This article will be permanently flagged as inappropriate and made unaccessible to everyone. Are you certain this article is inappropriate? Excessive Violence Sexual Content Political / Social
Email Address:
Article Id: WHEBN0000083742 Reproduction Date:
A yogi is a practitioner of yoga.[1] The term "yogi" is also used to refer specifically to Siddhas,[2][3] and broadly to refer to ascetic practitioners of meditation in a number of Indian religions including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.
In the Classical Sanskrit of the Puranas, the word yogi (Sanskrit: masc yogī, योगी; fem yoginī) originally referred specifically to a male practitioner of yoga. In the same literature yoginī is the term used for female practitioners as well as for divine goddesses and enlightened mothers, all revered as aspects of the Divine Mother Devi without whom there would be no yogis. The two terms are still used with those meanings today, but the word yogi is also used generically to refer to both male and female practitioners of yoga and related meditative practices in Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism etc.
In Hinduism the term yogi refers to an adherent of yoga.[1]
The Shiva Samhita[4] defines the yogi patel as someone who knows that the entire cosmos is situated within his own body, and the Yoga-Shikha-Upanishad text[5] distinguishes two kinds of yogis:
The Yoga-Bhashya (400 CE,[6] the oldest extant commentary on the Yoga-Sutra,[7] offers the following fourfold classification of yogis:
According to David White, the term yogi is also a pejorative term used by Hindu orthodoxy for a Siddha.[3] According to White,
[S]iddha means "realized, perfected one",[note 1] a term generally applied to a practitioner (sādhaka, sadhu) who has, through his practice (sadhana), realized his dual goal of superhuman powers (siddhis, "realizations", "perfections") and bodily immortality (jivanmukti).[8]
The term siddha has become a broad sectarian appellation, applying to Saiva-devotees in the Deccan (Mahesvara Siddhas), alchemists in Tamil Nadu (Sittars), a group of early Buddhist tantrikas from Bengal (Mahasiddha, Siddhacaryas), the alchemists of medieval India (Rasa Siddha), and a mainly north Indian group known as the Nath Siddhas.[8][2] The Nath Siddhas are the only still existing representatives of the medieval Tantric tradition, which had disappeared due to its excesses.[9] While the Nath Siddhas enjoyed persistent popular success, they attracted the scorn of the elite classes.[9] According to White, the term yogi
...has, for at least eight hundred years, been an all-purpose term employed to designate those Saiva specialists whom orthodox Hindus have considered suspect, heterodox, and even heretical in their doctrine and practice.[1]
According to White, the yoga as practiced by Saiva specialists is more closely identified in the eyes of those critics with black magic, sorcery and sexual perversions than with yoga in the conventional sense of the word.[10]
Brahmacarya for yogis, as stated in the Agni-Purana, embodies self-imposed abstention from sexual activity: fantasizing, glorifying the sex act or someone's sexual attraction, dalliance, sexual ogling, sexually flirtatious talk, the resolution to break one's vow, and consummation of sexual intercourse itself, with any being.
Married practitioners aspire likewise to abstain from unconscious/harmful sexual behavior, and to meditatively practice sexual yoga (as opposed to ego-centered sexual release) with their partner, but must practice aware chastity with regard to others.[11]
Modern science now understands that such a code of sexual conduct is also organically assisted by neurochemical changes in brain states of intense meditators (reduced dopamine and increased oxytocin) that induce general relaxation and mental stability, and is not sheerly by willpower alone.[12]
Historical yogis and yoga gurus:
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the External links Yoga/Yoga Tales at Wikibooks
Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Tantra, Hatha yoga
Yoga, Mahabharata, Buddhism, Upanishads, Ramayana
Gautama Buddha, Tibetan Buddhism, Sīla, Mahayana, Hinduism
Hinduism, Yoga, Hindu philosophy, Dāna, Agni
Bengal, Guru, Yoga, Channa village, Sri Aurobindo
Yoga, Pranayama, Hatha yoga, Patanjali, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
Yoga, Hinduism, Odisha, Durga, Buddhism
Sri Lanka, Guru, Tamil language, Jaffna, Hinduism