Who was Ramanuja Acharya?| Mark Whitwell

The most influential Vedanta Acharya in Krishnamacharya’s family lineage was Ramanuja of the 10th century: a reality realizer, like Christ or the Buddha, who declared that all seen conditions are a shesha of God (a manifestation of God’s abundance; an overflow into substance) and therefore, devotion to all ordinary conditions — body, breath, and relationship of all kinds — is bhakti: God-realizing activity.

Just as the whole-body is the bloom of the hridaya heart, so the material world is the bloom of Source Reality.

It is from Ramanuja that we get the great resolving statement of vishishtadvaita (qualified non-dualism): that is, “the Source and the Seen are One.”

Ramanuja gifted the world a philosophy of intimate connection. He saw that Yoga was necessary for every person because even though the unity of Source and Seen is established, the human mind has a tendency to assume separation.

He emphasized Yoga sadhana as the practical method of devotion to any natural ‘thing’: Yoga is connection; Yoga is relationship; or, as Krishnamacharya puts it: “Yoga joins the two to become one; otherwise, the mind remains fixated on two.” That the two are one is the revelation of Yoga.

Ramanuja also declared that the saints and sages of humanity would be appearing in family life. He stressed the male-female polarity to be the realizing principle of Vedanta; thus putting himself at odds with the ascetic, renunciate traditions that held (and continue to hold) so much power in the world.

To be specific, the fabric of Reality Itself manifests as male-female mutuality. Regardless of gender or social identification, every body — indeed, every cell of every body — is constituted by the union of male-female.

The right side, the base, and the back of the body carry the male principle; the left side, the crown, and the front carry the female principle. The exhalation expresses the male force as strength, and the inhalation expresses the female power as receptivity.

As I wrote in the hridayayogasutra Yoga sadhana is a most simple enactment of this union:

“Life’s union of polarities occurs as male receptivity to the female principle. A most simple enactment of this union is the ability for the strength of the whole body to receive an inhalation in yoga asana.

Strength (male) must receive (female) and be received. This is the form of all Life. This is anciently known as hathayoga: ha (sun or male) and tha (moon or female) in perfect union. Through hathayoga the heart (hridaya) is realized, where giving and receiving occurs in perfect union — ‘hr’ (to receive) and ‘da’ (to give).”

The heart is the locus of yogic realization and is revealed only through participation in life’s inherent mutualities. It is the first cell of life that appeared when you appeared.

It is a portal through which source reality, the absolute power of the cosmos, appears as pure intelligence, beauty, and functionality. We are not separate from God.

When we participate in the union of opposites within, it becomes possible without: whether in same-sex or opposite sex intimacy, in any gender identification or none whatsoever.

Ramanuja cleared up the excesses of renunciate and monastic life and provided a clear way for any person to live a fully human life. His is a wonderful realization and celebration of the essential unity of all ‘things,’ of the ever-present nurturing force of Source reality.

Unfortunately, he was not well known compared to the icons of orthodox religion such as Adi Shankaracharya, Gautama Buddha, or even Jesus Christ, whose followers dominated the landscape of religious thought as a practice of contemplation and seeking that was devoid of Yoga.

As a result of his deep scholarship into the religious traditions of India as well as his family’s religious connection to Ramanuja, Krishnamacharya became committed to his teachings. In particular, he was convinced of the necessity of Yoga which had nearly disappeared entirely from India since the 14th century.

Krishnamacharya found his teacher Ramamohan Brahmacharyi, a rare Yogi living in a cave system with his wife and children in the Tibetan Himalayas. He studied with him for seven years and then returned to India to start a family and bring forth Yoga into modern times.

Even though he had been offered powerful leadership jobs in orthodox religious institutions, he knew that Yoga was needed in spiritual life to realize the ideals of culture and sacred text; or for a non-religious person, simply as the means to realize the gifts of life. He knew that Yoga was required to enjoy the male-female mutuality; to participate in the two that are already one.

Sadly, Yoga today bears little resemblance to the principles and intentions that Ramanuja and Krishnamacharya devoted their lives to. The momentum of patriarchal culture with its denial of the feminine principle and its overvaluation of the male principle has diverted the nurturing force of Yoga into trivial and dangerous activity: male muscular heroics, gymnastic force, and religious seeking within the psychology of ‘not there yet.’

We hold these principles of intimate connection because we know that they can empower any person to live a wonder-full life of autonomy and connection.

Many students report that practicing for just seven minutes a day works wonders to release obstruction and let the nurturing force of Reality Itself clear their minds from the film of culture.

Thank you Ramanuja. Thank you Krishnamacharya.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: 

Mark Whitwell has been teaching yoga around the world for many decades, after first meeting his teachers Tirumali Krishnamacharya and his son TKV Desikachar in Chennai in 1973. Mark Whitwell is one of the few yoga teachers who has refused to commercialise the practice, never turning away anyone who cannot afford a training. The editor of and contributor to Desikachar’s classic book “The Heart of Yoga,” Mark Whitwell is the founder of the Heart of Yoga Foundation, which has sponsored yoga education for thousands of people who would otherwise not be able to access it. A hippy at heart, Mark Whitwell successfully uses a Robin Hood “pay what you can” model for his online teachings, and is interested in making sure each individual is able to get their own personal practice of yoga as intimacy with life, in the way that is right for them, making the teacher redundant. Mark Whitwell has been an outspoken voice against the commercialisation of yoga in the west, and the loss of the richness of the Indian tradition, yet gentle and humorously encouraging western practitioners to look into the full depth and spectrum of yoga, before medicalising it and trying to improve on a practice that has not yet been grasped. And yet Mark Whitwell is also a critic of right-wing Indian movements that would seek to claim yoga as a purely hindu nationalist practice and the intolerant mythistories produced by such movements. After encircling the globe for decades, teaching in scores of countries, Mark Whitwell lives in remote rural Fiji with his partner, where Mark Whitwell can be found playing the sitar, eating papaya, and chatting with the global heart of yoga sangha online. Anyone is welcome to come and learn the basic principles of yoga with Mark Whitwell.