The Buddha found the religious world of his day, the 6th c. B.C.,  to be one of pure dogma, book knowledge, and obscure rules.   The Indian religious environment was ossified, ritualised, caste-based, sacrifice-ridden, and heavy on the worship of powerful gods.  He revived a pre-Vedic, non-theistic tradition, and, as a result of his popularity,

meditation became the main form of spiritual practice on the entire subcontinent.  A thousand years later, around the 5th c. A.D., as was the case with the Shaolin monks (see other post), some Indians began to dispute that you can start meditation without preparing oneself physically.  They culled yoga out of its tantric roots, and made it center on purifying the body and its elements.  This was codified most completely in the book Hatha Yoga Pradipika, (15th c. A.D.) concluding that before yoga can be acheived, or meditation, the whole body - stomach, intestines, nervous system, etc., or, more specifically, its subtle energy channels- must be purified.  In other words, the mind (referred to as a herd of wild horses/monkeys) is too unruly to be  controlled by the mind, but only by the body - which we can control.  Nevertheless, those physical purification techniques require a major commitment, and profound dedication in and of themselves.

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In hatha yoga, 'ha' represents prana, and 'tha' represents mind, the mental energy.  Union between prana shakti, the life force, and manas shakti, the mental force, results in the awakening of higher consciousness.  AKA ida and pingala, tantra refers to them as Shakti and Shiva, and taoism as yin and yang.

 

The internal martial arts in China also developed a fusion of breath and mind.  The earliest written record of yin and yang dates to 1250 BC, in the I-Ching: "The ceaseless intermingling of Heaven (yang) and Earth (yin) gives form to all things.

All of the buddha's teaching center on one point: to find permanent joy, we must extinguish selfish desire.  Selfish desire or craving is the cause of all human suffering, and its importance is underscored by the fact that the Buddha used at least 15 terms for it.  Chief among them is 'trishna', thirst, the force which drives all created beings to seek personal satisfaction of their urges, even at the expense of others.  Its gratification is so deadly because it almost always brings a surge of satisfaction, reinforcing the compulsion to act on that desire again.

After 7 years of intense, INTENSE, dedicated, sustained, systematic meditation, the Buddha sat one night, resolving never to rise until he had attained his goal.  He relays it as follows (Vinaya Patika 111.4) :

 

"I roused unflinching determination, focused my attention, made my body calm and motionless and my mind concentrated and one-pointed.

 

Standing apart from all selfish urges and all states of mind harmful to spiritual progress, I entered my first meditative state, where the mind, though not quite free from divided and diffuse thought, experiences lasting joy.

Interesting, and convincing article in the NYTimes today about the dangers of yoga, for some people - particularly those not brought up sitting in full lotus - which means most of us.  Actually, yoga was originally more of a spiritual than physical undertaking, it meant 'the union of individual consciousness with universal consciousness', and was combined with other approaches to reach this end.   In total, they consisted of: yoga (asanas), pranayama (breath control), mudra (subtle physical movements which deepen awareness and concentration), bandha (locking the breath in particular areas to redirect its flow for the purpose of spiritual awakening), shatkarma (purifiction practices ridding the body of toxins, and preparing a base for the higher practices of pranayama), dharana (concentration), and dhyana (meditation).