Tantra - Relation To Yoga

Relation To Yoga

Shaiva tantra gave us the “Hatha Yoga” manuals, such as the 15th century Hathayoga Pradīpikā and the 16th century Gheranda Samhitā. It is from these manuals that most modern knowledge of Yoga and the subtle body derives.

Yoga as it has been inherited in the modern world has its roots in Tantric ritual and in secondary passages (pādas) within Tantric scriptures, The practices of mantra, āsana (seat/pose), sense-withdrawal (pratyāhāra), breath-regulation (prānāyāma), mental (mantric) fixation (dhāranā), meditation (dhyāna), mudrā, the subtle body (sukshma shārīra) with its energy centers (chakras, ādhāras, granthis, etc.) and channels (nādīs), as well as the phenomenon of Kundalinī Shakti are but a few of the tenets that comprise Tantric Yoga. While some of these derive from earlier, pre-Tantric sources, such as the Hindu Upanishads and the Yoga Sūtra, they were greatly expanded upon, ritualized, and philosophically contextualized in these medieval Tantras."

Fernando Estévez Griego, describing the Gheranda Samhita as being a tantric text, says that Raja Yoga means "Samadhi" from the tantric point of view. (source, p.2, in Spanish)

Read more about this topic:  Tantra

Famous quotes containing the words relation to, relation and/or yoga:

    The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious. More precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex relation to “the serious.” One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.
    Susan Sontag (b. 1933)

    There is undoubtedly something religious about it: everyone believes that they are special, that they are chosen, that they have a special relation with fate. Here is the test: you turn over card after card to see in which way that is true. If you can defy the odds, you may be saved. And when you are cleaned out, the last penny gone, you are enlightened at last, free perhaps, exhilarated like an ascetic by the falling away of the material world.
    Andrei Codrescu (b. 1947)

    Depend upon it that, rude and careless as I am, I would fain practice the yoga faithfully.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)