Suits And Countersuits Over Yoga
by PATITA PAVANA DAS ADHILKARY
EDITORIAL
Feb 16 (VNN)

A recent issue of the San Francisco Chronicle carried a headline story entitled, "Yogis Go to Court Over Poses". Accompanying this front page feature are photos of sleek yuppie "yogis" and their "yoga master", the grinning Bikram Choudhury wearing a chic baseball cap. Calling him, "the Beverly Hills master", the article says that Bikram is the plaintiff in a lawsuit that "has more twists and turns than his twenty-six postures."

Choudhury opened his Yoga College of India in San Francisco in 1973 and today boasts over nine hundred studios worldwide. His is the first chain in franchised yogadom, and he has copyrighted his poses, breathing techniques and dialogue. Now his lawyers have sent out a string of letters to a number of competing yoga studios to avoid teaching anything "derivative" of the so-called Bikram Yoga if they haven't graduated from the $5,000 per-person training program and are not paying a studio franchise fee. A penalty of $150,000 to each offending yogi is threatened in each letter.

But others yogis are striking back with their own suits aimed at Bikram. According to the counter suit filed by Open Source Yoga Unity, yoga is a 5,000 year-old process that cannot be owned by anyone. But Bikram says that he will "defend his spirit, sweat, blood and tears." The "master", a former "yoga champion" of India (whatever that means) has made millions and has several celebrity clients. Saying that he is "just protecting his investment", Choudhury has won lawsuits before. Last June he collected an undisclosed sum from a Southern California studio. He has written a book on yoga but says, "A lot of people are trying to teach my yoga from my book. But that is not possible." He says that he is opening an average of two new Bikram centers each day. One of his franchisee yogis said of Bikram, "His desire is not to police yoga, but to maintain the purity of his teachings." According to the Chronicle article, there are 18,000,000 yoga practitioners in the US accounting in $27billion in annual sales. Now many other yogis fear being sued by The Master if there is a whisper of "his" techniques in what they teach.

When Shrila Prabhupada first began teaching the true essence of yoga, bhakti-yoga, in New York City he often referred to the "nonsense" taught by unqualified and dishonest "uptown yogis". As seen in the article, millions of Americans practice what passes as yoga exercises, but with goals like weight loss, better sex life, or a "hotter" body. Few of them are vegetarians, sexually pure or know anything of the other niyamas or disciplines of the genuine yoga process. They don't even know that yoga actually refers to a spiritual process of "linking" with the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Who is identified throughout the shastras as Bhagavan Shri Krishna. Prabhupada once mentioned how one day the gopas met Krishna in the fields of Vraja. "That is yoga," His Divine Grace commented.

True, this material world is a place of temptations due to the allure of maya. But Shrila Prabhupada was never tempted to charge money for his teachings, to hoard wealth or hobnob with stars. Like Lord Shri Chaitanya, Who His Divine Grace followed with every step and with every breath, he gave away the Hare Krishna mantra freely to anyone who cared to have it. When he was physically with us, sankirtan was going on daily in hundreds of towns around the world for His Divine Grace mercifully enlisted we wretched fallen souls to assist him in his divine mission. He wrote dozens of books and encouraged us to teach others from his books. How the lawsuit yogi can write a book that cannot be used for teaching is impossible for me to understand. If a text is not useful in conveying a message then what is the use of writing it? Shrila Prabhupada never affixed his name to bhakti yoga as "The Prabhupada Method." He never called the maha mantra his alone to give or to conceal.

Our beloved Guru Maharaja never with held the secrets of the Vedas from anyone who was willing to learn whatever their material status. Like Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, he brought with him a mango tree that gives unlimited fruits. His only request was that we help him throw these nectarean fruits to all persons in every direction. Because of him alone we know that love of the Master of Yoga Shri Krishna, and service to His Lotus Feet, is a transcendental gift from the bona fide spiritual master that cannot be copyrighted by any lawyer. For we cannot fathom our good luck and fortune in submitting to a powerful representative of the Madhva-Gaudiya sampradaya, instead of having a so-called guru who bills his disciples or sues them when they turn around and try to teach what he has written and taught.

http://www.vnn.org/editorials/ET0402/ET16-8555.html