{"id":1274,"date":"2012-05-16T09:02:07","date_gmt":"2012-05-16T08:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/?p=1274"},"modified":"2012-05-16T09:08:50","modified_gmt":"2012-05-16T08:08:50","slug":"categories-yoginis-and-gender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2012\/05\/categories-yoginis-and-gender.html","title":{"rendered":"Categories, Yoginis, and Gender"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"
A Yogi at Mohenjo Daro.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Yesterday, Bristol University\u2019s Department of Theology and Religious Studies seminar<\/a> hosted Dr. Sondra Hausner<\/a>, who teaches anthropology at Oxford. Her talk, while very good, won\u2019t exactly be the subject of my blog post today. But instead I thought I\u2019d write about a few of the \u2018spin off\u2019 ideas that came to me out of her talk. [This is one of the things I\u2019m very grateful for in academia, the opportunities one gets to hear leading researchers on countless topics and then to have a beer or glass of water with friends, or sometimes those very researchers, to discuss\u2026]<\/strong> As with most spin offs, these are just preliminary and perhaps fragmentary notes\u2026<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. She mentioned a researcher* who had contrasted\u00a0Pata\u00f1jali\u2019s<\/a> highly mentalistic notion of yoga with the emphasis on bodily understanding found in Indus Valley Civilization<\/a> (IVC)\u00a0depictions of yoga (more images<\/a>). This, according to her source, suggested the possibility of inversions of the prioritization of body or mind in certain practices (viz. yoga). Thus we can infer shifting understandings of what it would mean to be a yogi or yogini. This is fair enough, if the premises hold up. But what do we actually know about the Indus Valley Civilization\u2019s emphasis, be it mental or physical, in yoga?<\/strong> Do we even know that they did<\/em> yoga of any sort?
    \n\u2013
    \nMy understanding is that we just don\u2019t know enough about the IVC to say such things for sure. Yes, we have plenty of fragments depicting people and animals and perhaps some form of     rudimentary script<\/a> (it has not yet been translated and some researchers believe it is not a script at all<\/a>), but to suggest that we can judge how mental-vs-bodily oriented the people were is at best very speculative. \u00a0I asked Dr. Hausner about this and she gave a good response, but offered nothing in particular beyond suggesting that the image might suggest a more bodily oriented understanding of yoga in the IVC.
    \n\u2013
    \n\u201cSpeculative\u201d still comes to mind for me, though. Without texts or a continuous tradition of any kind, it\u2019s really difficult to say much about the theory or practice of people in the\u00a0Indus Valley Civilization. On the one hand, from images, we have no idea<\/em> what the practitioners are supposed to be thinking about, and on the other hand with <\/em>texts, we often have no idea what the practitioner is doing<\/em>. I\u2019m reminded of the (also Oxford-based) anthropologist     David Gellner\u2019s work in Nepal<\/a>, where he found that there was very clearly an insider-outsider relationship with texts, and that, first of all, outsiders weren\u2019t expected to ever read the texts, and if they did <\/em>read them, they most definitely couldn\u2019t interpret them correctly because of the hidden symbolic language used. That was in the specifically tantric context, which is different from the yoga sutras, but you can see that there can be difficulty in exact understanding of a 2000 year old text and tradition, especially when we\u2019re talking in\u2026
    \n\u2013<\/li>\n
  2. Non-emic terminology. <\/strong>That means that we\u2019re using our<\/em> (etic) categories to define and characterize their<\/em> practices. Mind and body simply aren\u2019t Indian terms, nor are mental and physical, though we can find and use plenty of Sanskrit, Pali, etc that match up fairly well. Early Indians probably<\/em> didn\u2019t think in terms like our Western, post-Descartes, polarity of mind and body, that which thinks vs that which is extended in space. In fact, early Buddhist<\/a> texts sometimes define r\u016bpa<\/em> (body or form) in terms of the experience<\/em> of solidity and resistance. Elsewhere\u00a0n\u0101ma <\/em>(name, or the mental side) and r\u016bpa <\/em>are described as being like two sticks or reeds of grass leaning against one another for support \u2013 the image suggesting mutual dependence and explicit denial of Cartesian Dualism which is not based on a theory of mutual dependence and in fact Descartes struggles (humorously) to even show how the two substances can interact with one another<\/em>. <\/strong>All this is to say that our search through old texts and images in search of \u2018mentalistic\u2019 vs \u2018bodily\u2019 prioritization is fraught with difficulties. But that\u2019s not to say it can\u2019t be done and, after all, it was just a single seminar paper and one cannot demand too much (and this wasn\u2019t even the main topic of the paper!), so this shouldn\u2019t be read as criticism of the paper or the various sources, but more of a warning to students\/readers who may pick up bits here and there in the realm of\u2026
    \n\u2013<\/li>\n
  3. Categories<\/strong>. \u00a0One of the central themes of the paper was that the category \u201cyogini\u201d has existed for thousands of years in Indian culture despite the vicissitudes of what exactly<\/em> the term meant. In fact in her field work she found that it could be a contested label when placed on any one woman \u2013 is she a yogini? a real<\/em> yogini? My girlfriend was sitting next to me at the talk. She does yoga. Is she a yogini, a real<\/em> yogini? Sensing this puzzlement in my mind (I imagine, or perhaps I was just getting an overly confused look on my face), my girlfriend smacked my leg. Oh, she\u2019s a psychic too, definitely a real<\/em> yogini.In any case, the category \u201cyogini\u201d lives on, despite\u00a0fluctuation\u00a0and contestation (perhaps, in fact, because of it \u2013 it was never reified,\u00a0ossified, and\u00a0forsaken).
    \n\u2013
    \nThink about that for a minute. Then think about a funny Western word that is about 140 years old\u2026.     Buddhism<\/a>. There are already folks out there who argue that you can\u2019t talk about Buddhism, you have to talk about Buddhisms<\/em><\/strong>; or, more often, that you can\u2019t talk about the Buddhist religion, you can only talk about Buddhist religions<\/em><\/strong>. To me, this \u201czzz-ing\u201d of categories reflects more of a postmodern ideology than anything else. Some distinctions are useful, for instance Pure Land Buddhism vs Zen Buddhism<\/a>. But to say \u201cthere is no Buddhism, only Buddhisms<\/em>\u201d seems simply vapid. Do people do this with other religions? \u201cThere is no Catholic Church, only Catholic Churches<\/strong>\u2026\u201d <\/em>What, one for each building<\/em>? Each Catholic person<\/em>? \u00a0As a warning against monolithic interpretations (which have occurred and will surely continue), this is fine, but beyond that, I don\u2019t see the value in pluralizing our categories, as if that \u201czzz\u201d confers special recognition of differentiation hitherto ignored or somehow overlooked.
    \n\u2013<\/li>\n
  4. The final point she brought up was the idea of differentiating between categories <\/strong>(she gave the example of a person claiming, \u201cI am a Hindu\u201d)\u00a0and practices <\/strong>(what that person actually does<\/em>) and going beyond them to experience.<\/strong> I think that\u2019s an interesting idea, especially after Robert Scharf<\/a>\u2018s heavy (some might say\u00a0devastating) blow to the idea of experience in the study of religion:\u00a0\u201cBuddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience,\u201d\u00a0Numen <\/em>42, no. 3 (1995), pp. 228-283.\u00a0Download PDF<\/a> \u2013 see also\u00a0\u201cThe Rhetoric of Experience and the Study of Religion,\u201d in\u00a0Cognitive Models and Spiritual Maps<\/em> (\u2026).\u00a0Download PDF<\/a>. It has been a few years, but as I remember, for Scharf all so-called experience is reducible to categories and practices. The idea of some\u00a0ineffable\u00a0experience which is somehow beyond<\/em> the concepts (texts, oral teachings) and practices is mere rhetoric cooked up after Buddhism\u2019s (primarily Zen\u2019s) encounter with the West. But it seems that there is some experience<\/em>,\u00a0ineffable\u00a0as it may be, through which the yogini transcends the category of woman, transcends gender \u2013 and yet the power she obtains as a yogini is hers precisely because of her (gendered) practices contravening social norms. Of course it is her practice<\/em> in the context of sexist categories<\/em> which allow this, but, I think Dr. Hausner was suggesting, this two-part approach doesn\u2019t satisfy either<\/em> the complexity of what the yogini herself must experience or<\/em> the experience we (as devotees, I suppose) have in her presence, an experience which in fact gives her the power<\/em> which is so essential to her being within the category.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \u00a0<\/p>\n

    That researcher is Thomas MacEvilly<\/a>. One of his works can be viewed (in part at least) here: the\u00a0Archaeology of Yoga<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Yesterday, Bristol University\u2019s Department of Theology and Religious Studies seminar hosted Dr. Sondra Hausner, who teaches anthropology at Oxford. Her talk, while very good, won\u2019t exactly be the subject of my blog post today. But instead I thought I\u2019d write about a few of the \u2018spin off\u2019 ideas that came to me out of her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":118,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-buddhism"],"yoast_head":"\nCategories, Yoginis, and Gender<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Yesterday, Bristol University's Department of Theology and Religious Studies seminar hosted Dr. Sondra Hausner, who teaches anthropology at Oxford. Her\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2012\/05\/categories-yoginis-and-gender.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Categories, Yoginis, and Gender\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Yesterday, Bristol University's Department of Theology and Religious Studies seminar hosted Dr. Sondra Hausner, who teaches anthropology at Oxford. Her\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2012\/05\/categories-yoginis-and-gender.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"American Buddhist Perspectives\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-05-16T08:02:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-05-16T08:08:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.harappa.com\/indus\/gif2\/yogiseal.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Justin Whitaker\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Justin Whitaker\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2012\/05\/categories-yoginis-and-gender.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2012\/05\/categories-yoginis-and-gender.html\",\"name\":\"Categories, Yoginis, and Gender\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-05-16T08:02:07+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-05-16T08:08:50+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/#\/schema\/person\/abfb8f851f671638c4c7536b963f9da9\"},\"description\":\"Yesterday, Bristol University's Department of Theology and Religious Studies seminar hosted Dr. Sondra Hausner, who teaches anthropology at Oxford. Her\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2012\/05\/categories-yoginis-and-gender.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2012\/05\/categories-yoginis-and-gender.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2012\/05\/categories-yoginis-and-gender.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Categories, Yoginis, and Gender\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/\",\"name\":\"American Buddhist Perspectives\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/#\/schema\/person\/abfb8f851f671638c4c7536b963f9da9\",\"name\":\"Justin Whitaker\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/817b6fba8ae056aaff4f9bdc84347d72?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/817b6fba8ae056aaff4f9bdc84347d72?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"caption\":\"Justin Whitaker\"},\"description\":\"I am an almost-life-long Montanan; a baptized Catholic; an ardent Atheist; a practicing Buddhist; a lover of Wisdom. I have a BA and almost an MA in (Western) Philosophy from the University of Montana-Missoula, an MA in Buddhist Studies from Bristol University, UK, and I am currently working on a Ph.D. in Buddhist Ethics at the U of London. My main academic foci are early Buddhist ethics and Kant (odd combination, I know). I also study Western ethics, Tibetan Buddhism, Theravada, Comparative philosophy, and Environmental ethics. I also like photography, running, drinking wine, and eating peanut butter (often in that order).\",\"sameAs\":[\"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/author\/justinwhitaker\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Categories, Yoginis, and Gender","description":"Yesterday, Bristol University's Department of Theology and Religious Studies seminar hosted Dr. Sondra Hausner, who teaches anthropology at Oxford. Her","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2012\/05\/categories-yoginis-and-gender.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Categories, Yoginis, and Gender","og_description":"Yesterday, Bristol University's Department of Theology and Religious Studies seminar hosted Dr. Sondra Hausner, who teaches anthropology at Oxford. Her","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2012\/05\/categories-yoginis-and-gender.html","og_site_name":"American Buddhist Perspectives","article_published_time":"2012-05-16T08:02:07+00:00","article_modified_time":"2012-05-16T08:08:50+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.harappa.com\/indus\/gif2\/yogiseal.jpg"}],"author":"Justin Whitaker","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Justin Whitaker","Est. reading time":"7 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2012\/05\/categories-yoginis-and-gender.html","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2012\/05\/categories-yoginis-and-gender.html","name":"Categories, Yoginis, and Gender","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/#website"},"datePublished":"2012-05-16T08:02:07+00:00","dateModified":"2012-05-16T08:08:50+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/#\/schema\/person\/abfb8f851f671638c4c7536b963f9da9"},"description":"Yesterday, Bristol University's Department of Theology and Religious Studies seminar hosted Dr. Sondra Hausner, who teaches anthropology at Oxford. Her","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2012\/05\/categories-yoginis-and-gender.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2012\/05\/categories-yoginis-and-gender.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2012\/05\/categories-yoginis-and-gender.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Categories, Yoginis, and Gender"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/","name":"American Buddhist Perspectives","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/#\/schema\/person\/abfb8f851f671638c4c7536b963f9da9","name":"Justin Whitaker","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/817b6fba8ae056aaff4f9bdc84347d72?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/817b6fba8ae056aaff4f9bdc84347d72?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","caption":"Justin Whitaker"},"description":"I am an almost-life-long Montanan; a baptized Catholic; an ardent Atheist; a practicing Buddhist; a lover of Wisdom. I have a BA and almost an MA in (Western) Philosophy from the University of Montana-Missoula, an MA in Buddhist Studies from Bristol University, UK, and I am currently working on a Ph.D. in Buddhist Ethics at the U of London. My main academic foci are early Buddhist ethics and Kant (odd combination, I know). I also study Western ethics, Tibetan Buddhism, Theravada, Comparative philosophy, and Environmental ethics. I also like photography, running, drinking wine, and eating peanut butter (often in that order).","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/"],"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/author\/justinwhitaker"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/118"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}