This book grew out of an upper-division course I developed at the University of Texas at Austin, “Yoga as Philosophy and Practice,” and I would like to thank first of all Ellen Briggs Stansell, my teaching assistant for its first three years. Together we discussed all the topics broached here. Concurrently Ellen became a yoga teacher as well as a doctoral candidate, completing a thesis on the Bhagavad Gita. Matthew Dasti and Neil Dalal, also graduate students at Texas, made helpful comments, as did my philosophy colleague and fellow yoga student Kathleen Higgins. Matthew helped me select passages from the Gita to translate in appendix B. Insights and lots of feedback were provided by my wife, Hope. Kisor Chakrabarti, J. N. Mohanty, and Peter Heehs read portions of early drafts and made solid suggestions. For chapter 2, 3, and 4, the book has benefited from extensive comments by Colin Foote, particularly with regard to Buddhist theories and practices.
Let me thank my yoga teachers, many of whom I have doubtless copied in scripting a yoga class in chapter 1: Brigitte Snyder (best of flow teachers), John Schlorholtz (author of the DVD series Ageless Yoga, and my brother-in-law), Peggy Kelly (founder of Austin School of Yoga), Mary Keator, Cary Choate, Jessica Montgomery, Annick Sebbane, Ravyn Abboushi, Genevieve Gilbreath, Larissa Rogers, Jenn Wooten, Charlie Llewellyn, Pam Brewer, Jessica Wozniak, Brienne Brown, Devon Dederich, Jerry Balderas, Enid Baptiste, Kaye Klier, Matt Borer, Rachel Hector, Ana Pilar, Elizabeth Cafferky, Chuck Hausman (“Kewal”), Dorothee Bethscheider (“Dodo” in Auroville, South India), Kimberley Jones, Esta Herold (“Seva”), Tenille Collard, Jessica Goulding, Jenny Dawson, and Christina Sell. Two of these guru-jis attended my lectures on Indian philosophies at UT and read portions of the book in draft, providing helpful reactions; Ravyn Abboushi and Genevieve Gilbreath thus deserve special acknowledgment—as does Peggy Kelly, dean of Austin yoga teachers, and senior Anusara teacher Christina Sell, who read portions of the Kularnava Tantra with me. Tracie Brace, founder of Yoga Rasa, Houston, and Michael Benton (“Mehtab”) and friends at Yogayoga, Austin, graciously rewarded a little teaching of Sanskrit on my part by enriching my practice through help as teachers or students, as did dozens more, all of whom I salute with heartfelt thanks.
Chapter 4, first section, written as a presentation at an APA conference, was in large part published in the Newsletter of the American Philosophical Association (Fall 2005). Much of chapter 3, second section appears in The Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict, 2nd edition, ed. Lester Kurtz (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2008). I also read part of it as the paper, “Ahimsa (‘Nonharmfulness’): The Vedantic, Buddhist, and Jaina Arguments,” Seventeenth International Congress of Vedanta, University of Miami, Oxford, Ohio, September 2007. Ideas on the mind-body problem in particular were developed in connection with efforts by Daniel Bonevac and me to introduce the readings in our Introduction to World Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). Much of the second section of chapter 2 was presented at the International Seminar on Understanding Consciousness, Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Kolkata, January 2008, and will appear in the conference proceedings. The third and fourth sections began as the paper, “The Mind-Body Problem in Three Indian Philosophies,” presented at the International Conference on Mind and Consciousness, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, West Bengal, January 2002, and included in the conference proceedings. Part of chapter 4, third section will appear in the Jadavpur Journal of Philosophy (in press) and was read as part of the Sri Aurobindo Annual Lecture Series, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, 2008. Special thanks go to Indrani Sanyal and her colleagues in the Philosophy Department at Jadavpur and to editors and others who have facilitated these papers and publications.
I am especially grateful to Wendy Lochner, Christine Mortlock, Leslie Kriesel, Martin Hinze, Derek Warker, and Milenda Lee at Columbia University Press. Wendy Lochner in particular had a large hand in shaping this book through championing the appendices as well as editing several sections while encouraging me to write for a wide audience.