瑜珈大師艾揚格去世 曾將瑜珈引入西方

NEW DELHI — B. K. S. Iyengar, who helped introduce the practice of yoga to a Western world awakening to the notion of an inner life, died on Wednesday in the southern Indian city of Pune. He was 95.

新德里——B·K·S·艾揚格於週三在印度南部城市浦那逝世，享年95歲，在西方世界開始瞭解“內在生活”概念期間，他曾出力將瑜伽引入西方。

The cause was heart failure, said Abhijata Sridhar-Iyengar, his granddaughter.

他的孫女阿比加塔·斯里達爾-艾揚格(Abhijata Sridhar-Iyengar)說，其死因是心力衰竭。

After surviving tuberculosis, typhoid and malaria as a child, Mr. Iyengar credited yoga with saving his life. He spent his midteens demonstrating “the most impressive and bewildering” positions in the court of the Maharaja of Mysore, he later recalled.

艾揚格童年時曾患過肺結核、傷寒和瘧疾，他說是瑜伽救了自己的命。他後來回憶說，十幾歲的時候他在邁索爾的王公宮殿裏展示“最驚人，最讓人眼花繚亂”的瑜伽體式。

A meeting in 1952 with the violinist Yehudi Menuhin, an early yoga devotee, proved to be a turning point, and Mr. Iyengar began traveling with Mr. Menuhin, eventually opening institutes on six continents.

1952年，他與早期瑜伽愛好者耶胡迪·梅紐因(Yehudi Menuhin)會面，這成了他人生的轉折點，他開始隨同梅紐因旅行，最終在六大洲都開辦了學校。

Among his devotees were the novelist Aldous Huxley, the actress Annette Bening and the designer Donna Karan, as well as a who’s who of prominent Indian figures, including the cricketer Sachin Tendulkar and the Bollywood siren Kareena Kapoor. He famously taught Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, 85 at the time, to stand on her head.

他的擁躉包括小說家阿爾都斯·赫胥黎(Aldous Huxley)、女演員安妮特·貝寧(Annette Bening)和設計師唐娜·卡蘭(Donna Karan)，此外還有衆多印度名人，包括板球運動員薩辛·坦都卡(Sachin Tendulkar)和寶萊塢女星卡琳娜·卡普(Kareena Kapoor)。他的著名事蹟是教授當時85歲的比利時伊麗莎白皇后做頭倒立。

In a 2005 book, “Light on Life,” Mr. Iyengar mused about the vast changes he had seen.

艾揚格在2005年的《生命之光》一書中，思省了自己曾經目睹的巨大變遷。

“I set off in yoga 70 years ago when ridicule, rejection and outright condemnation were the lot of a seeker through yoga even in its native land of India,” he wrote. “Indeed, if I had become a sadhu, a mendicant holy man, wandering the great trunk roads of British India, begging bowl in hand, I would have met with less derision and won more respect.”

“70年前我開始練習瑜伽的時候，嘲笑、排斥和公然譴責就是瑜伽修習者要面對的命運，甚至在印度本土也是如此，”他寫道。“事實上，如果我去做一個苦行僧，就是一個行乞的聖人，在英屬印度的寬闊道路上拿着碗乞討，也不會遇到那麼多嘲笑，反而還會贏得更多尊敬。”

The news about Mr. Iyengar — or “guru-ji,” as many here called him, using a Sanskrit honorific — rippled through India on Wednesday morning. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Twitter that he was “deeply saddened” by Mr. Iyengar’s death and offered “condolences to his followers all over the world.”

艾揚格被許多人依照梵語中的敬語，稱爲“尊敬的上師”(guru-ji)，他的死訊在週三早上傳遍了印度。印度總理納倫德拉·莫迪(Narendra Modi)在Twitter上說，對於艾揚格的死訊“深感悲傷”，並且“向他在世界各地的追隨者們表示慰問”。

Mr. Iyengar’s practice is characterized by long asanas, or postures, that require extraordinary will and discipline. A reporter who watched daily practice in 2002, when Mr. Iyengar was 83, said that he held one headstand for six minutes, swiveling his legs to the right and the left, and that when he finished, “his shoulder-length hair was awry, he seemed physically depleted,” but he wore the smile of a gleeful child.

艾揚格瑜伽的特色包括長期保持體式，這需要非凡的意志力與訓練。2002年，艾揚格83歲的時候，一位見過他日常練習的記者說，他在6分鐘內保持頭倒立的姿勢，雙腿向左右轉動，結束時，“他的齊肩長髮都亂了，體力也似乎完全耗盡”，但他臉上仍然帶着孩子般的愉快笑容。

Ms. Sridhar-Iyengar said her grandfather recognized early on that yoga, up until then viewed as a mystical pursuit, “had something for everybody, not just the intellectually or spiritually inclined.”

斯里達爾-艾揚格說，早在瑜伽還被視爲神祕之物的時候，她的祖父就已發現，瑜伽“對每個人都有好處，不僅是智力或靈性方面的”。

“He felt satisfied,” she said. “Even at the end, even a few weeks before, he said, ‘I’m satisfied with what I’ve done.’ He took yoga to the world. He knew that.”

“他感到滿足，”她說，“直到最後，就在幾個星期前，他還說：‘我對自己做的事情感到滿意。’是他把瑜伽帶向世界，他知道這一點。”

Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja Iyengar was born on Dec. 14, 1918, into a poor family in the southern state of Karnataka. The 11th of 13 children, he was born in the midst of an influenza outbreak. Three of his siblings died before reaching adulthood, and he watched his father, a teacher, die of appendicitis when he was 9 years old. Mr. Iyengar himself contracted tuberculosis, typhoid and malaria; by the time he began studying yoga, at 16, he was painfully frail.

拜魯爾·克里希那馬查爾·桑達拉拉亞·艾揚格(Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja Iyengar)於1918年12月14日出生在印度南部卡納塔克邦一個貧窮的家庭裏，他是家中13個孩子中的第11個，出生時正值流感爆發，三個兄弟姊妹未成年便夭折了。他的父親是一位教師，在他9歲那年死於闌尾炎。艾揚格自己患有肺結核、傷寒與瘧疾，16歲開始學習瑜伽時，當時他的身體極爲虛弱。

“My arms were thin, my legs were spindly, and my stomach protruded in an ungainly manner,” he wrote. “My head used to hang down, and I had to lift it with great effort.”

“我細胳膊細腿，肚子難看地鼓起，頭總是低着，要擡起來得費很大力氣，”他寫道。

His first teacher was his brother-in-law, a Brahmin scholar who had set up a school of yoga at the Jaganmohan Palace, and who sometimes denied his student food if his performance was deemed inadequate. Mr. Iyengar, then a teenager, was the youngest member of the Maharaja of Mysore’s entourage, and was asked to demonstrate his ability to stretch and bend his body for visiting dignitaries and guests.

他的第一位老師是妻子的哥哥，一位在賈甘莫哈宮開有瑜伽學校的婆羅門學者。如果表現不好，老師有時會不給他飯吃。艾揚格當時只有十幾歲，是邁索爾王公的隨員中最年輕的一個，人們讓他在來訪的權貴與賓客們面前展示自己伸展和彎曲身體的技巧。

Mr. Menuhin, who visited India in 1952, heard of his practice and penciled him in for a five-minute meeting, and was so instantly impressed that the session went on for more than three hours. Mr. Iyengar recalled, in an interview with CNN, that “the moment I adjusted him and took him, he said, ‘I’ve never felt this sense of joy, elation.’ ”

1952年，梅紐因訪問印度時聽說了艾揚格的事，安排與他進行5分鐘的會面，結果一下就被打動了，會面延長到三個多小時。艾揚格在接受CNN採訪時回憶，“我幫他調整，教他的時候，他說，‘我從沒有過這樣歡樂喜悅的感覺。’”

The violinist later brought Mr. Iyengar to Switzerland, where he introduced him to other prominent Westerners who became his followers. In his first visit to New York in 1956, Mr. Iyengar said he encountered little interest in yoga. It was not until the next decade that he began to attract crowds.

後來這位小提琴家帶艾揚格來到瑞士，把他介紹給其他西方名人，他們都成了他的信徒。1956年，艾揚格來到紐約，覺得人們對瑜伽並不感興趣。直到60年代，他纔開始吸引大衆。

“We were just coming out of the ’60s change-your-consciousness thing, and many of us were in our heads, and wanting to meditate, and reach Samadhi,” or enlightenment, Patricia Walden, a longtime student of Mr. Iyengar’s, said in an interview in 2000. “Iyengar was, like, ‘Stand on your feet. Feel your feet.’ He was so practical. His famous quote was, ‘How can you know God if you don’t know your big toe?’ ”

“我們剛剛經歷了60年代的‘改變你的意識’那些事，很多人都想深入內心，靠冥想去尋找三昧(Samadhi)，”2000年，師從艾揚格多年的帕特里西亞·沃爾登(Patricia Walden)說，所謂的“三昧”也就是“覺醒”。“艾揚格說：‘雙腳站立，去感受你的雙腳’。他注重實際。他的名言是‘如果你連自己的大腳趾都不瞭解，又怎能去了解上帝？’”

Were it not for his celebrity in the West, Mr. Iyengar would hardly have gained a reputation in India, said Latha Satish, who heads a major yoga institute in the southern city of Chennai.

印度南部城市欽奈一家大型瑜伽學校的校長拉塔·薩蒂什(Latha Saatish)說，如果不是因爲在西方的名氣，艾揚格在印度可能不會出名。

“He was at the right time at the right place; he would not have survived here,” Mr. Satish said. In India, he said, “everybody was interested in Western education; yoga was not so popular.” Mr. Iyengar’s trademark improvisations — like the use of blocks, blankets and straps to assist in holding difficult postures — were adopted “because of the need of students abroad,” he said.

“他出現在正確的時間與正確的地點；他本來無法堅持到這個時候，”薩蒂什說。他表示，在印度，“所有人都喜歡西方教育，瑜伽根本不流行。”艾揚格的招牌創新包括使用磚塊、毯子和帶子來輔助難做的姿勢，它們被採納只是爲了“迎合海外學員的需要”，薩蒂什說。

Mr. Iyengar’s survivors include a son, Prashant; five daughters, Geeta, Vinita, Suchita, Sunita and Savitha; five grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

艾揚格在世的親人包括兒子普拉尚特(Prashant)、五個女兒吉塔(Geeta)、維尼塔(Vinita)、蘇西塔(Suchita)、蘇尼塔(Sunita)和薩維塔(Savitha)。以及五個孫輩和三個重孫輩。

Past students recalled Mr. Iyengar as warm and charismatic, but also strict. Elizabeth Kadetsky, who wrote a memoir of the year she spent studying with him, recalled that she was standing on her head in a class when he “took his fingers and shoved them in my upper back, and bellowed, ‘In the headstand, this portion of the back is not straight.’ ”

以前的學生都說艾揚格溫和且富有領袖魅力，但也非常嚴格。伊麗莎白·卡德茨基(Elizabeth Kadetsky)曾經根據自己隨艾揚格學習的一年經歷寫過一本回憶錄，她回憶自己在課上做頭倒立時，“他用手指推我的上背部，大吼：‘做倒立，後背這裏不能挺直。’”

As his influence spread, she said, he was fiercely competitive with other leading yoga gurus, and would get cranky when asked about their methods.

她說，隨着他的影響力日益增加，他開始同其他重要的瑜伽導師激烈競爭，被問到其他人的方法時會發脾氣。

“He demanded loyalty,” she said. “One had to be 100 percent with him.”

“他需要忠誠，”她說，“別人必須全心全意地對他。”

By the time he reached his 80s, Mr. Iyengar had become accustomed to the kind of reception usually reserved for pop stars. As power yoga became a multimillion-dollar industry, he occasionally cringed at the commercialization of the practice, and wondered whether it would survive its own popularity. But the pleasure he took in the practice was unaffected.

步入80多歲的時候，艾揚格開始習慣流行明星般的待遇。隨着力量瑜伽成爲價值千萬美元的大產業，他偶爾也會對這種鍛鍊方式的商業化表示厭惡，覺得過分流行可能會扼殺它。但是修習瑜伽帶給的他快樂仍然不減。

At the end of a session in 2002, he lay on his back, knees bent so that his calves were beneath his thighs, arms out to either side, weights holding him down. He lay still for 12 minutes, perfectly immobile except for the twitch of a pinkie. Asked what he was thinking, he replied, “Nothing.”

2002年，在一次課程即將結束時，他平躺着，彎曲膝蓋，讓小腿肚處於大腿下方，伸開雙臂，重心放低。他靜靜地躺了12分鐘，除了小指抽動了一下，完全保持靜止。人們問他當時在想什麼，他說：“什麼也沒想。”

“I can remain thoughtfully thoughtless,” he said. “It is not an empty mind.”

“我可以保持有思的無思，”他說，“這並不是頭腦空空。”