I started being interested in eastern spirituality in general since i started training physical yoga last year. It changed my life i would say, i stopped feeling any physical discomfort caused by sedentary lifestyle and many times at the end practice, laying down on floor in "corpse pose" i felt something approaching a bliss, my mood also seems significantly lifted, i no longer give a fuck, even tho my material situation has not changed much.
This in turn caused me to get interested in eastern philosophy itself, i started reading Yoga Sutras, translation by Swami Satchenada (most popular translation from sanskrit i think, this guy was pretty famous with american hippies back in 60s).
Many of Satchenada commentaries are pretty interesting, they are modern and straight-forward, for example there are explamples including driving cars or going to the mall, there are also fragments that made me ask, is this guy reactionary? Can i reconcile at all my marxist tendencies with my interest in eastern philosophy, or are those things contradictory? All i know there is some one movement that says "actually buddhism and marxism has lot in common", are there more?
Here is the quote i am talking about:
"Suppose some people drive up in a big car, park in front of a huge palatial home and get out. Some other people are standing on the pavement in the hot sun getting tired. How many of those people will be happy? Not many. They will be saying, “See that big car? Those people are sucking the blood of the laborers.” We come across people like that; they are always jealous. When a person gets name, fame or high position, they try to criticize that person. “Oh, don’t you know, that person’s brother is so-and-so. Some strings must have been pulled.” They will never admit that the person might have gone up by his or her own merit. By that jealousy, you will not disturb the other person, but you disturb your own serenity. Those people simply got out of the car and walked into the house, but you are burning up inside. Instead, think, “Oh, such fortunate people. If everyone was like that how happy the world would be. May God bless everybody to have such comfort. I will also get that one day.” Make those people your friends. That response is missed in many cases, not only between individuals but even among nations. When some nation is prospering, the neighboring country is jealous of it and wants to ruin its economy. So we should always have the key of friendlin
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