Karen O'Brien-Kop

Karen O'Brien-Kop's introduction to the Yogasutra highlights its status as a significant work of philosophy. Approaching the Yogasutra as living philosophy, this book elucidates philosophical conceptions of yoga, recognises the logical structure the sutras follow and explains the rules and principles that have sustained Patañjali's system of thought for centuries.

Moving beyond standard interpretations of Patañjali's text and commentary as an aphoristic practice manual, O'Brien-Kop uses branches of philosophy to read the Yogasutra. Covering reality, self, ethics, language and knowledge, Patañjali's philosophies come to the fore. The book introduces his reasoned positions on dual and non­dual metaphysics, the relationship between mind and body, the qualities of consciousness, the nature of freedom, and how to live ethically.

Carefully-selected extracts from the primary text are translated for those unfamiliar with Sanskrit and commentaries run throughout. A glossary provides definitions of key concepts with useful translations. Accessible and up-to-date, this introduction broadens our understanding of Indian philosophical thought and explains why the Yogasutra deserves to be read alongside Parmenides' 'On Nature' and Plato's Phaedo as a classic of world philosophy.

This monograph employs conceptual metaphor theory to investigate philosophy of mind and and the materiality of meditation systems in three c.4th-5th-century CE Sanskrit meditation treatises: the Patanjalayogasastra, the Abhidharmakosabhasya and the Yogacarabhumisastra. The book also challenges the historical framing of these and other texts as 'classical' and applies decolonial thought to how emic labels from South Asian culture might prove more appropriate and useful in categorisation.

This article addresses the theme of ‘death and immortality’ from the perspective of consciousness, and takes as its starting point a root text of Hindu philosophy, the Sāṃkhyakārikā by Īśvarakṛṣṇa (c. fourth century ce). The text posits a dualist ontology in which consciousness is separate and autonomous from a material reality that includes body and mind. The goal is to be ontologically situated in a ‘pure’ consciousness (non-objective), which signifies existential liberation. There are mundane ways to understand this claim, such as referring to cognitive states that produce affective dissociation, or more radical interpretations, such as a post-death state. This article explores the question of what Sāṃkhya's consciousness is like: it is said to be immortal, plural, individuated, and contentless. What is the motivation for and implication of engagement with a system that describes an existential freedom that may only be known in a dualist reality or after death? And how can Sāṃkhya's concepts be brought into conversation with contemporary investigations into mind–body questions? Sāṃkhya rationality counters the argument of eternal oblivion or of consciousness as an illusion confined to the brain. Yet there are resonances with Chalmers's notion of consciousness as fundamental. This article concludes that contemporary Anglo-American philosophy of religion can be enhanced by adding Sāṃkhya thought to its purview.

This paper examines the topic of Yogācāra idealism through a little studied Buddhist meditation manual, the so-called 'Yogalehrbuch' or 'Qizil Yoga Manual', a primarily Buddhist Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma text with Mahāyāna Yogācāra strands. What does this unique Central Asian text say about Buddhist meditation practices called yogācāra or yoga? It centres on methods of vivid visualization that are somewhat specific to the Central Asian region of Kucha on the Silk Road. To understand the Manual's practice and definition of yogic meditation, this paper considers how some of the hyper-real visualizations in the dhātuprayoga section relate the mind to reality and whether Yogācāra meditation can be said to propose idealism as a metaphysical theory about the nature of reality. The paper also asks whether neurocognitive research insights can be useful in understanding what some regard as a 'hallucination-like' quality of some visualizations, which destabilise distinctions between appearances and reality. Furthermore, it argues that analyzing the materiality of meditation, particularly the environment of the cave, helps us to better understand the text's techniques of yogic visualization. The paper concludes that the 'Qizil Yoga Manual' facilitates soteriological idealism and suggests that factoring in the material contexts of meditation is useful, both in deciphering the text's meditation methods and in discussing the metaphysical theory of idealism.

The Pātañjalayogaśāstra concludes with a description of the pinnacle of yoga practice: a state of samādhi called dharmamegha, cloud of dharma. Yet despite the structural importance of dharmamegha in the soteriology of Pātañjala yoga, the śāstra itself does not say much about this term. Where we do find dharmamegha discussed, however, is in Buddhist yogācāra, and more broadly in early Mahāyāna soteriology, where it represents the apex of attainment and the superlative statehood of a bodhisattva. Given the relative paucity of Brahmanical mentions of dharmamegha in the early common era, Patañjali appears to adopt this key metaphor from a Mahāyāna context—and to revise its primary meaning from fullness to emptiness. This article traces the early elaborations of dharmamegha in Buddhist texts, and, drawing on conceptual metaphor theory, lays out four arguments that each, in part, can account for the stark contrast in how classical yoga and yogācāra employ the superlative metaphor of dharmamegha.

Conventionally, the label 'classical yoga' has been aligned with—and sometimes conflated with—the text of Patañjali's Yogasūtra. Yet if we broaden the scope of inspection to a wider textual corpus, we can identify a richer and more complex discourse of classical yoga in soteriological contexts. This discourse is also employed in Buddhist Sarvāstivāda traditions and is semantically and metaphorically entangled across religious boundaries. By comparing passages from the Pātañjalayogaśāstra and the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya, this article highlights the botanical image of the seed and its seedbed (the substratum) as a key metaphorical structure in the soteriology of the two texts.

This chapter offers analytical meta-reflection on the process of identifying, surveying and examining the current field of academic yoga and meditation studies. It discusses significant and ongoing shifts in this field of study, as well as the scholarly choices that contributors have faced collectively in what they have classified under the categories of ‘yoga’ and ‘meditation’ and in the terms they have used. This chapter discusses the theoretical and practical challenges of one of the first attempts to bring into direct dialogue two closely related areas of academic research: meditation and yoga. Finally, the chapter also points to emergent themes, foci and issues in the field, as well as to current gaps for future research.

https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-Yoga-and-Meditation-Studies/Newcombe-OBrien-Kop/p/book/9781138484863

For scholars researching non-western traditions, the line between religion and philosophy can be blurred, and the prevailing ways in which decolonial theory is employed in both disciplines are uneven. Decolonization analysis often refers to the concept of the pluriversal (as described by Mbembe 2016) to deconstruct the hegemony of the universal, so that epistemology is pluralised, and diverse traditions are actively employed, following Chakrabarty’s directive towards provincializing Europe, (Chakrabarty 2000). The study of religion approaches the value of the ‘global’ with caution, since the colonial formation of the discipline means that scholars are still correcting the distortions of the ‘world religions’ paradigm. Hence, the decolonial imperative is often to critique religious studies as beyond reform (as per Nye 2019). Recently, Josephson Storm has argued that post-structuralism in religious studies (and humanities more broadly) has led to ‘epistemological anarchy’ – where critique rests only on negation and is left with nothing constructive to say – a project that is left to social sciences and theology. In philosophy, however, a current push towards the global is evident as a commitment to make the field of enquiry more ‘inclusive’ (e.g. in how Carpenter investigates the Greek philosopher Plato and the Indian philosopher Vasubandhu in equal measure). Philosophy, then, is still aiming towards a more constructive notion of the universal by emphasizing engagement between traditions – as evident in evolving disciplinary names for degree programmes such as global philosophy, intercultural philosophy, world philosophy, cross-cultural philosophy and so forth. This paper explores what appears to be a tension between the ways in which the disciplines of philosophy and religious studies value the category of the universal and how this sits within the decolonial critique. It argues that religious studies is already employing certain methodological strategies that can also be relevant for philosophy.

The presence of Buddhist ideas in the Pātañjalayogaśāstra has already been widely discussed – often focused on soteriology.  Less attention has been paid specifically to the interactions between Sāṃkhya and Buddhist ontology in the early common era. There are some studies however that examined ontology and causality. Mikogami examined Asaṅga’s treatment of the Sāṃkhya doctrine of satkāryavāda (that the effect pre-exists in the cause) in the Yogācārabhūmiśāstra (Mikogami 1969) – which I’ll discuss today. Sparham argued that Yogācāra is shaped by proto-Sāṃkhya models of mind regarding a permanent mental substratum, and that it was these Sāṃkhya ideas which were then refashioned in Yogācāra as storehouse-consciousness (or ālayavijñāna) (Sparham 1993: 9-10). Wezler examined interlinked theories of causality between the Yogasūtrabhāṣya, Vasubandhu’s Madhyāntavibhāgabhāṣya and Asaṅga’s Abhidharmasamuccaya (Wezler 1987). Recently Maas has highlighted the Sarvāstivāda theories of temporality and showed how Yogasūtra 3.13 reworked a passage in Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāṣya (Maas 2020). This present paper  focuses on the Samkhya doctrine of satkāryavāda, paying attention to how ontology is underpinned by theories of causality. We will consider how Asaṅga critiques satkāryavāda and how the Sautrāntika concept of contiguity (not continuity) is perhaps in part constructed in relation to satkāryavāda – and right in the middle of this nexus of doctrines on ontology and causality is the Pātañjalayogaśāstra – a text that rests on Sāṃkhya metaphysics, defines yoga as a darśana, but also incorporates elements of Sautrāntika and Yogācāra thought.

Delivered November 2020:
This paper approaches the topic of yogācāra idealism from the point of view of the Central Asian ‘Yogalehrbuch’ from Qizil, a fragmentary Buddhist meditation manual from c. 4th-6th century CE (Schlingloff 2006). The text describes vivid visualisation techniques, some of which are standard in models of Buddhist meditation but some of which may seem extra-ordinary, paralogical, or bizarre. Drawing on cognitive science, I examine these meditation sequences in terms of ‘reality processing’ and biomedical definitions of visual hallucination. In the ‘Yogalehrbuch’, meditation may be understood as a strategy of temporary idealism (in this instance a mind-generated material experience) using specific techniques of bhāvanā (mental cultivation). Vivid visualization generates levels of ontological displacement to create non-ordinary states of awareness.

November 21, 2020. Draft Paper.
An ontological argument with metaphoric underpinnings: In this paper I briefly examine one example of a mirrored argument form between the PYŚ and the AKBh by comparing two passages, from PYŚ 2.13 and AKBh 4.94. Both passages examine a set of arguments that explain ethical causality in relation to rebirth. The argument in both texts is similar in terms of form and sequence, although not in terms of the doctrinal content or conclusion reached. Both arguments are also connected to the metaphor of the seed and the substratum as a means to explain karmic repercussion in relation to transmigration. The formal similarity of these two passages suggests intertextual borrowing.

Book Review. GERALD LARSON: Classical Yoga Philosophy and the Legacy of Sāṃkhya with Sanskrit Text and English Translation of Pātañjala Yogasūtra-s, Vyāsa Bhāṣya and Tattvavaiśāradī of Vācaspatimiśra. (MLBD Classical Systems of Indian Philosophy.) 1023 pp. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2018.

Book review of:
Brian Black and Laurie Patton (editors), Dialogue in Early South Asian Religions: Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain Traditions. Dialogues in South Asian Traditions: Religion, Philosophy, Literature and History. Farnham; Burlington: Ashgate, 2015. 278pp

Conventionally, the label 'classical yoga' has been aligned to, and sometimes conflated with, the text of Patañjali's Yogasūtra, produced in the 4th-­‐5th century. Yet if we broaden the scope of inspection to a wider textual corpus from the same period, we can identify a richer and more complex discourse of classical yoga, which is also employed in Buddhist traditions and which is semantically entangled across religious boundaries. In particular, this study focuses on dialogic interaction between three contemporaneous texts via the use of shared metaphorical systems to explain theories of liberation. There are a number of close correspondences, hitherto unexplored, between the soteriology of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra and both the Sautrāntika positions in the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya and the earliest textual layers of the Yogācārabhūmiśāstra. I draw on conceptual metaphor theory to demonstrate how yoga, yogācāra, and Sautrāntika constructed their soteriology under the broad met...

This paper examines the topic of Yogācāra idealism through a little studied Buddhist meditation manual, the so-called ‘Yogalehrbuch’ or ‘Qizil Yoga Manual’, a primarily Buddhist Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma text with Mahāyāna Yogācāra strands. What does this unique Central Asian text say about Buddhist meditation practices called yogācāra or yoga? It centres on methods of vivid visualization that are somewhat specific to the Central Asian region of Kucha on the Silk Road. To understand the Manual’s practice and definition of yogic meditation, this paper considers how some of the hyper-real visualizations in the dhātuprayoga section relate the mind to reality and whether Yogācāra meditation can be said to propose idealism as a metaphysical theory about the nature of reality. The paper also asks whether neurocognitive research insights can be useful in understanding what some regard as a ‘hallucination-like’ quality of some visualizations, which destabilise distinctions between appearances...