Yoga and Vedic Religiosity: An Interview with Mark Whitwell
Mark Whitwell at the Lakshmi Temple inside the Mysore Palace, at the rear temple of which Krishnamacharya first taught the Maharaj of Mysore and his family
With Rosalind Atkinson
Q: Mark, in your opinion, what is the difference between a person going to a temple and being with the deities from a religious perspective compared to from the yoga perspective?
Mark Whitwell: The personalities of the smritis (sacred stories) were turned into gods and goddesses that people started to relate to without yoga, without participation. Krishnamacharya was saying that everyone should have a yoga practice, because yoga was the way to participate in the truth of life. If the truth of life is expressed through a cultural like a deity, a special person, then the way that we relate to that beautiful idea is through our own yoga practice. Not like a “good luck god” to be appealed to in superstitious hopefulness. What the yoga does is turn us around into an esoteric relationship with any deities or sacred story figures, a relationship where we love them not as something separate from ourselves, but as a personification of an aspect of the One reality, that we are also arising in, that our family and spouse and parents and everyone else is also arising in. Once there is a yoga there, a person feels their own place in the cosmos, it stops being a childish or consumer or begging relationship.
Q: Can you summarise your perspective on the Bhagavad Gita?
Mark Whitwell: To summarise that great epic, it is saying to do what’s right for you, to do your dharma, do what’s right for you, your duty. Krishna is saying to Arjuna that he must step up and do his life, even though he feels afraid. And the way he says to do that is by sacrificing the inhale to the exhale, and sacrificing the exhale to the inhale. By being a yogi in the midst of life’s chaos. And to do it without fretting for whatever the results might be, good or bad. To take action without worrying about the result of action.
Q: And how about the Ramayana?
Mark Whitwell: In India, almost everyone is familiar with this story. It has been retold in countless forms since the original setting in poetry and song by Tulsi Das. I was sitting in the home of Tulsi Das in the city of Varanasi one day, when I heard this deep pulse coming up through the ground, like a dub beat pulse! And then there were words – “What’s up Ram, its something wrong?”
“Yes, my man, my wife has gone…!”
It turns out it was a modern version of the Ramayana by MC Yogi, the sound drifting in from nearby. It felt like a potent message that we can and must adapt these epics to modern understandings, while still communicating the essence of the teachings. Hanuman, who is so close to Ram that he is known as Ram’s breath, is asking Ram what is wrong, and something is indeed wrong, as Ram’s wife Sita has been stolen by the demons. And this is not just a story, this is a very accurate diagnosis of the existential problem for humanity, that the feminine is not there. And so Hanuman, Ram’s breath, your breath, is there to bring Sita back to Ram, to bring the descent, the inhale, the yin, the feminine back into your own body, your own kingdom. Hanuman brings Sita back into your own body so that peace can prevail in the kingdom.
Q: Many different religions incorporated a yoga practice… do you think us looking into the Vedas and the Epic stories of Hinduism is in danger of feeding Hindu nationalism on the one hand, and the world’s confusion between Hinduism and Yoga on the other?
Mark Whitwell: Well we have to look into them from a yogic perspective. And it won’t always be appropriate to do so. It is probably not appropriate, for example, for a Western yoga studio to have a Hindu deity in the foyer. Certainly not on Yoga mats and some of the more disrespectful commodifications. Krishnamacharya taught several Muslim students, and he would never impose Hindu mantra on these students. His basic approach was to treat everyone with respect, to give them yoga as a tool within their existing religious culture.
Of course, in his context a person’s culture and religion were deeply entwined and probably determined by birth.
These days, in most places that I teach, many people coming to yoga come from bland modern culture, many atheist or perhaps traumatized by Christianity, or perhaps still with hidden programming by or reactions to Christianity. Many don’t realise that they do actually come from a culture, it’s just a culture of stealing things from other cultures. So there can be a naïve kind of enthusiasm for Hindu culture, just because it’s so colourful and wild and beautiful, different to their own western background. That is why there must be the yoga, to bring the main experience into the student’s body, to end that outward consumer search that is at risk of gleefully appropriating. That sense of lack or blank void in people must be shown to be an illusion, that hunger gets sated, through their own practice.
One group of people I love teaching is Hindu students from India and of Indian descent around the world, whether that’s first generation in the USA or 5th generation Indo-Fijians in Fiji. Krishnamacharya taught that every sincere Hindu person needed a yoga practice as a seamless part of their devotions. People already have their puja place, their family deity, and they instantly understand how yoga as full-body prayer can be incorporated into those devotions. That’s the context it evolved out of, the sincere religious life, but it transforms it from rote activity to full-feeling participation. And for some younger modern people it makes it possible to reconnect with that tradition, from the esoteric viewpoint rather than just exoteric religion. It can foster connection with parents, reconnection with the family traditions but from a new perspective.
And I love sharing these tools of Yoga with sincere Muslim students. Islam, the religion of love, the most Yogic! There is already this profound practice of whole-body prayer, so we can just add the breath into these devotions and it becomes a full deck of cards. It becomes participation in Allah, not petitioning to a distant figure, even in love. The beautiful words of Quran can be incorporated into the practice as mantra. The Yoga helps people actualize their religious ideals.
And Christians too, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains… there’s a lot there, we could go into the process of all of these sincere practitioners getting Yoga. And for some of them there is a cosmopolitan outlook and worldview that enjoys engaging with the Vedas and the ancient stories and can easily see it as a different expression of the same truth. And for others there is a sense of threat in different expressions, so it’s not appropriate. In a rural Fijian Christian community, or a Muslim community in a situation of hostile Hindu nationalism, we would not be discussing the Ramayana. Just the breath is enough.
Mark teaching a group of Fijian Christian women on the small island of Taveuni. Photo by JBB / EndlessSmiles 2017
Q: And finally, what’s the relationship between these epics and our yoga practice?
Mark Whitwell: There are great teachings in these epics of Ramayana and Bhagavad Gita, but in the ordinary life, these personalities like Krishna and Arjuna, Sita, Ram and Hanuman have been turned into mere temple religion, where we go and beg for a good outcome. It was Krishnamacharya’s sincere view for India to return to the full way of Veda, where everyone would be doing a yoga practice as their first response to the Veda or their Guru. In India we see little threads of yoga here and there. So we must turn superstitious religion into yogic participation.
Recommended reading on Hindutva and rising fascism in India: Arundhati Roy’s Azadi - essays on democracy and freedom.
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About Mark Whitwell:
Mark Whitwell is an internationally recognized Yoga Master and teacher, a traditional teacher in the best sense of the word, who shares the Yoga he received from his Teachers Tirumalai Krishnamacharya and his son TKV Desikachar. Mark Whitwell put together the well-known Yoga textbook The Heart of Yoga for his teachers, after seeing the gap between what he received in India and what was being practiced in the US. He credits his time spent with many different saints and sages, including Baba Muktananda, Robert Adams, and especially UG Krishnamurti for ensuring that the Yoga he teaches is participation in life, not a struggle towards a future result. Mark Whitwell unites the strands of Advaita Vedanta and Tantric Hathayoga into a simple and cohesive practice that is accessible to all bodies and abilities. He emphasizes the importance of making Yoga relevant to our modern daily lives, without losing the essence as a spiritual and interior practice, not a workout. He teaches around the world including at Omega Institute, Kripalu, Esalen, Bhakti and Shaktifest, 1440, Kawai Purapura, Crystal Castles, the Yoga Barn Bali, and other renowned venues for the sharing of wisdom. He has his own Ashram in a northern island of Fiji where he runs an annual “Teacher Untraining.” Mark Whitwell is the author of the Hridayayogasutra, Yoga of Heart: The Power of Intimate Connection, The Promise, and God and Sex: Now We Get Both (non-duality for a modern audience). He is the founder of the Heart of Yoga Foundation, the host of the successful Heart of Yoga Podcast and has many thousands of dear students/friends worldwide who attest to how an authentic yoga practice has transformed their lives. Humble and down-to-earth, he would be horrified to read this bio about him!