Theos-Talk Archives (May 1996 Message tl00781)

Here is something light.

	....Ramadoss


> Date: Mon, 13 May 96 15:33:59 PDT
> From: Inho Lee <inho@fangio.UCSC.EDU>
> Subject: Something funny

>> (WORLD NEWS)
>>
>> MONK GLOATS OVER YOGA CHAMPIONSHIP
>>
>> 'I am the serenest!' he says.
>>
>>     LHASA, TIBET - Employing the brash style that first brought him to
>> prominence, Sri Dhananjai Bikram won the fifth annual International
>> Yogi Competition yesterday with a world-record point total of 873.6.
>>
>>     "I am the serenest!" Bikram shouted to the estimated crowd of
>> 20,000 yoga fans, vigorously pumping his fists. "No one is serener
>> than Sri Dhananjai Bikram; I am the greatest monk of all time!"
>>
>>     Bikram averaged 1.89 breaths a minute during the two-hour
>> competition, nearly .3 fewer than his nearest competitor, second-place
>> finisher and two-time champion Sri Salil "The Hammer" Gupta.
>>
>>     The heavily favored Gupta was upset after the loss. "I should be
>> able to beat that guy with one lung tied," Gupta said. "I'm beside
>> myself right now, and I don't mean trans-bodily."
>>
>>     Bikram got off to a fast start at the Lhasa meet, which like most
>> major competitions, is a six-event affair. In the first event, he
>> attained total consciousness (TC) in just 2 minutes, 34 seconds, and
>> set the tone for the rest of the meet by repeatedly shouting, "I'm
>> blissful! You blissful?! I'm blissful!"  to the other yogis.
>>
>>     Bikram, 33, burst onto the international yoga scene with a
>> gold-mandala performance at the 1994 Bhutan Invitational. At that
>> competition he premiered his aggressive style, at one point in the
>> flexibility event sticking his middle toes out at the other yogis.
>> While no prohibition exists against such behavior, according to Yoga
>> League Commissioner Swami Prabhupada, such behavior is generally
>> considered "unBuddha-like."
>>
>>     "I don't care what the critics say," Bikram said. "Sri Bikram is
>> just gonna go out there and do Sri Bikram's own yoga thing."
>>
>>     Before the Bhutan meet, Bikram had never placed better than
>> fourth.  Many said he had forsaken rigorous training for the celebrity
>> status accorded by his Bhutan win, endorsing Nike's new line of prayer
>> mats and supposedly dating the Hindu goddess Shakti. But his
>> performance this week will regain for him the number one computer
>> ranking and earn him new respect, as well as for his coach Mahananda
>> Vasti, the controversial guru some have called Bikram's "guru."
>>
>>     "My special training diet for Bikram of *one* super-charged,
>> carbo-loaded grain of rice per day was essential to his win," Vasti
>> said.
>>
>>     The defeated Gupta denied that Bikram's taunting was a factor in
>> his inability to attain TC.  "I just wasn't myself today," Gupta
>> commented.  "I wasn't any self today.  I was an egoless particle of
>> the universal no-soul."
>>
>>     In the second event, flexibility, Bikram maintained the lead by
>> supporting himself on his index fingers for the entire 15 minutes
>> while touching the back of his skull to his lower spine. The feat was
>> matched by Gupta, who first used the position at the 1990 Tokyo
>> Zen-Off.
>>
>>     "That's my meditative position of spiritual ecstasy, not his,"
>> remarked Gupta. "He stole my thunder."
>>
>>     Bikram denied the charge, saying, "Gupta's been talking like that
>> ever since he was a 3rd century Egyptian slave-owner."
>>
>>     Nevertheless, a strong showing by Gupta in the third event, the
>> shotput, placed him within a lotus petal of the lead at the
>> competition's halfway point.
>>
>>     But event number four, the contemplation of unanswerable riddles
>> known as koans, proved the key to victory for Bikram.
>>
>>     The koan had long been thought the weak point of his spiritual
>> arsenal, but his response to today's riddle-"Show me the face you had
>> before you were born"-was reportedly "extremely illuminative,"
>> according to Commissioner Prabhupada.
>>
>>     While koan answers are kept secret from the public for fear of
>> exposing the uninitiated multitudes to the terror of universal truth,
>> insiders claim his answer had Prabhupada and the two other judges
>> "highly enlightened."
>>
>>     With the event victory, Bikram built himself a nearly
>> insurmountable lead, one he sustained through the yak-milk churn and
>> breathing events to come away with the upset victory.