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Recently this has been up on the headline for like two days already. Yoga was BANNED! Not to all but to certain group of people only. I don't know why but these people seems to create most of the noise. Especially during parliament meetings. They are the one making racist remarks and yet they accuse people of making racist remarks. What are they trying to imply? Is it that they are the only race, therefore any remark regarding them is classified as racist remark while the rest are not considered race so those remarks made are not racist remarks? Up to you to decide.
Never mind about that, it is still a long time before Malaysia can reach High Tech Nation if they are still fighting over who perli-ed who and why chinese are "pendatang". Eh MAHATIR! Your 2020 vision is not coming true. 11 more years but it seems we are not "ready" for it yet. I think we do stand a chance in 200200. Alright, let's get back to the main topic. Yoga. I wonder how did they come about making this decision. It seems the main reason is that Yoga has some religious influences in it. It is said to be some Hindu-Buddhist teaching is preached when learning yoga. To what extend this statement is true, I'll leave it for you to judge. However, before you make any decision, let me share some Yoga experience of mine with you.
First of all, let me describe my size. I'm 189 cm tall, weighing at almost 90Kg, you can imagine the tummy I have. All my friends know that I am not FIT at all. So by perception, I think I can't bend my body. But I can! To certain extend of course. I can't bend my body to allow my head to touch my knees while my legs are straight. (LOL). I first practiced yoga when I joined some novitiate programme back in 2003, 2005 and 2007. My mentor said yoga can help us stretch our body so that during our meditation session we can sit longer without experience pain on our legs and our back. So he taught us a set of yoga call "Worshiping The Sun". Not a very hard routine and also not a simple routine. I can do all the postures except one where I have to bend down forming a triangle with the floor. My feet just won't touch the ground. Never mind about that, I cheated my way through that. I actually enjoyed that because after doing that you really can feel the difference in your body. So I do think yoga helps.
Now here comes the question. In Buddhism, we actually don't worship any god or any human being. The Buddha (the statue you see in temples especially the famous one in Thailand - The reclining Buddha) is just our teacher. We pay respect to him for what he have been through and for what he had taught us. We do not worship him like idol worshiping. Therefore we are flexible for He said, " Come and see, if you think this benefits you, then practice it." In a general way of explaining this will be - practice whatever that you think is good for you and whatever that helps you to attain Nibbana (ever lasting peace). So we just learn whatever that helps us. We do not practice or learn anything blindly. So Yoga to us is just a way to help us. At least for me it is. I have never ever thought that yoga has religious elements in it. Who cares what "Worshiping The Sun" is for or really do we worship the sun? All I did when I was doing the posture is trying to ease my pain. Where got time to think about other things?
Well another reason I heard from my mom (she practices yoga regularly, I don't) was there is this meditation session included in the whole routine. (So there are other routines!!!) She thinks that this might be the cause that those people consider it a religious element. Well to me meditation is not a word solely for Buddhism. I believe other religion also have their set of meditation. They do meditate! Just that the ways are different. We believe in concentrating on certain things to realise impermanence, non-self and suffering. While Christians of course have their which I do not know what they contemplate on. As for muslims, if I haven't remembered it wrongly, it is stated in my Form 4 History Text that Nabi Muhammad "bertapah" in some cave. So he did meditate after all. He meditated based on Allah's teaching. I meditate based on Buddha's teaching. Meditation is a very general term. It doesn't mean that you are a Buddhist if you meditate. It doesn't mean that you will be influence to be a Christian if you meditate. It sure doesn't make sense that you will become a Hindu follower if you practice yoga.
Things are amazing. A 100ml cup filled up with 50 ml of water could be half full and at the same time it could be half empty. Why choose to look at things in a negative way? Why complain that the cup is half empty? Why not we rejoice that the cup is half full? Why think of so many ways to restrict people? Why punish yourself for the things you have not done? Why want to dig something up to make yourself suffer? Is it worth it to build walls around yourself to make sure you don't go out of it to make mistakes when you can have beautiful sceneries outside the walls? I wonder why this body is making so much noise. They should spend their time thinking how to make Malaysia a better place and how to make Malaysia achieve Developed Nation status.
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