Yoga, Caste, and Fundamentalism

<p>When I lived in a yoga ashram in Nepal in the 1980s, I invited a young man in the neighborhood to practice with us. We became good friends, and he enjoyed the daily practice of yoga exercises and kirtan chanting. One day, he asked if he could learn meditation. He had to renounce his Brahmin caste to do so according to the Tantric system of yoga I was practicing. After some hesitation, he finally agreed to cut his white Brahmin thread, a symbol of his caste superiority, and to be initiated into the age-old practice of Tantric yoga.</p> <p>A few months after his initiation, he abruptly stopped attending our meditation sessions. After weeks of inquiry, I finally learned that he had been called back to his family&rsquo;s village and told in no uncertain terms by his father that he would become an outcast unless he put the Brahmin thread back on.</p> <p><a href="https://rbjonnes108.medium.com/yoga-caste-and-fundamentalism-3b2336f4915d"><strong>Read More</strong></a></p>