praa.na and sun

[Frits Staal]

I have not followed this discussion but only a detail re. #6: hamsa does
not mean swan but goose - obvious also for semantic reasons unlike swan
which is a typically European-Romantic (Wordsworth?) bird.

At 01:56 PM 2/8/02 -0800, you wrote:
>Dear friends,
>Q: Which texts on yoga and tantra identify or
>link the sun and praa.na?
>
>Clarification:
>1. It seems a quite widespready idea to link
>these two in modern presentations of yoga and
>meditation, see a few quotes under (6) randomly
>selected from the internet (first two suitable
>hits after search on "prana sun").
>2. Several vedic texts identify, directly or
>indirectly, praa.na and the sun, e.g. Ath.Veda
>11.4.12, S'atapatha Braahma.na 10.4.1.23,
>Aitareya Braahma.na 1.19 and 5.31.3, Ait.
>Aara.nyaka 2.2.1, and Pras'na Up. 2.5ff. Most
>massively, and most convincingly to common sense,
>these texts present as the cosmic counterpart of
>praa.na not the sun (suurya, aaditya, savit.r)
>but the wind, vaayu.
>3. Some of these late Vedic texts link praa.na
>and knowledge/insight/consciousness (prajnaa)
>(Kau.siitaki Up) -- the Brahma Suutra seem
>S'ankara's commentary (2.4.15-16) are unwilling
>to accept this.
>4. The Yoga-vaasi.s.tha presents a much closer
>link between praa.na and knowledge -- cf.
>Dasgupta in his hist. of indian philosophy,
>1922:259: "From the movement of praa.na there is
>the movement of citta, and from that there is
>knowledge (sa.mvit)." In Jaideva Singh's
>text+transl. of S'iva Suutras with K.semaraaja's
>comm. I find, apart from ref. to a "bodily"
>praa.na beyond which the aspirant should try to
>go, a quoted statement according to which, in the
>transl. of Singh, "consciousness is, at first,
>transformed into praa.na" (praak sa.mvit praa.ne
>pari.nataa). According to Singh (p. 227), here
>"praa.na ... does not mean life-breath. It means
>the universal Life-force which brings about both
>subject and object." There is a link with three
>breath-channels associated with sun, moon and
>agni, but there is no convincing link with the
>sun specifically.
>5. As far as I could see, the link between
>praa.na and the SUN is not made in the classical
>sources on yoga (yoga-suutra and major
>commentaries). Nor in the few tantric sources I
>looked at. Did anyone encounter an "afterlife" in
>later sources of any Sanskrit or Indic knowledge
>system of the link sun-praa.na which we find in
>vedic texts which in their formulation seem too
>distant to be a direct source for the "popular"
>ideas referred to under (6)?
>6.
>- http://home.att.net/~uy/page14.html an article
>of a certain Yogi Baba Prem on "a little known
>text called the Shiva Svarodaya":
>"Hamsa usually means swan. It can also mean the
>supreme soul, individual soul, prana, sun, Shiva,
>the list could go on and on."
>- quote from a link which seemed defective:
>"Solar prana - this is that vital and magnetic
>fluid which radiates from
>the sun, and which is transmitted to man's
>etheric body...It is... emitted ... "
>www.inetport.com/~one/dkprana.html
>
>Thanks for following my query till here, Jan
>Houben
>
>
>
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Frits Staal

http://philosophy.berkeley.edu/staal