Not really one for ideas of lineage and parampara myself ( despite the fact my own teacher Ramaswami spent 33 years with Krishnamacharya. I only spent 5 weeks with Ramaswami, which puts it in perspective somewhat. However, I have spent the last couple of years in close study of Krishnamacharya's own texts (continuing the close reading of his texts with Ramaswami on his TT at LMU), practicing what I find there each morning. Can you get parampara from a text, lineage? And yet those five weeks with Ramaswami were so inspiring, so much distilled... No it's not that I'm not one for linage and parampara but more that I struggle with the concepts).
....but I love a good story me and do like the idea of how teaching spreads, (we posted on Iyengar recently talking about branches of a tree) an was it David Garrigues this week who mentioned that there were fifty or so 'senior' teachers who spent a significant period studying with Pattabhi Jois, I prefer dissemination to parampara, perhaps it amounts to the same thing.
David, in the link above, also refers to Ashtanga as Hatha yoga, an idea I'm struggling with currently. It strikes me as problematic, take the question of kundalini in Yogayajnavalkya and in Hathayogapradipka, a blockage in Yogayajnavalkya, something to encourage rising in HYP. Krishnamacharya seems to have followed the Yogayajnavalkya model and only dipped into HYP when it suited him, usually for asana descriptions, he would write of this asana approach coming from hatha and this from Raja yoga.... post to come on this. Did Pattabhi Jois take Krishnamacharya's teaching in a more hatha direction, do his students, what does that say about parampara... although admittedly having spent time with many hatha yoga students in Russia recently, Ashtanga strikes me as Hatha lite if at all, not necessarily a bad thing).
But back to Tim and his story...
Tim begins with an outline of the Krishnamacharya myth/legend. I told pretty much the same story in Russia last week before we then went ahead and fondly questioned/explored each element of the myth... Krishnamacharya's dream in which he supposedly received the Yoga Rahasya from his ancestor Nathamuni, the SEVEN phd's, The walk back and forth to the Himalaya's and seven years spent with Ramohan Bramacharya, the stopping the heart story, the Mysore teaching....
Tim continues the story through Pattabhi Jois meeting Krishnamacharya in Hassan, Norman Allan and David Williams coming to Mysore to study with Pattabhi Jois and then setting up in Encinitas. Bringing Pattabhi Jois to Encinitas, Tim himself coming on the scene, the blossoming of Ashtanga in the US and worldwide....
This all leads Tim into an intro to a song (it's a kirtan' after all) on Krishna
This from Ramaswami this morning
Truth alone exists. Untruth does not exist even as it may appear to, even obscuring Truth. Untruth can never succeed as Truth alone exists . One can find out the truth about oneself and the world any time by right perception (samyak darsana) because Truth always exists unaffected by time (avakasa) and space (akasa). It is in the nature of things that Truth alone will triumph because it alone exists and cannot be destroyed. Satyameva jayate, na anrutam (upanishad)