One of the great things about Ashtanga Yoga is that once you’ve learned the series, you’ve joined a world-wide fraternity (or sorority, too, I guess); you can go all over the world, check out on the internet where the local Ashtanga studio is, then show up, throw down your mat, do your practice, and you automatically belong (at least sort of, for the next hour and a half or so.)
It’s sort of the same thing with another of the fraternities (and this one, given the gender balance in the field, really is more of a fraternal organization) I belong to, the worldwide world of academic philosophers. Being a member of this club, as it were, I can, (although not quite with the freedom of Ashtanga), show up at a college or university Philosophy Department, and, by speaking the right code words—“metaphysics,” “ontology,” “British Empiricism,” and so on—at least introduce myself to one or more of my far-flung colleagues in the field.
I’d tried to contact the Philosophy Department at the University of Mysore before coming here, but to no avail. So, the other day, I showed up in person at the Department, and, in typical Indian style, after waiting around for about an hour, was invited to come back the next day, that is, today.
So, this afternoon, I had a lovely meeting with Professor Sheshagiri Rao, Chairman of the Department, an expert in Indian Philosophy and Comparative Philosophical Studies East and West. We reminisced together about one of my former professors at the University of Washington, Karl Potter, who is arguably the most reknowned scholar of Indian Philosophy in the West.
Professor Rao invited me to come back to visit his department in a week or so when students are giving presentations and said I would be entirely welcome to sit in on one of his classes and even give a little lecture should I be so moved.
It wasn’t quite as easy as just showing up and throwing down my mat, but I did feel like I belonged.
Plus, on the way home, I enjoyed a coconut from another of the “clubs” to which I belong: people who carry lots of stuff on bikes.
Yea, you should com visit here at UW - the library school where I work's in the same building as the philosophy department, and not only that, there's another Professor Shapiro - I get his mail sometimes.
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