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Why I Teach Yoga and Meditation
John Borelli
Most people, when they ask, presume I teach Yoga and Meditation--a course meeting Theology or general education requirements at Georgetown University--because the topic is trendy.
To be sure, the course is popular. When I offered it during the 2006 autumn semester, 84 students registered. The director of the Catholic Studies program, which lists the course, was delighted. He arranged for an assistant and switched us from a classroom to a small auditorium. Friends predicted that many would drop once they realized that it was not what they expected. A few left but others took their places. Eighty-four finished the course in December, despite the fact that many told me privately that, yes, it was not what they expected.
The same happened the next time, but we kept the number to 35. The program director could not arrange for an assistant, and I could not do justice to a larger number of students. I “volunteer” to teach a course when I can in addition to my work as President DeGioia’s special assistant for interreligious initiatives. In 2007, none dropped out or admitted any regret when finishing the course.
My reasons for teaching Yoga and Meditation are multiple, as I shall explain. I teach this course or some other course on dialogue or involving comparative theology because I want to learn if our undergraduate students are grasping what we intend when we promote interreligious understanding as an important value in Catholic and Jesuit education. And I teach it because it allows me to reach a maximum number of students.
Three decades ago, this course was already a popular elective. I developed it while I was directing religious studies and teaching full-time at the College of Mount Saint Vincent, a small liberal arts college in the northwest corner of New York City. It used to be a Catholic women’s college, founded by the Sisters of Charity. When I arrived on its campus, over thirty years ago, the college admitted men and had a multi-level cooperative program with Manhattan College, founded as a men’s college by the Christian Brothers. I competed to attract students for electives (courses beyond requirement in religious studies). Yoga and Meditation was one such elective.
In 1976, I had completed requirements for a doctorate in history of religions and theology at Fordham University, writing and defending a dissertation on a prominent 16th century Hindu theologian, Vijñānbhikshu, who wrote important commentaries on Vedānta, Sankhya, and Yoga foundational texts and theological summaries of each of these systems of Hindu thought. In fact, Vijñānbhikshu’s gloss on Vyāsa’s commentary on the Yoga Sūtras is the fullest that exists. I had concentrated on his place in the Vedānta tradition and compared his theological model of understanding the relationship between the divine and the world of individual souls and created things, with the approaches of Bonaventure and Nicholas of Cusa. Vijñānbhikshu was my strength and foundation for offering a course on yoga. It focused on foundational literature of the yoga tradition within the larger Hindu tradition. Then, in the second half of the course, we would read a Buddhist text on meditation and a Christian text on meditation.
There was a twenty year hiatus between the last time I had taught the course at the College of Mount St. Vincent and the first time I offered it to Georgetown undergraduates. In the intervening years, I had left academia for a position at the U. S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops in the arena of ecumenical and interreligious relations.
I teach Yoga and Meditation today, in addition to the opportunity it affords to work directly with undergraduates, because this course allows me to return to an area of research that I enjoy and know something about in depth. We spend half the term studying yoga within the Hindu tradition. We spend the other half studying Christian meditation. Thus, for a third and twofold reason, I teach this course because it gives me an opportunity to teach about the Catholic tradition and in doing so to employ a method of comparative theology. Curiously, student evaluations occasionally offer the criticism that less attention be given to Christianity.
Instead of a long research paper on some aspect of meditation, which I required twenty years ago, students write several short reflections on topics, questions, and issues that arise from class materials and discussions. Hence, for a fourth reason, I teach Yoga and Meditation because it allows me to engage in conversation with students about interreligious understanding, comparative theology, spiritual practice, and religious values. This is a broadly Catholic engagement with various intellectual and cultural traditions, a hallmark of Jesuit education. During every academic term, a multitude of lectures, panels, and other events, broadly categorized as “interreligious,” take place on campus. I encourage students to attend by offering extra credit if they write articles from a reporter’s point of view on, at most, two events. They are also treated to guest speakers, authors of the required books, including Tom Ryan (Prayer of Heart and Body).
The course meets twice a week for two 75 minute periods. On days when I have prepared well enough to keep the class within these limits, we are able to have two seven-minute periods of quiet sitting. We begin the term focusing on breathing and from there expand, using various forms of meditation, to sharpen attention. We try various kinds of yogic concentration techniques and expand to include both the mind emptying methods of the Christian via negativa and the imaginative exercises of Ignatian and other Christian practices. Had I specialized in Buddhist studies, I probably would teach a comparative course on Christian and some derivative form of Buddhist meditation.
The first noticeable difference between now and twenty years ago is that far more young people are signing up for yoga exercises than a generation ago. Over half my students have taken hatha yoga (postures and breathing exercises) in a gym. The second major difference is that these students can sit still. They devote themselves to the few minutes of quiet sitting with an intensity I had not anticipated. This was not my experience twenty years ago. At times, lights go off because no one has moved enough in the interval to signal the motion sensor. My third and major observation is the most important: Students today are hungry for meaningful spiritual practices and have huge questions on their minds about the relation between religious belief and practice and living life.
They still tell me that before this course they had no idea about the ancient past of yoga and the religious significance of the many terms associated with yoga—terms like atman, chakra, karma, prāna, siddhi. Classical yoga also offers a precise language about mediation. The students tell me, too, how grateful they are to explore meditation both intellectually and spiritually.
Dr. John Borelli is Special Assistant for Interreligious Initiatives to the President of Georgetown University. While serving as Associate Director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs at the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops for 16 years, he managed dialogues with Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus and other interreligious projects.
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