Sinister Yogis (eBook)

David Gordon White (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2010 | 1. Auflage
376 Seiten
University of Chicago Press (Verlag)
978-0-226-89515-4 (ISBN)

Infos

Since the 1960s, yoga has become a billion-dollar industry in the West, attracting housewives and hipsters, New Agers and the old aged. Marketed as a clear path to self-realization, mind expansion, and taut abs, yoga is also perceived as an ancient and unchanging Indian tradition based on the revelations of benign and limber sages. But this modern conception of yoga derives from nineteenth-century European spirituality, Sinister Yogis reveals, and the true story of yoga's origins in South Asia is far richer, stranger, and much more entertaining. To uncover this history, David Gordon White focuses on yoga's practitioners. Combing through millennia of South Asia's vast and diverse literature, he discovers that yogis are usually portrayed as wonder-workers or sorcerers who use their dangerous supernatural abilities which can include raising the dead, possession, and levitation to acquire power, money, and sexual gratification. As White shows, even those yogis who aren't downright villainous bear little resemblance to Western assumptions about them. At turns rollicking and sophisticated, Sinister Yogis tears down the image of yogis as detached, contemplative teachers, finally placing them in their proper context.

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Since the 1960s, yoga has become a billion-dollar industry in the West, attracting housewives and hipsters, New Agers and the old-aged. But our modern conception of yoga derives much from nineteenth-century European spirituality, and the true story of yoga's origins in South Asia is far richer, stranger, and more entertaining than most of us realize.To uncover this history, David Gordon White focuses on yoga s practitioners. Combing through millennia of South Asia s vast and diverse literature, he discovers that yogis are usually portrayed as wonder-workers or sorcerers who use their dangerous supernatural abilities which can include raising the dead, possession, and levitation to acquire power, wealth, and sexual gratification. As White shows, even those yogis who aren t downright villainous bear little resemblance to Western assumptions about them. At turns rollicking and sophisticated, Sinister Yogis tears down the image of yogis as detached, contemplative teachers, finally placing them in their proper context.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 15.7.2010
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Religionsgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Buddhismus
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Hinduismus
• ISBN-10: 0-226-89515-7 / 0226895157
• ISBN-13: 978-0-226-89515-4 / 9780226895154