fajrdrako | Plus ca change....

Just now I was reading the preface to "Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali" by B.K.S. Iyengar. Iyengar is one of my many heroes; surely the greatest yoga expert living today. For decades I have based my yoga practice on his book "Light on Yoga". The hatha yoga class I am now taking is specifically based on his teaching style.

Patanjali is the greatest yoga expert of all time - the man who two thousand years ago or more wrote the great definitive work on yoga theory and practice.

In the preface Iyengar says, among other things, that he is no scholar and doesn't feel qualified to translate or present Patanjali to a modern audience - but that there was no one else who could do it, and it needed to be done. He asks readers with corrections or suggestions to write to him so he may improve future editions.

He finishes: "In ending this preface, I pray Patanjali to bless the readers so that the illuminative rays of yoga may penetrate and reach them, and that poise and peace may flow in them as a perennial river flows into the sea of spiritual wisdom." [Thorsons, HarperCollinsPublishers (London, 2002), p. xx].

Now, yesterday

acampbell and I were talking about saints, and this struck me as a similar concept: that Patanjali is invoked as a saint might be invoked, to bless the readers in a certain way.

More, it strikes me as exactly the same sort of words and sentiments a western medieval writer would use. Giraldis Cambrensis, William of Tyre, William of Malmesbury - I'm not really thinking of anyone specific, but it's the kind of traditional tone and thought that was typical of the great historical writers of the 10th to 14th centuries: first, a polite disclaimer that they are not writing because they think they are any kind of intellectual or expert, but because the work needs to be written and they are able to do it; and then a blessing on the readers.

I don't know if this is just Iyengar's personal style, or whether it's from the Indian cultural tradition. It might even be a reflection of Patanjali himself - I'll know more about that when I've read further.

In sounding like my beloved medieval writers, Iyengar has just endeared me to him even further.