Everyone today is interested in yoga. The word "yoga" in its contemporary denotation refers to a practice that is primarily physical, or which works with body and breathing as its initial tools. The popularity of yoga bothin the West and in India results in a vast "yoga literature" produced for the sake of the constantly growing community yoga-practitioners, or "yoga-buyers". The word "philosophy" is often used here not with referenceto rigorous reflection and investigation rooted in a questioning approach, but rather to "theory" intended to complement the practice of yoga, consisting of authoritative answers, doctrinal prescriptions, or even worse, New-age slogans, clichés and maxims repeated in book after book.My endeavor in this short talk is of course different. I hope to illustrate that this classical treatise of meditation consists of hardcore philosophical strands, and contributes, along with its commentarial body, to the perennial philosophical exploration of time and temporality, the limits of language, freedom as concept and ideal, the ever-pending question of self and identity, and the role and place of body and memory in identity-formation. In this talk, we will "travel" together in Patañjali's text, and discuss several of it philosophical intersections.In my reading I correspond with the philosophical work of Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya and Daya Krishna, two of the most creative Indian thinkers in the 20th century.

About the Speaker:

Daniel Raveh is a Professor of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel. He is the author of two books: Exploring the Yogasūtra: Philosophy and Translation (Continuum 2012) and Sūtras, Stories and Yoga
Philosophy: Narrative and Transfiguration (Routledge 2016), and co-editorof Contrary
Thinking: Selected Essays of Daya Krishna (OUP 2011).
At present he is a fellow at JNIAS, JNU.