It is a real joy reading David Gordon White’s The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali: A Biography.[1] And I am learning at a clip. One of the welcome surprises is that the language of the sutras is often closer to what has been termed “Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit” than to the classical Sanskrit of nearly every other Hindu scripture and commentary.[2] This is the language of the early Mahayana Buddhist scriptures of the first centuries of our era. In connection with the language of the sutras, White adds that Buddhist philosophy dominated the Indian philosophical arena throughout the first five centuries of our era.[3] According to him, many of the critical scholars of Hindu literature are thus supporting the hypothesis that there was a close connection between the two traditions.[4] Be that as it may, I found the connection by stripping both Buddhism and yoga of all metaphysics and religion. Thus my “Ten Principles of Bon Buddhism” (April 10, 1992) match perfectly my “Ten Principles of Bon Yoga” (November 13, 2012). In fact, the latter principles cite the former ones, which precede them by two decades. As is clear from White’s historical account, first metaphysics and then religion encumbered both Buddhism and yoga in later centuries. The unwelcome accretions are well worth stripping and casting away for good.

Footnotes

1. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2014.

2. Op. cit., p. 10.

3. Op. cit., p. 230.

4. Loc. cit.