Papaloapan University Ranks Third in Mexico

The Universidad del Papaloapan took third place in the nationwide Becalos competition. I am so proud of my team. This was the first year that our little English department participated in the online challenge with medicine, nursing, chemistry, biotec, and business students from smalltown Oaxaca sweating in the rainforest to outperform many of Mexico's far bigger and wealthier universities. Congratulations to our Becalos tutors Laura Angeles Sanchez and Sibel Estrada Escobedo!

Yoga Yeshua: Connecting Body and Spirit to God

There is a widespread perception that Eastern and Western spirituality are as distant and divergent as a Japanese Buddhist temple and an Anglican Christian church. This is a myth. Rudyard Kipling said “East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet,” but the adjacent river valleys where Abraham and yoga were born met constantly for commercial and cultural exchange at the time these ancient ancestors of Judaism, Jesus, Hinduism, and Buddha arrived on earth. That is a fact. The authentic core disciplines of Yoga (yoke) and Yeshua (Jesus) are harmonious not contradictory, so we can now discuss a core of life enhancing practice that I call Yoga Yeshua.

Yoga and Buddha: What's the relationship?

Yoga scholars often differ in characterizing the exact relationship between Patañjali’s Yoga Sutras and Buddhism. Karen O’Brien finds the text weaving Buddhist strands into a Sankhya textile with the Buddhist terminology paralleling the Sankhya metaphysics. Pradeep Gokhale believes Sankhya and Buddhism to be the text’s primary influences with the Yoga Sutras fitting Buddhist psychology into a Sankhya framework. He sees Patañjali learning from Buddhists as Gautama learned from Brahmanists and hears echoes of the Buddhist Dhammapada rustling through Patañjali’s eight limbs.

What is Authentic Yoga?

Imagine yoga’s history as India’s geography. You are flying over the Ganges River from its source in the Himalayas to its mouth on the Bay of Bengal. You can’t see much. Most of the terrain is blanketed in clouds just as much of yoga’s past is cloaked in the mists of time. Occasionally, the vista opens up. You gaze intensely at each of these viewpoints to note the flow has grown in size and changed in color from tributaries that fed the river at junctions you did not witness but can reliably assume, much like academics squinting at the few yoga texts that dot the course of yoga’s development note shifts suggesting a new ideological stream has added to the winding course of yoga’s historical evolution.

Yoga Olmeca IV: Constructing a Monumental Life

The Olmec city of La Venta has both warrior intimidation entrance and also a geek stimulation entrance, so dorks now rush in where savages once feared to even tread. There’s no pen holder bulging from my shirt or toilet paper dangling from my pants. Still, I proudly show my university professor ID for free admission and then bounce through the doorway into the tourist museum with unsightly glee.

Yoga Olmeca III: Revving the Engine and Hugging the Curves

Not all who wander are lost!” wrote J. R. R. Tolkien. Yet, society urges folks to settle down, stay put, and fit in. The gray clouds drifting across the Veracruz sky above me look truly majestic, but drifters are gazed upon less fondly down here. When did humanity’s shift from hunting to planting become a moral imperative? I often feel more compelled to hunt for meaning than plant myself on the turf. 

Yoga Olmeca II: Penetrating the Olmec World

The tossed concrete-block salad that is today’s Acayucan recalls the crumbling stone-block ruins of yesterday’s Olmec settlements without the justification of the passing time. Mexicans lack the gringo compulsion to order the world. Still, they often derive greater happiness from that world they feel less need to control, which may partly explain this American’s pursuit of happiness in this disorganized place.

Yoga Olmeca I: A Fertile Night in the Rainforest

A crocodile thrashes beneath me. Squawking and dripping of the rainforest where Mel Gibson filmed Apocalypto and Sean Connery filmed Medicine Man surround three sides of my cozy wood cabin that overhangs a lily-choked shore and overlooks a mist-shrouded isle broadcasting monkey chatter across the glassy lake. It’s Christmas in the jungle. The lush fertility extends to a curvaceous young form peacefully dozing under the blanket beside me and deeply inhaling from the cool oxygenated air. I recall a perfect day.

Sacred Yoga Texts III: The Yoga Sutras

Between the Bhagavad Gita’s spiritual yoga and the Hatha Pradipika’s physical yoga lies the Yoga Sutras text. The wisdom of the Yoga Sutras was passed down by sages from early times then later written down by Patañjali. There’s a myth that Patañjali was a serpent, who overheard the secrets of yoga while being worn as God's necklace. Here's my translation: