What Buddhism Can Give To Modern Yoga: An Interview With Shinzen Young

What Buddhism Can Give to Modern Yoga Shinzen Young
What Buddhism Can Give to Modern Yoga

An Interview with Shinzen Young
Rick Colella is the founder and owner of Insight Yoga studio in Pasadena, CA. A long-time student of Shinzen
Young, Rick has been teaching Insight Yoga—Vipassana techniques within asana practice—for the past 7 years.
Rick Colella: In a recent talk, you mentioned how a person can actually realize the full extent of classical yoga as
formulated by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras by using Buddhist Vipassana techniques in asana practice. Can you
talk a little bit about that?
Shinzen Young: If you look upon yoga from the perspective of the Yoga Sutras, then what is ordinarily taught in
a yoga class is only two of the eight limbs – Asana and Pranayama. Yama and Niyama, the ethical basis of yoga
and the virtuous spiritual customs of India are rarely mentioned. Pratyahara , the restraint of the senses is
sometimes given some mention in the last five minutes of class, for instance, in savasana a teacher might say
withdraw from everything, relax and let go of all sensory experience, but Dharana (initial level concentration),
Dhyana (mid-level concentration), and Samadhi (absolute concentration) are not usually explicitly mentioned.
The bulk of what is taught as “yoga” is asana and pranayama. So although most yoga teachers in some way give
lip service to the yoga sutras, in point of fact, they don’t emphasize the classic goal of yoga as something
realistically attainable. But that goal is attainable! The classic goal of yoga is Samadhi, the ability to take any
object, any time, and pour so much concentration on it that you merge with it and both you and it disappear
into an experience that transcends time and space.
There are two ways to look upon the pranayama and asanas that constitute most of what is taught in modern
yoga. They may be looked upon as exercises to prepare the body for the long periods of intense sitting that may
be required to attain Samadhi. On the other hand, they may be looked upon as a venue within which you
cultivate intense concentration in lieu of those long periods of formal sitting practice. The former point of view
would seem to be implied in the yoga sutras themselves. If we take this point of view, then clearly, modern
yoga, although spectacularly effective in creating health and vitality, is failing dismally to achieve its ultimate
goal because very few students of yoga ever go on to do intense sitting practice. If we take the second point of
view, that the yoga session itself is the venue for developing the inner limbs of the Yoga Sutras, then a little
formal training in Mindfulness technique can go a long way towards facilitating that goal.
Most yoga teachers would probably say that while doing asanas and pranayama their students are developing
Dharana, Dyana, and Samadhi. To which, I would say that the kind of concentration power that Patanjali is
talking about is utterly extraordinary and although people develop a certain amount of concentration when they
do yoga and focus on the breath or focus on alignment, this typically doesn’t begin to reach the industrial
strength of intensity that Patanjali is asking for. It’s just a temporary state of light focus that dissipates as soon as
the workout is over. It’s not the earth-shaking, paradigm-shifting dissolution into cessation that is the goal of
classical yoga.
RC: So how might we change the situation?
SY: Mindfulness from the Buddhist tradition can be very useful here, because Mindfulness gives the yogi
systematic formal focusing techniques that they can use during the yoga practice to assure that the
©1998-2017 Shinzen Young • All rights reserved. 1
art_BuddhismYoga.doc • Created: 11/29/2010 • Modified: 12/7/2016
What Buddhism Can Give to Modern Yoga Shinzen Young
development of concentration is high enough to achieve Samadhi in Patanjali’s sense of the word. This is what
you are trying to develop with Insight Yoga.
In this way of working, the body sensations that occur during the yoga session are the objects with which one
attempts to attain Samadhi. The asanas are actually the ideal venue to penetrate the materiality of the body. By
systematically noting types of sensations in the body, locations of sensations in the body, or aspects of sensation
like solidity, restfulness, flow, and vanishing, then, eventually, with time, you will come to Samadhi on your
asana while you’re doing it.
How will you know that you’ve achieved Samadhi on the asana? First the sense of a physical body will break up
into a lot of waves and vibrations. Then those waves and vibrations will die away into Cessation. Nirodha. Mind,
body and surrounding scene collapse into a dimensionless point. In other words, you have had such a complete
experience of the body sensations of the asana that there’s no time to fixate those sensations into a thing called
a body. With that, you have achieved the perfection of the posture internally, whatever it may look like
externally. You’ve achieved perfection of the posture because the posture has become not somewhat formless,
but literally formless, because through the asana, the body has dropped into the unborn state. After the yoga
practice, the perception of body and mind will of course return, but your paradigm will have permanently
shifted.
RC: Is there a gift that Yoga could give to Buddhism?
SY: There are some Buddhist teachers who have this weird prejudice, that if you’re doing Buddhist practice you
shouldn’t mix yoga in with it. But I think that bringing yoga sessions into Buddhist retreats will greatly facilitate
the Buddhist practice.
There are four reasons for this. First, yoga postures tend to induce pleasant sensations and this gives meditators
something interesting and pleasant to focus on in the body. I like to have something pleasant and fun at retreats
so that the practice doesn’t become a grim endurance exercise. Second, the yoqa postures tend to produce
energy flow states in the body and this helps the meditator get insight into what we in Buddhism call anicca or
impermanence. Third, when mindfulness meditators work with body sensation, it is desirable to be able to
contact sensation anywhere in the body. The yoga postures induce sensation over the whole body making it
easier to contact sensation globally through the body and facilitating the detection of the more subtle levels of
sensation that often go unnoticed.
Finally, on a purely physical level, the yoga increases health and vitality and prepares the body for periods of
formal sitting practice. So Buddhist meditators that practice yoga will live longer, have more energy, and be able
to sit more comfortably and therefore be more likely to achieve enlightenment.
©1998-2017 Shinzen Young • All rights reserved. 2

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