Sri U. Ve. M A Lakshmithathacharya Swami
Mysore Yoga Parampara! I want to share some information which I think can help us all to appreciate and understand it better. This writing is about the Mysore Yoga Parampara which Sri T. Knrishamacharya came from. Mysore is a complex community with many great lineages, profound scholars and yogis, all of whom have made contributions to the yoga culture of Mysore. Mysore has so much to share with the international yoga community! This is just a small glimpse into a beautiful yoga tradition that has existed in Mysore for at least a thousand years.
When we want to understand the background of yoga in Mysore, there are actually two ways we can look at it. One approach is to trace the yoga postures and try to understand where they came from and how old they are etc. This makes sense because most people are interested in the postures more than anything else. So we read stories of Sri Krishnamacharya studying postures in the Himalayas, and examine his writings on postures and try to work out where those postures might have come from. There is this mysterious Yoga Korunta text and many ideas around that to ponder. There is plenty of debate, but we can say that a lot of study has been done on this front and we know more now than we did before. We get caught up in all kinds of postural trivia and debate as we go down this avenue. This has validity no doubt. However if we look at yoga as more than a physical practice it becomes clear, at least to me, that you cannot understand the background of yoga by studying about postures alone.
There is another way to look! What if we look at yoga as a spiritual practice and start to trace back the spirituality and philosophy? This takes us in a different direction altogether and we can see that there is indeed a Mysore Yoga Parampara that goes back a very long time. Sri Krishnamacharya came from a particular spiritual lineage and it is much simpler to trace than the asanas and mysterious texts that were eaten by bugs etc. When you ask Sanskrit scholars in Mysore about Mysore Yoga Parampara they tend to talk about a spiritual lineage rather than simply yoga postures. I believe this is a much more accurate way to understand the yoga culture of Mysore.
Sri Krishnamacharya was an Iyengar. Tirumalai Krishnamacharya was his full name because his family lived near Tirupati in Tamil Nadu. My acharya, Sri U. Ve. Laxmithathacharya Swami came from that same spiritual lineage and here is what I have managed to learn about it so far.
This is a Sri Vaishnava lineage sometimes referred to as Nathamuni Sampradaya, but most of the time my teacher would simply call it Mysore Yoga Parampara. It starts with the god Nariana whose primary symbol is the sun, and his consort Lakshmi. There are many saints or acharyas in this lineage. Each of the saints have many texts which they wrote, stories of their lives, and contributions to the richness of this tradition. There are several important acharyas that are mentioned most often. This is by no means the entire picture, but it does give an outline of an ancient yoga tradition.
Nammalvar was the first important acharya. He was a mystic poet who remained speechless from birth until the age of 16. He is said to have spent the first 16 years of his life in the samadhi state, sitting inside a large hollow tamarind tree. At the age of 16 he began to speak and he expressed himself in poetry. The poems of Nammalvar are in Tamil language and have contributed greatly to the philosophical and theological ideas of Vaishnavism. The period in which Nammalvar lived is debated. He is mentioned in Indian texts which could put him as far back as 3059 BCE (Wikipedia). Most Indologists would place Nammalvar much later, but regardless of the exact date, this saint lived a very long time ago. My teacher always said these saints are timeless and that it is their message that is important, not the exact dates of their lives.
Nathamuni is the next important acharya. He lived from 823 CE–951 CE according to Wikipedia. (all dates mentioned here are taken from Wikipedia) Nathamuni famously heard some people who were from a small village called Melkote (not far from Mysore) reciting some of the poetry of Nammalvar. They only knew 11 verses of Nammalvar's poetry and the rest had been lost over time. Nathamuni was so passionate about recovering the lost poetry of Nammalvar that he memorized it went to the place where Nammalvar lived and sat reciting the 11 poems that he knew 12,000 times each until he got into the samadhi state and was able to learn the rest of Nammalvar's poems in his visions. My acharya Sri Lakshmithathacharya Swami lived in Melkote and he would recite that very poetry every day and taught it to many students. Obviously this poetry is still around today. It is very abstract and passionate poetry. You can actually hear some of it on YouTube if you search for it. While it may be difficult to understand for Western cultures, the idea of getting information through the samadhi state is a recurring theme in Mysore Yoga Parampara. Sri Krishnamacharya is said to have entered the samadhi state and had a vision of Nathamuni from which he received the information to write the Yoga Rahasya, which is one of his most famous writings.
Yamunacharya is the next outstanding acharya and was the grandson of Nathamuni. Naturally they lived in the same period. Yamunacharya was a great scholar and he wrote many works. One of them was a 32 verse summary of the Bhagavad Gita called the Gitartha Sangraha. This is the sum and substance of Nathamuni Sampradaya, my acharya used to say. It is a core text for Bhakti Yoga. Deep devotion and ecstatic love for the divine are very much hallmarks of this yoga tradition. The yoga of the Bhagavad Gita is much more certral for Mysore Yoga parampara than the yoga of Patanjali. I spent three and a half years studying the Gitartha Sangraha with Sri Lakshmithathacharya Swami to try to learn the world view and spiritual ideas of this Mysore Yoga Parampara. Although he passed away before I could complete my education, I found it deeply impactful. These ideas permanently changed my understanding of yoga. He also spent much time teaching me about the tradition that he came from.
Ramanujacharya was the next important acharya, and he was the founder of the Vishishtadvaita philosophy. He lived from 1017–1137 CE. Ramanuja's Acharya belonged to the Advaita school founded by Adi Shankara. There are three major branches of Indian philosophy which are fundamentally different. Dvaita(dualism) Advaita (nondualism) and Vishishtadvaita (qualified nondualism). Ramanuja took after the philosophy of the Tamil saints such as Nathamuni and Yamunacharya and diverged from his Guru on many points. He defeated his acharya in a debate. There is a story about Ramanuja yelling the secret mantra from the roof of the ashram which, needless to say, made him very unwelcome there. Ramanuja was then in exile for some years and 12 of those years he spent in Melkote, which is an hour and a half by car from Mysore. He founded his own philosophical views and those are what is called Vishishtadvaita. Mysore Yoga Parampara is steeped in this philosophy.
Ramanuja appointed 74 acharyas to carry on his message and teaching and these were referred to as "Simhaasanaadhipathis." Most of these appointees were grihastas or family people. All Iyengars can trace their ancestry back to one of those 74 acharyas appointed by Raamanuja. One of the dearest to Raamanuja was Ananthacharya. Ananthacharya showed great valor when he was the only person willing to go on a difficult and dangerous mission to establish a temple in Tirupati. Ananthacharya went alone in the dangerous jungle and dug a huge water reservoir by hand so that he could create a garden to grow flowers for rituals. This was a great delight for Raamanuja and it was also connected with the writings of Nammalvar. This showed Ananthacharya's great love and devotion to his teacher and his spiritual tradition.
Ananthacharya was a distinguished disciple of Raamanuja and he settled near Tirupati. Again, Tirupati is where the "Tirumalai" in Tirumalai Krishnamacharya comes from. The father of modern yoga "T. Krishnamacharya '' came from this lineage and for those who know, it is obvious from the tilok that he wore on his forehead. Another connection is that Ananthacharya was called "Lakshmi Thatha" because of a miraculous story that happened with the goddess Lakshmi in their temple. Many of the descendants of Ananthacharya bore the name Lakshmithathacharya, including my acharya, Sri U. Ve. M A Lakshmithatacharya Swami. It means "father of Lakshmi'' and has to do with a ritual in which Lakshmi was given to Lord Nariana in marriage. Ananthacharya acted as the Father of Lakshmi in this ritual to give her in marriage.
Mysore Yoga Parampara has been carefully preserved even in our modern times. Many sacrifices have been made by the families involved to keep this tradition alive. This is surely not the only Yoga Parampara in Mysore. There are many lineages both Vaishnava and Shiaiva and these comprise a whole community which is steeped in spiritual practice. There is so much I do not know! This is just a small glimpse into what I have learned so far. I offer it humbly for those who might be interested to learn something about the spiritual background of the yoga of Mysore rather than simply trying to trace the origins of the yoga postures that Mysore has become known for.
Here is a short list of the notable Acharyas in this tradition:
Supreme Lord Sriman Nariana and Goddess Malakshmi Piratti
Vishvaksena
Nammalvar
Nathamuni
Pundarikaksha
Srirama Mishra
Yamunaacharya
Mahapurna
Raamanujacharya (Founder of Vishishtadvaita)
Ananthaacharya
Chikka Govindaraj Wadevar
Periya Lakshmithathacharya Swami
Dasha Vidya Charavarthy Alvar Swami
Tarakateertha Lakshmithathacharya Swami
Pundita Raja U. Ve. Alvar Tirumalai Iyengar Swami
U. Ve. M A Lakshmithathacharya Swami
One may study these acharyas and read the many texts composed by them to learn more about the spiritual tradition they belong to. Some acharyas are relatively obscure, but the ones written about here were very famous and have a lot to read and learn about. The Brahma Sutras, Puranas and Bhagavad Gita are central texts for Nathamuni Sampradaya.
resources for studying Mysore Yoga Parampara.
Mysore Yoga Traditions Archive
Mysore Yoga Traditions Conference
One may ask, what are the spiritual understandings and practices that have been handed down with this yoga tradition? How, and to what extent, can we as people from all different cultures and religious backgrounds incorporate these ideas into our approach to yoga? Can we belong to a yoga tradition in a true and sincere manner that involves more than simply practicing postures? This is precisely the conversation that Mysore Yoga Conference is based around! Participating in high quality education with the great scholars of Mysore is the way to begin. From this we gain an accurate view of the tradition, based on our own personal interactions with the community.
About half of all postural practices around the world today can be traced back to Sri T. Krishnamacharya. By learning the philosophy and history of the Mysore Yoga Parampara we can gain new insight into the yoga that has had a very positive effect in millions of lives across the globe.