In this deep conversation Scott Johnson is joined by his good friend Greg Nardi. They talk to Shyam Ranganathan, a field-changing researcher, scholar, author and teacher of philosophy, and an expert in the neglected traditions of Indian moral philosophy. Shyam talks about his life as a philosophy researcher, his work on decolonisation and his translation of the yoga sutra named, Patanjali Yoga Sutra
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About Shyam Ranganathan
Shyam Ranganathan is an author, editor, and translator of more than 50 peer-reviewed scholarly works (including Ethics and the History of Indian Philosophy MLBD 2008 and 2017; the Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Ethics 2017; and Hinduism: A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation, Routledge 2018). He is a specialist in translation, having written his PhD dissertation on how we can understand texts without projecting our beliefs onto them. With this specialised knowledge, Dr. Ranganathan translated Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra (Penguin 2008). Having taught more than 20,000 hours and 3,000 students,Dr. Ranganathan founded Yoga Philosophy in 2019. Yoga Philosophy is a scholar practitioner initiative bringing research-based knowledge about yoga and philosophy to practitioners.
Dr. Ranganathan is an E-RYT-500 and CYA-RYT Gold. He is a member of the Department of Philosophy at York University in Toronto, Canada, as well as the York Center for Asian Research.
Find out more about Shyam here.
Understanding Yoga Philosophy – Shyam Ranganathan
In this open and honest conversation Scott and Greg unpack Shyam’s translation of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. Shyam shares how translation works, how his movement into philosophical research and south asian studies compelled him to write a translation of Patanjai’s Yoga Sutra. He also shares on the decolonisation of yoga and how he is focusing now on trauma response.
“This conversation with Shyam Ranganathan has been 2 years in the making. Both Greg Nardi and I had such a great time talking to Shyam about the way he translated the yoga sutra. It’s important to understand his perspective on research and translation so you can possibly find your own.“
Scott Johnson – November 2022
If you enjoyed this podcast then you might also enjoy Scott’s conversations with Ty Landrem, Daniel Simpson and Greg Nardi.
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