Yoga versus zazen
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At the risk of annoying people with all of my yoga questions...
I assume Crowley, and Europeans in general, just wouldn't have had access to information about zazen back then. Crowley taught - as the AA seems to do so still today, based on their public information - yoga. He emphasized keeping the muscles "braced" while in asana. Zazen, on the other hand, emphasizes a more relaxed posture. I can see how both serve the purpose of asana - preventing the body from producing signals that disturb meditation. In yoga, bracing keeps the body still and you know if you fall out of good practice. In zazen, maintaining relaxation keeps the body still. Both lead, if successful, to samadhi, though Sekida (Zen Training) argues that different practices can produce two different types of samadhi.
I, until recently, practiced zazen. But I have now begun trying yoga, as Crowley taught it, to see if I'm missing out on anything. Does anyone here have experience with both? Do you know of any reason why a magician should prefer yoga, especially as Crowley taught it, over zazen (other than you need to master it to attain the next grade or that your teachers knew it and could, therefore, teach it and judge it better)?
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Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Ultimately, success is your proof. If it works it works!
But, to tackle it a little more directly: Aside from the direct and obvious benefits you mention, I've long felt that a significant part of the particular approach Crowley taught was the struggle as a training in will. One of the things rigid asana training is good for is hard, demanding struggle that tends to drive away a lot of people - and persistence in it gives a particular power of persistence that doesn't seem likely by a gentler method.
On the other hand, that could be justification after the fact 
like seeing the benefit of an ordeal however much it hurt at the time. 
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@Jim Eshelman said
"Ultimately, success is your proof. If it works it works!"
Yes, but works for what? Does Crowley/AA use yoga for the sole purpose of development of will and achieving samadhi? Peter Carroll, modelling after Crowley's approach, developed a stripped-down approch to yoga in Liber Null. But he established it for the purpose of developing certain skills necessary for practicing particular types of magic, especially for cultivating a trance state suitable for launching sigils. Though he also used it for developing will. I don't think he ever cared about samadhi.
I should have asked a more specific question. I can't see that he meant to do so, based on Yoga for Yahoos or Mysticism, but did Crowley/AA intend for things like pranayama or dharana to provide any particular skills that one might miss by doing zazen instead? (I still don't have any idea what pranayama should do for you. But I don't think I ever came close to doing correctly.)
@Jim Eshelman said
"
On the other hand, that could be justification after the fact like seeing the benefit of an ordeal however much it hurt at the time. "Crowley seemed to have a semi-sadistic streak, but in a friendly sort of way somehow.
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"Crowley seemed to have a semi-sadistic streak, but in a friendly sort of way somehow."
More on this, please.
Thanks,
Chris H -
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
I only have a passing knowledge of asana yoga. However I've studied zazen in two different Japanese Buddhist traditions. I wouldn't necessarily say that a zazen posture is a relaxing position. If zazen is done correctly - at least as taught by a traditional Japanese schools - the posture has just enough musculature tension that if the practitioner isn't vigilant the position will slip. This is one of the tools used by zazen to ensure the mind is focused - in this case on posture - and not wandering all over the place.
Within zazen identifying the fact that the mind wanders if not vigilantly managed and understanding the nature of the wandering mind is the first realization / accomplishment of zazen. Most people are able to acknowledge their inability to control their mind after they sit zazen the first time.
The next accomplishment is the ability to control the mind from wandering and stay focused on a selected focal point (chakra within the body, an external image, etc.) for a length of time. This is much harder than it seems. Most people after some diligent zazen practice over a few weeks can keep focus for 30 seconds to a few minutes before the vigilance is lost and the effort starts again. There will be a bunch of other stuff that happens to a practitioner during this portion of development - the sense of weightlessness, floating or falling for instance, which is an experience of the formless realm within Buddhist parlance. Some people experience uncontrollable emotions for no reason such as crying.
The third accomplishment, and this is a major one, is ability to enter this focused state at will and maintain it for as long as one desires. This is very difficult and takes some time to master - at least within my experience and those people I'm familiar with who also practice zazen.
The state of being able to hold the minds focus at will is called samatha in Sanskrit (pronounced shamatta). In Chinese it is referred to as chi and Japanese as shi. In English it's been translated by Thomas Cleary (prolific translator of many Asian Buddhist texts) as Stopping [the mind] - which has been misunderstood, many taking the stopping to mean stopping the mind from thinking, one hasn't stopped the mind, just stopped it from wandering. Those that have translated Tibetan Buddhist texts into English have translated samatha as the calm abiding. This is probably the best English translation as that gives a good account of what it feels like when one gets very adept at this practice.
The calm abiding, or samatha is the entry into numerous other practices. Of interest here it is the entry into the practice of samadhi. There are other skills that need to be developed to gain a full samadhi experience, such as vipasina meditations.
Where does this all fit into Western esoteric studies? We'll I'm a beginner myself, but I definitely see correlations between the ability to control and focus the mind within the zazen practice and having the skill to control and focus the mind for magickal operations. Buddhist Tantric meditations share a very close affinity to the skills needed for visualizations conducting while one executes a magickal ritual.