Published Paper Details:

Yoga and Sufism are two streams of thought and praxis that were cultivated in the two great spiritual traditions of Hinduism and Islam respectively. While at the surface, they look in very diverse and divergent, they yet share a common core that lies in their being a way of tranquility and calmness of mind and body. The discipline of Yoga, though highly commercialized in our times and often considered at best as stress busting exercise, was in it pristine purity, a way of life that led to an ultimate experience of joissance through the control of the movements of body and mind. The truth of sufism, likewise, did not lie in its associated beliefs or rituals but as a transformative way of life externalist to attain subsistence in God after annihilation of the principle of separation - ego or mind. Both Sufism and Yoga were essentially praxis for union or proximity with the divine and prescribed practices were divergent but helped to this end. Taken as an instrument, both the yogis and sufis attained their goals through comprehensive discipline of body and mind and involved association with the Masters and fundamentally renunciatory ethic. However abuses in both have been too evident to any student. This paper seeks to distinguish between various yogas and argue that while Karma yoga, bhakti yoga and jnana yoga have analogues in Sufism, differences regarding theistic framing in Sufism and more emphasis on live of God need not be seen as pulling them in divergent ways.