the world; and that the self (atman) is the agent of its own acts (karma) and therefore the recipient of the fruits, or consequences, of action (phala). All the Vedanta schools unanimously reject both the heterodox (nastika) philosophies of Buddhism and Jainism and the conclusions of the other orthodox (astika) schools (Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Samkhya, Yoga, and, to some extent, the Purva-Mimamsa). The influence of Vedanta on Indian thought has been profound, so that it may be said that, in one or another of its forms, Hindu philosophy has become Vedanta. Although the preponderance of texts by Advaita scholastics has in the West given rise to the erroneous impression that Vedanta means Advaita, the nondualistic Advaita is but one of many Vedanta schools. |
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