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# 2020-02-01 - The Yoga-Sūtra of Patañjali
I found this book for a couple of dollars in the thrift store. It
was published in 2003. This was more clear to me than any of the
English translations that i read previously.
> In those times, most teaching was done orally and students learned by
> way of sūtras. The word sūtra comes from the same root as the
> medical term suture, meaning to connect or hold together [as in
> thread, or stitch]. When the teacher expounded on a piece of
> knowledge, the student would be given a short phrase that would later
> remind her/him of the greater body of material. This was somewhat
> the equivalent of modern day cue cards.
>
> A further story says that Patañjali himself wrote down the sūtras
> on palm leaves but a goat ate half of them before he took the
> remainder to the Himalayas. Perhaps this is the origin of modern day
> "goat yoga."
>
> --Depak Chopra
> Sri Patañjali was the epitome of acceptance of all methods and
> broad-mindedness of approach. He did not limit his instructions to
> one particular technique, to members of any particular religion or
> philosophy, or in any other way. He gave general principles and used
> specifics only as examples. For instance, in delineating objects for
> meditation... he simply gave various possibilities to choose from and
> then concluded: Or by meditating on anything one chooses which is
> elevating.
# Introduction
The Yoga-Sūtra of Patañjali is one of the most enlightening
spiritual documents of all time. Nearly two thousand years old, this
collection of 196 compact observations on the nature of consciousness
and liberation remains unrivaled for its penetrating insight. Though
brief, the Yoga-Sūtra manages to cut to the heart of the human
dilemma. With uncommon directness, Patañjali analyzes how we know
what we know and why we suffer. He then provides a meditative
program through which each of us can fulfill the primary purposes of
consciousness: to see things as they are and to achieve freedom from
suffering. Weaving the threads of ancient yogic knowledge into a
detailed map of human possibility, the Yoga-Sūtra stands as a
testament to heroic self-awareness, defining yoga for all time.
Even today, from a distance of two millennia, we can be sure that
Patañjali's inward quest arose from a deeply ingrained desire to
extract happiness and meaning from the mysteries of life,
consciousness, and mortality.
In Patañjali's era, though, the yoga posture or āsana, was simply a
means of sitting as steadily and effortlessly as possible and was not
an exercise system of any kind. This older, contemplative yoga has
come to be known as rāja-yoga--the "royal" or "exalted"
path--distinguishing it from the later hatha yoga. It is also often
referred to as classical yoga for the same reason.
[Everything in creation is part of nature, or prakṛti, including
everything that we think of as "me"--physical, emotional, conceptual,
spiritual, internal, external... this is all impermanent, and subject
to cause and effect.]
Pure awareness [Puruṣa], on the other hand, is not stuff of any
sort and is therefore free of cause and effect. It was never created
and never ends, existing beyond time. Because it is immaterial, it
has no location, movement, or other natural properties; nor does it
have anything in common with consciousness or thought, other than the
role of observing them. It is literally intangible, impersonal, and
inconceivable.
Like the rest of nature's stuff, consciousness is embroiled in an
ongoing process of creation, spiraling from form to form, pattern to
pattern. This incessant repatterning of consciousness distorts its
actual relationship to pure awareness.
Like the rest of creation, the aspect that Patañjali calls
consciousness, or citta, is evolving. Its evolutionary goal is to
refine itself to the point where it can become so still, so unmoving,
and equally absorbed in all phenomena that it becomes very much like
pure awareness itself. In that instant, it can reflect pure
awareness back to itself, making it realize that it is distinct and
separate from nature. In other words, the underlying purpose of
creation is to reveal pure seeing to itself.
Another perceptual change occurs during this process. One's sense of
time becomes spacious, with consciousness sensing many more
individual events than before and beginning to perceive its own
workings in more detail. What seemed like a smooth flow--the reality
of the phenomenal world--can now be seen as the flickering of
microphenomena arising and vanishing with unimaginable speed and
subtlety. Under ordinary circumstances they had blended together
something like the individual frames in a motion picture, giving the
illusion of solidity and continuity. ... In this light, the dramas of
consciousness no longer seem real, nor do the propel one any longer
toward thoughts or actions that will bring more suffering. One
recognizes, at last, that the unchanging awareness that knows this
reality is the true center of human existence and that it is free of
suffering.
Patañjali's program of moral and personal discipline can seem
impossibly difficult at first. The challenge lies not in the
prescription itself, though, but in overcoming the well-established
mental and physical habits that already produce suffering in our
lives. These habits of perception and behavior cost us dearly, yet
we cannot help but hold them dear, for they ARE us. That is, we have
all developed seemingly tried-and-true patterns of thinking and
reacting, crystallizing into stories about ourselves and the world,
and we cling to them as our identity and home. Letting all of these
constructions dissolve into the much less orderly or [less]
predictable stream of momentary reality runs completely counter to
the organizing imperative of the self. There are hardly any tools in
the self's repertoire, or in our collective society, for surrendering
control to such an extent or for facing reality so squarely.
# Chapter 1, Integration
In chapter 1, Patañjali defines yoga as a multi-faceted method of
bringing consciousness to a state of stillness. To show why this
might be worthwhile, he examines what he believes to be the
fundamental predicament of existence and then offers a solution. The
predicament, he says, is that consciousness and the pure awareness
underlying it are separate but generally feel like the same thing.
Patañjali considers this the primary failure of human understanding,
a defect that produces suffering with nearly every thought and action.
The solution, he asserts, is to let consciousness settle to the point
where it can reflect awareness back to itself. Ordinarily,
consciousness is not reflective but rather a whirl of thoughts,
sensations, and feelings turning in one direction, then another.
When it is utterly motionless, though, consciousness becomes
jewel-like, reflective enough to help awareness overcome this case of
mistaken identity and recognize its true nature. This, and not our
compulsive quest for gratification from external experience, is the
source of the most profound happiness and wisdom.
As surely as human beings are endowed with native faculties of
speech, logic, and movement, so too do we possess a bottomless well
of inner silence and stillness. ... the Yoga-Sūtra locates complete
realization and freedom from suffering in the bodymind's natural
potential to become placid and steadily aware in the present moment.
The yoga of Patañjali is more a program for developing this capacity
than it is a state to be reached.
Patañjali states from the onset that pure awareness is overshadowed
by the modulations of consciousness, which is continually transformed
from one pattern of thought to another and rarely sits still for
long. This characteristic of consciousness requires deliberate,
consistent, and intense inner work, or yoking, if one is to awaken
from its automaticity and see through its incessant, limiting
definitions of reality.
Patañjali's universe is not relative. Some perceptions are true and
others are not. But to Patañjali, concepts are clearly not the same
thing as truth. Later, in 1.48, he shows that consciousness arrives
at the highest possible level of true perception only when it moves
beyond thought altogether.
Patañjali now defines the two polarities of yogic will that create
the potential for realization. Practice, or abhyāsa, is the will to
repeatedly align and realign attention to the present moment, the
only place where the singular process of yoking consciousness into
profound stillness can be enacted.
A special type of effort is cultivated and driven by abhyāsa, in
which we practice to return to a point of focus without exertion. At
the final stages of stilling, all action ceases. So abhyāsa might
better be described as "subtle effort," focused on the cultivation of
effortlessness.
Vairāgya literally means "not getting stirred up" and refers to the
relationship that arises in the instant one perceives something.
Vairāgya is the willingness to let a phenomenon arise without
reacting to it. In other words, one can allow any feature of
consciousness--a thought, feeling, or sensation--to play itself out
in front of awareness without adding to its motion in any way. This
subtracts more and more of the confusion from our experience, leading
to profound stillness and clarity.
Thus vairāgya reveals the newness and originality of the unfolding
moment. As we let go of reacting in conditioned ways, we are
jettisoning the learned patterns we have developed in the past to
relate to every aspect of experience. To let go of these is to enter
into a spontaneous and unpredictable present, unmodulated by wanting,
aversion, or other forms of self-centeredness. Indeed, what gets
"stirred up" in reaction always has to do with ME. The sense of "I"
is largely composed of reaction, being an encyclopedic enthology of
likes and dislikes, and it infiltrates even our most altruistic
thoughts and deeds.
Every time we soften to an experience that would otherwise incite us
to react, we break out habit of setting our personal consciousness
apart from nature.
Patañjali says that nonreaction is the mastery of our tendency to
react. Achieving such a degree of effortlessness requires enormous
effort, as he explains below. But this is a special type of
effort--to allow, to let things be--that becomes refined little by
little with steady practice and eventually extinguishes itself.
From Patañjali's perspective, any kind of volutional bodymind
movement, whether mental or physical, constitutes a kind of action or
karma. Each action or volution leaves an impression (saṃskāra) in
the deepest part of memory, there to lie dormant for a time and then
spring forth into some new, related action. This in turn will create
fresh latent impressions, in a cycle of latency and activation.
Concentration (dhāraṇā, 3.1) builds spontaneously as the yogi
softens and opens to experience, not through steely attempts at mind
control. Eventually the only mental forms that arise in this
practice (abhyāsa) are entrained to the same object as the preceding
ones, supplanting all other perceptions. This is absorption
(dhyāna, 3.2, 4.6). As one continues to hold on to the possibility
of the mind's falling completely still, the intervals between
thoughts grow longer. In time, mental formations cease altogether
for minutes or even hours at a time.
By halting its own movement, consciousness has ceased to "seed" the
memory with saṃskāras. From then on, nothing more will be added
to the store of latent impressions that were left by earlier thoughts
and actions. When any of the already-stored impressions is
activated, nonreaction can limit its effects by preventing it from
inciting further action and thereby perpetuating the cycle of
karma-saṃskāras-karma.
It may seem odd that Patañjali doesn't appear to place much
importance in the experiences of insight and bliss that inevitably
come and go as stilling deepens. Helpful and desirable though these
experiences may feel in the moment, they are nonetheless subtly egoic
traceries spreading turbulence across a consciousness bound for
mirrorlike placidity. They may be considered landmarks indicating
progress on the path, Patañjali suggests, but should not be mistaken
for its conclusion, freedom from suffering.
To Patañjali and the adherents of sāṃkhya, īśvara is a divine
awareness that has nothing in common with any god in the pantheons of
their contemporaries. Actually, neither yoga nor sāṃkhya is
theistic per se. While Patañjali acknowledges that yogis may be
inclined to invoke deities (2.44), he is careful to set īśvara
apart. Īśvara is not a being or entity but rather a puruṣa. It
was not created and cannot be destroyed, existing beyond time and
space; nor does it create or destroy anything. Unlike the playful
īśvara of Vedanta, Patañjali's īśvara is not subject to cause
and effect and is thus unmoved by devotional activities such as
prayer or ritual.
30 Sickness, apathy, doubt, carelessness, laziness, sexual
indulgence, delusion, lack of progress, and inconstancy are all
distractions that, by stirring up consciousness, act as barriers to
stillness.
31 When they do, one may experience distress, depression, or the
inability to maintain steadiness of posture or breathing.
32 One can subdue these distractions by working with any one of the
following principles of practice.
33 Consciousness settles as one radiates friendliness, compassion,
delight, and equanimity toward all things, whether pleasant or
painful, good or bad.
34 Or by pausing after breath flows in or out.
35 Or by steadily observing as new sensations materialize.
36 Or when experiencing thoughts that are luminous and free of sorrow.
37 Or by focusing on things that do not inspire attachment.
38 Or by focusing on insights culled from sleep and dreaming.
39 Or through meditative absorption in any desired object.
40 One can become fully absorbed in any object, whether vast or
infinitesimal.
41 As the patterning of consciousness subsides, a transparent way of
seeing, called coalescence, saturates consciousness; like a jewel, it
reflects equally whatever lies before it--whether subject, object, or
act of perceiving.
42 So long as conceptual or linguistic knowledge pervades this
transparency, it is called coalescence with thought.
43 At the next stage, called coalescence beyond thought, objects
cease to be colored by memory now formless, only their essential
nature shines forth.
44 In the same way, coalesced contemplation of subtle objects is
described as reflective or reflection-free.
45 Subtle objects can be traced back to their origin in
undifferentiated nature.
46 These four kinds of coalesced contemplation--with thought, beyond
thought, reflective, reflection-free--are called integration that
bears seeds of latent impressions.
Together, yogic effort and effortlessness guide the bodymind as it
gravitates steadily toward integration, or samādhi. Now that the
stuff of self is no longer seen as other than the rest of creation,
consciousness ceases to struggle against itself and can relax its
incessant restlessness.
Samādhi (literally, "putting together") is both the culminating
practice of yoga ... and its end-state.
47 In the lucidity of coalesced, reflection-free contemplation, the
nature of the self becomes clear.
48 The wisdom that arises in that lucidity is unerring.
49 Unlike insights acquired through inference or teachings, this
wisdom has as its object the actual distinction between pure
awareness and consciousness.
50 It generates latent impressions that prevent the activation of
other impressions.
51 When even these cease to arise and the patterning of consciousness
is completely stilled, integration bears no further seeds.
# Chapter 2, The path to realization
Having explored the ultimate state of transcendence, samādhi,
Patañjali now turns his attention to the route by which one comes to
arrive there. After identifying ignorance of one's true nature as
the root cause of suffering, he explains how it colors human
experience and perpetuates itself across the span of life, death, and
rebirth. ... Finally, Patañjali begins to lay out the eight-limbed
program of aṣtaṅga-yoga, charting the path that leads from
external to internal and from ignorance to realization.
1 Yogic action has three components--discipline, self-study, and
orientation toward the ideal of pure awareness.
2 Its purposes are to disarm the causes of suffering and achieve
integration.
The path to realization, or sādhana, is of no use unless one travels
it. Action, or kriyā, is required for most of us if we are to
progress toward samādhi (see 4.1, however). Energetic effort alone
is not enough--it must be in the right direction, headed toward the
supreme objective. For Patañjali, discipline, or tapas (literally
"heat"), provides the energy; self-study (svādhyāya) serves as the
road map; and pure awareness, as exemplified by the divine īśvara,
is the destination.
3 The causes of suffering are not seeing things as they are, the
sense of "I," attachment, aversion, and clinging to life.
4 Not seeing things as they are is the field where the other causes
of suffering germinate, whether dormant, activated, intercepted, or
weakened.
5 Lacking this wisdom, one mistakes that which is impermanent,
impure, distressing, or empty of self for permanence, purity,
happiness, and self.
6 The sense of "I" ascribes selfhood to pure awareness by identifying
it with the senses.
7 Attachment is a residue of pleasant experience.
8 Aversion is a residue of suffering.
9 Clinging to life is instinctive and self-perpetuating, even for the
wise.
17 The preventable cause of all this suffering is the apparent
indivisibility of pure awareness and what it regards.
18 What awareness regards, namely the phenomenal world, embodies the
qualities of luminosity [sattva], activity [rajas], and intertia
[tamas]; it includes oneself, composed of both elements and the
senses; and it is the ground for both sensual experience and
liberation.
20 Pure awareness is just seeing itself; although pure, it usually
appears to operate through the perceiving mind.
21 In essence, the phenomenal world exists to reveal this truth.
22 Once that happens, the phenomenal world no longer appears as such,
though it continues to exist as a common reality for everyone else.
23 It is by virtue of the apparent indivisibility of awareness and
the phenomenal world that the latter seems to posses the former's
powers.
24 Not seeing things as they are is the cause of this phenomenon.
25 With realization, the appearance of indivisibility vanishes,
revealing that awareness is free and untouched by phenomena.
26 The apparent indivisibility of seeing and the seen can be
eradicated by cultivating uninterrupted discrimination between
awareness and what it regards.
Patañjali recognizes that there can be no substitute for direct
knowing; his decision to create the Yoga-Sūtra, however,
demonstrates his belief that words can serve to reinforce direct,
preconceptual insight, even regarding transcendent states of
consciousness that are beyond thought. Patañjali seems to have had
practicing yogis in mind when he composed the Yoga-Sūtra, hoping it
would organize and clarify the direct knowledge they were acquiring
through yoga.
In particular, when the mind considers the IDEA of discrimination, it
tends to frame it as a comparison between two tangible entities, as
if holding an apple in one hand and an orange in the other. Viveka,
however, is the discrimination between utterly intangible awareness
on one hand, and all that can be felt on the other. Thus, at first
viveka can be experienced only in regard to the tangible. Awareness
itself cannot be sensed, merely recognized by default, until
consciousness arrives at a stillness so transparent and mirrorlike
that its properties approximate those of awareness itself. This can
develop only when latent impressions are no longer being activated or
produced...
Viveka is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon. It develops in stages,
not unlike learning to read.
28 When the components of yoga are practiced, impurities dwindle;
then the light of understanding can shine forth, illuminating the way
to discriminative awareness.
29 The eight components of yoga are external discipline, internal
discipline, posture, breath regulation, concentration, meditative
absorption, and integration.
At the same time, all frontiers of being are interconnected, with the
work at each supporting the work at the others. In that sense,
aṣtaṅga-yoga must cultivate all eight aspects simultaneously.
It is often assumed that by posture (āsana) and breath regulation
(prāṇāyāma) Patañjali meant the movements and breathing
exercises of hatha yoga, widely practiced today. From this one could
infer that he considered their mastery a prerequisite for
integration. However, as mentioned at the outset, most hatha yoga
was probably not devised until the ninth or tenth century, many
centuries after the composition of the Yoga-Sūtra, and was almost
certainly unknown to Patañjali. His modes of āsana and
prāṇāyāma were far simpler, being the physical and respiratory
thresholds of the yoking process, coterminous with the other six
levels, their sole purpose being to serve as vehicles for
interiorization and calm.
30 The five external disciplines are not harming, truthfulness, not
stealing, celibacy, and not being acquisitive.
31 These universals, transcending birth, place, era, or circumstance,
constitute the great vow of yoga.
32 The five internal disciplines are bodily purification,
contentment, intense discipline, self-study, and dedication to the
ideal of yoga.
33 Unwholesome thoughts can be neutralized by cultivating wholesome
ones.
The external disciplines, or yamas [the abstinences], are the way we
yoke ourselves in relation to the world.
When we choose to follow the yamas, we are in effect repudiating the
natural human wish, seen from infancy, for the immediate
gratification of all our desires through external things. Although
we learn throughout childhood to check our impulses in accordance
with society's codes of behavior, every culture condones some form of
violence, deception, appropriation, hedonism, and acquisitiveness.
Taking the "great vow" of the yamas sets one apart from the rest,
therefore, in allegiance to a higher standard.
For this reason, the yamas must not be thought of as moral
commandments but as skillful ways to relate to the world without
adding to its suffering or ours.
35 Being firmly grounded in nonviolence creates an atmosphere in
which others can let go of their hostility.
36 For those grounded in truthfulness, every action and its
consequences are imbued with truth.
37 For those who have no inclination to steal, the truly precious is
at hand.
38 The chaste acquire vitality.
39 Freedom from wanting unlocks the real purpose of existence.
Īśvara-praṇidhāna, dedicating oneself to the ideal of pure
awareness, has little to do with the emotion of devotion. Rather,
praṇidhāna (literally, "application," "alignment") is the
orientation one takes as every thought, word, or deed comes to serve
the goal of knowing pure awareness, or puruṣa. ... As we sit in
stillness, praṇidhāna is a surrender that we can make in every
moment--to let nature (prakṛti) unfold exactly as it will, without
our attachment or aversion--thereby entering the perspective of pure
awareness. ... Finally, just as one conceives of īśvara as being
utterly independent of nature (prakṛti), one comes to see the
"aloneness" (kaivalya, 2.25) of one's own awareness (puruṣa).
These last three niyamas--intensity, self-study, and orientation
toward pure awareness--constitute yogic action, or kriyā-yoga. The
path to freedom, Patañjali insists, is a path of action and requires
these three disciplines if realization is to be achieved.
Posture, or āsana, is the bodily aspect of Patañjali's holistic
system. Here the term refers only to those postures suitable for
prolonged immobility. Āsana traditionally refers as well to a seat
or cushion used to support the body. For most body types, a level of
steadiness and ease commensurate with samādhi is hard to attain
without such support. Even Siddhartha Gautama, a seasoned and highly
accomplished yogi, bundled grasses into a comfortable and supportive
cushion before sitting down to the contemplation that led to his
awakening, some six or seven centuries before Patañjali.
# Chapter 3, The extraordinary powers
The power of primary interest to Patañjali is discriminating
awareness, or viveka, arising from samādhi and leading to
realization.
As withdrawal of the senses (pratyāhāra, 2.54) diverts attention
from the gross realm of externals toward the internalized and subtle,
concentration (dhāraṇā) can yoke its orientation to any chosen
object or field. Once bodymind stillness has deepened sufficiently,
Patañjali observes, an unprecedented fixity of attention becomes
possible (2.53). This is because steady observation of the body
sitting (āsana) and breathing (prāṇāyāma) is itself powerfully
concentrative, and one of its primary effects is to reveal the
stunning distractability afflicting the usual modes of consciousness.
This distractibility can't be rectified, after all, unless it is
recognized. The "effortless effort" of abhyāsa manifests here as
the effort both to focus and to return from distraction, while the
will not to react (vairāgya) is the mechanism through which
distractibility is attenuated. Concentration, a yogic action, and
withdrawal of the senses, an effect, are interdependent, each arising
with and supporting the other.
Likewise, dhyāna, or absorption, develops as all perceptual activity
funnels to the chosen area.
9 The transformation toward total stillness occurs as new latent
impressions fostering cessation arise to prevent the activation of
distractive stored ones, and moments of stillness begin to permeate
consciousness.
10 These latent impressions help consciousness flow from one tranquil
moment to the next.
11 Consciousness is transformed toward integration as distractions
dwindle and focus arises.
12 In other words, consciousness is transformed toward focus as
continuity develops between arising and subsiding perceptions.
In chapter 1, Patañjali notes that when samādhi deepens to the
point where thought ceases, the reflective experience of
consciousness leaves latent impressions (saṃskāras) of its own;
these prevent the activation of any new saṃskāras (1.50). Here he
describes the actual transformation toward that samādhi, which takes
place one moment at a time. Each new instant (kṣaṇa) of
unfolding consciousness is oriented either toward or away from
stillness. As more and more successive instants occur during which
no distracting saṃskāras are activated, intervals of tranquility
begin to connect and flow together.
13 Consciousness evolves along the same three lines--form, time span,
and condition--as the elements and the senses.
14 The substrate is unchanged, whether before, during, or after it
takes a given form.
15 These transformations appear to unfold the way they do because
consciousness is a succession of distinct patterns.
16 Observing these three axes of change--form, time span, and
condition--with perfect discipline yields insight into the past and
future.
This particular nature of consciousness--unfolding as a succession of
distinct patterns that, under ordinary circumstances, are perceived
as a continuity--dictates how it must be transcended, as Patañjali
describes at the end of chapters 3 and 4. It will become clear that
wisdom consists in knowing the true nature of consciousness as a
sequence of finite, inconceivably brief appearances that have no
awareness in and of themselves. Only awareness (puruṣa) sees, and
it sees without beginning or end.
17 Word, meaning, and perception tend to get lumped together, each
confused with the others; focusing on the distinctions between them
with perfect discipline yields insight into the language of all
beings.
18 Directly observing latent impressions with perfect discipline
yields insight into previous births.
19 Focusing with perfect discipline on the perceptions of another
yields insight into that person's consciousness.
20 But it does not yield insight regarding the object of those
perceptions, since the object itself is not actually present in that
person's consciousness.
21 When the body's form is observed with perfect discipline, it
becomes invisible: the eye is disengaged from incoming light, and the
power to perceive is suspended.
22 Likewise, through perfect discipline other percepts--sound, smell,
taste, touch--can be made to disappear.
Now Patañjali turns to the shamanic realm of yogic endeavor, which
appears to have coexisted with the liberatory realm from earliest
times. The appearance of magical powers in the Yoga-Sūtra is
completely in keeping with religious traditions in India and
elsewhere, stretching back to prehistory. ... The yogic stance,
however, carefully enjoined by both Siddhartha Gautama and
Patañjali, is that such powers, while impressive, do not conduce to
liberation in and of themselves.
Most of these either are deployed in the phenomenal world or unlock
its secrets; few directly pertain to wisdom (prajñā).
23 The effects of action may be immediate or slow in coming;
observing one's actions with perfect discipline, or studying omens,
yields insight into death.
24 Focusing with perfect discipline on friendliness, compassion,
delight, and equanimity, one is imbued with their energies.
25 Focusing with perfect discipline on the powers of an elephant or
other entities, one acquires those powers.
26 Being absorbed in the play of the mind's luminosity yields insight
about the subtle, hidden, and distant.
Once again, the luminosity to which Patañjali refers here and
throughout the Yoga-Sūtra--including aphorisms 2.18, 2.41, 2.52,
3.36, 3.44, 3.50, 3.56, 4.19--is sattva, one of the three fundamental
qualities or nature, or guṇas. Sattva is the luminous, bouyant
quality that gives consciousness the transparency and reflectivity
that can be clearly recognized once consciousness settles. These in
turn, reveal pure awareness to itself.
33 Focusing with perfect discipline on the light in the crown of the
head, one acquires the perspective of the perfected ones.
34 Or, all these accomplishments may be realized in a flash of
spontaneous illumination.
According to esoteric descriptions found elsewhere in the yogic
literature, the cakras, or "wheels," are immaterial energy centers
that distribute life force (prāṇa) via the nāḍi throughout the
energetic body interpenetrating the physical one. Although
Patañjali doesn't mention the cakras again, he lists powers that
arise from subjecting certain of them to perfect discipline.
Note that it is by focusing on the heart and not on higher centers
that one comes to grasp the nature of consciousness. The heart
center is associated with the sense of touch, and focusing on it
sharpens one's sense of bodily sensation. The yogas of both
Patañjali and Siddhartha Gautama regard bodily sensation as a
foundation of mindfulness and therefore a direct path to
understanding the nature of consciousness.
36 Experience consists of perceptions in which the luminous aspect of
the phenomenal world is mistaken for absolutely pure awareness.
Focusing with perfect discipline on the different properties of each
yields insight into the nature of pure awareness.
37 Following this insight, the senses--hearing, feeling, seeing,
tasting, smelling--may suddenly be enhanced.
38 These sensory gifts may feel like attainments, but they distract
one from integration.
He makes it clear, though, that the goal of yoga, and indeed the
whole point of existence is not to cultivate power in the phenomenal
world but to end suffering by realizing the nature of pure seeing for
its own sake.
53 Focusing with perfect discipline on the succession of moments in
time yields insight born of discrimination.
54 This insight allows one to tell things apart that, through
similarities of origin, feature, or position, had seemed continuous.
55 In this way discriminative insight deconstructs all of the
phenomenal world's objects and conditions, setting them apart from
pure awareness.
56 Once the luminosity and transparency of consciousness have become
as distilled as pure awareness, they can reflect the freedom of
awareness back to itself.
# Chapter 4, Freedom
At the end of chapter 3 Patañjali leaves us with a glimpse of
freedom, or kaivalya. As he defines is, kaivalya is not a state that
we achieve but rather the inherent separation that exists between
prakṛti and puruṣa. Recognition of this separation is called
discrimination, or viveka, and is accompanied by insight into the
momentary transformations of the world's forms. It is this insight
that defuses the dramas of consciousness, in effect freeing it from
further suffering.
In chapter 4 he prepares us for a more thorough depiction,
elaborating on the way forms arise in nature and continually change.
He describes the latent forces that drive these transformations, both
of consciousness and its objects. He then analyzes and affirms the
reality of the world, independent of the perceptions of its
observers. Consciousness itself is an object, he asserts, incapable
of self-regard. Once its recognition as such can be steadily
maintained, reality can finally be seen as it actually is--a torrent
of microphenomena utterly devoid of substantiality or permanence.
The true nature of pure awareness itself is now visible,
omnipresently observing the world but separate from it and not imbued
with its qualities. This, Patañjali explains, fulfills the true
purpose for which nature created consciousness, and marks the end of
suffering.
3 The transformation into this form or that is not driven by the
causes proximate to it, just oriented by them, the way a farmer
diverts a stream for irrigation.
Another metaphor related to cultivation might make Patañjali's
concept even clearer. A farmer doesn't actually create a crop such
as apples; rather, they are the product of apple trees, each one the
latest of a long line of predecessors. The ancestry of each apple
tree stretches back to antiquity, every generation depending for its
existence on a fruitful convergence of seed, sunshine, water, and
nutrient soil. The farmer, as the current agent of convergence, is a
proximate cause of the apple's existence, having obtained the seeds,
planted them in rows of soil, irrigated and fertilized them, and
finally harvested the fruit. One would even call the product "the
farmer's apples." But it is primarily the seed that determines the
apple's essential attributes--color, texture, taste, shape, content,
life span, and potential to reproduce--even though each of these may
be affected by proximate causes.
The same way, it is the "seed" of the latent impressions
(saṃskāra) that germinates, blooming into specific thoughts,
forms, and actions. The set of conditions that host this emergence
will certainly influence it, like the farmer's influence on the apple
crop, but its essential attributes are determined long before it
becomes visible.
[Apples are propagated by grafting, not by seed.]
4 Feeling like a self is the frame that orients consciousness toward
individuation.
5 A succession of consciousnesses, generating a vast array of
distinctive perceptions, appears to consolidate into one individual
consciousness.
Ahaṃkāra is the individuating principle, or "I-maker." ... Even
though a being may experience countless, often radically different
modes of consciousness, each erupting from the activation of latent
impressions, ahaṃkāra impregnates them all, regardless of their
variety, with a unifying self-sense, or asmitā. This makes them all
feel like they're "happening to me."
Each saṃskāra has four attributes:
* a cause, usually originating with one of the five causes of
suffering (kleśas);
* an effect, manifested as thought or action (karma)
* a basis in consciousness (citta)
* the support of an object (viṣaya)
Patañjali mentioned this in order to explain how saṃskāras are
deactivated at the time of ultimate realization, which he discusses
beginning with 4.29. Not only does realization eradicate the causes
of suffering, as well as cause and effect, but it also represents a
transformation in which the ordinary appearances of consciousness and
the phenomenal object world are seen through. Since the four
saṃskāra attributes are inseparable, the dissolution of a single
one means the end of the saṃskāra as well.
Any object or phenomenon consists of a succession of moments in which
innumerable experiential forms, or dharmas, arise and pass away.
These cannot ordinarily be perceived as such, instead running
together like the frames in a motion picture. This tendency to blur
together imparts an unreal sense of continuity and permanence to
phenomena, an illusion that is nonetheless taken to be their actual
reality. Indeed, while Patañjali's word dharma never means anything
in the Yoga-Sūtra other than "irreducible constituent of
experience," dharma is one of the most inclusive words in the
Sanskrit language and commonly refers to several different orders of
reality, both micro- and macroscopic. Other traditional meanings
include "nature as a whole," "the lawfulness of natural processes,"
"teachings related to natural law," "mental state," and "the virtue
that arises from living in accord with nature."
The world, Patañjali assures us, is real, and its objects exist
independently of the observer. Like the object, the act of observing
can be broken down into constituents. Every perception may revers
several of the strata that compose a human being, including sense
organs (indriya), sensory mind (manas), intelligence (buddhi),
"I-maker" (ahaṃkāra), and subtle sense experiences (tanmātras).
These constitute the "path" along which the sensing of an object
travels on the way to becoming a full-fledged perception. As
Patañjali pointed out in 2.27, wisdom, or prajñā, clarifies the
actual nature of each of these strata. Even in the absence of
prajñā, though, one can readily understand how any path through
these strata cannot be the same from one person to the next. And if
this sensing never reaches consciousness--namely, intelligence,
I-maker, and sensing mind--it cannot be known.
18 Patterns of consciousness are always known by pure awareness,
their ultimate, unchanging witness.
19 Consciousness is seen not by its own light but by awareness.
20 Furthermore, consciousness and its object cannot be perceived at
once.
21 If consciousness were perceived by itself instead of by awareness,
the chain of such perceptions would regress infinitely, imploding
memory.
22 Once it is stilled, though, consciousness comes to resemble
unchanging awareness and can reflect itself being perceived.
23 Then consciousness can be colored by both awareness and the
phenomenal world, thereby fulfilling all its purposes.
[That's deep philosophical stuff. The way this is translated
resembles a discussion of computer science, quines, and recursion.]
Now Patañjali hones in on a key distinction between awareness and
consciousness: the latter is the object of the former and cannot
illuminate itself. In other words, consciousness cannot see itself,
any more than a television picture can watch itself, even though it
is capable of displaying a vast array of distinctive programs and
settings, each offering a compelling pseudo-reality. Once the volume
is turned down and the screen darkened, however, the illusion
evaporates. One remembers that it was just a show appearing on a
machine. Seeing our reflection in the screen, we sense ourself
sitting there, breathing, watching, thinking.
To penetrate Patañjali's view of realization, we must go beyond this
metaphor. One awakens from the illusory experiences of sitting,
breathing, watching, and thinking--the pageant of the phenomenal
world--to the knowledge of pure awareness, standing apart from all
experience. Nobody is watching. There is just watching
itself--puruṣa.
Patañjali explains that an object becomes a percept by "coloring"
consciousness. Thus, once consciousness is becalmed to the point of
resembling pure awareness, puruṣa can sense its own presence for
the first time. Consciousness is now "colored" by awareness and can
represent it back to itself. In its luminosity, consciousness
reveals more of the detail about itself and the transformations of
its constituent stuff--insights that will ultimately unravel the
bonds of the guṇas and their projections.
Patañjali asserts that the phenomenal world is the grounds for both
experience and liberation (2.18). Now that consciousness can
accommodate both aspects of existence, prakṛti and puruṣa, both
its purposes can be fulfilled, and freedom is at hand.
The guṇas depended for their effects on the relatively gross
calibrations of everyday perception. But in the absence of any
bodymind movement whatsoever, consciousness now can reflect the
finest possible grade of phenomena. At this level of discrimination,
the guṇas' contribution to the coloring of each new transformation
can clearly be seen. Once seen through, the guṇas lose all power
to compel, and become irrelevant.
# Afterword: The Yoga-Sūtra today
... the Yoga-Sūtra continues to compel chiefly because of the way it
addresses the central concerns of human existence.
... awareness is intrinsically free and ... every human being can
come to know freedom. Patañjali unshackles us from the fetters of
conventional effort, which largely belongs to the domain of
suffering, and instead directs us to the possibility of
effortlessness. The yogic processes of interiorization and calm are
not as much something we do as they are naturally unfolding
properties of being that our selves usually hold in check. [grace]
An important feature of the Yoga-Sūtra is Patañjali's emphasis on
embodiment. Āsana and prāṇāyāma are the ground of the yogic
path.
This emphasis on physical sensation, also notable in the teachings of
the Buddha, is not theoretical but rather a pragmatic response to
experience and practice.
Patañjali was a realist among idealists, his teaching a model of
pragmatism. Absent of ceremoniousness or sentimentality, its program
depends for its success solely on the energy and engagement the yogi
brings to it. Awakening is not an intellectual event--nor, indeed, a
mental activity of any kind--but instead emerges by itself when flesh
and blood, mind and breath, are permeated more and more fully by the
settling process, nirodha.
Thus Patañjali always returns to the prescription of nondoing as the
most direct way for body and mind to unlearn what they think they
know and thereby reset the course toward pure awareness. The
trajectory of yoga takes us backward and inward through ourselves
toward the clarity of primordial repose.
# Dualism and nondualism
The yogic path leads to realization, in which every aspect of being
can be seen as it is. Each experience or attribute of the
world--including oneself--is exposed as compound in nature, with all
its particulars in flux. This is directly known by an awareness that
is unconditioned and unchanging. From the yogic perspective, all
suffering and confusion are seen through and neutralized by this
realization. It is not necessary, therefore, to conceptualize,
verbalize, or "make sense" of the experience in order to achieve
freedom.
However, to communicate the possibility of liberation to others, to
describe the process of yoga, and to encourage others to try it, one
must eventually do just that. While clearly recognizing the limits
of the mind to know itself, Patañjali makes an appeal to the minds
of his followers, and to all who would enter the yogic path, by
offering them a conceptual model of reality. In that sense, the
Yoga-Sūtra is a work of technical philosophy.
As soon as yoga enters the domain of philosophy, though, the mind
must assert its special prerogative, however grandiose, to install
itself as the locus of all knowledge. On that behalf, it must demand
an answer to the following question: if awareness lies at the core of
all experience, who is experiencing the awareness?
Awareness is much more vast than thought. While awareness easily
accommodates all mental experience, the mind is too small a container
for the contents of awareness. This seems to be because so many of
its functions are dedicated to selecting and elaborating on the
desirable and also filtering out or eliminating the undesirable.
Even much of the mind's own content, such as the conditioned values
that determine what is desirable or not, is internalized and hidden
from conscious view to make room for efficient mental functioning.
It is therefore impossible for the mind to swallow the whole stream
of sensorimental phenomena, yet it is also difficult for it to grasp
that it cannot. This would seem to be one of the factors that
prevent the mind from accepting the knowable fact that awareness
requires no experiencer or recipient.
The qualities of these two domains, mind and awareness, seem so
opposed that any analysis might well conclude that they are mutually
exclusive...
This conclusion reflects the mind's irresistible compulsion to reify
and classify its experiences in relation to the self. It is in the
nature of mind to sort things apart, compartmentalize them, and
identify the laws governing their behavior and separateness. So the
philosophical mind rightly sees dualism in Patañjali's isolation of
awareness (puruṣa) from consciousness (citta) and nature
(prakṛti).
However, any philosophical analysis must also take into account
Patañjali's negation of puruṣa, which he strips of any self
properties whatsoever. Awareness itself has no attributes--no
thought, action cause, effect, temporality, materiality, or
interaction with the world. One might well ask: "Isn't seeing
perhaps the fundamental, defining action of a self?" Patañjali's
reply is that the whole point of yoga is to recognize that seeing is
not a self activity at all.
Thus one must recognize that if the yoga-darśana is a dualistic
philosophy, it is a dualism that counterposes everything against
virtually nothing. Puruṣa is not a substantial entity in any
sense, being utterly devoid of qualities or essence. It neither adds
to nor subtracts from what we know as the universe; it is just the
knowing itself.
In practical terms, characterizing Patañjali's system as dualism
hardly detracts from its primary purpose as a vehicle for realization
and is not especially significant to the yogi. In fact, the most
decisive transformation in the yogic process is the discovery of
underlying phenomenal nonduality, which becomes visible with the
arising of coalescence, or samāpatti. Samāpatti means "things
falling together," and abiding in it steadily is samādhi, or
"putting things together." When consciousness is becalmed to a
mirrorlike reflectivity, all perceivable phenomena are seen for the
first time to be unitary and nondual, though empty of seeing itself.
For the reader of the Yoga-Sūtra who wants to use it for its primary
purpose, as a guide to realization, therefore, it is critically
important not to become identified with concepts of dualism or
nondualism. Just as the line on the map is but a symbol of the
actual highway, the Yoga-Sūtra is merely a conceptual analogue to
the true yogic process, where all discursive activity must subside
for wisdom to enter. To get anywhere at all, we must keep our eyes
primarily not on the map but on the road itself.
That road leads us to a realm of profound insights--that all
phenomena are in fact interconnected and impermanent, that the stuff
of self is not other than the stuff of the world, and that the pure
awareness regarding self and world is not colored by them. In the
words of an ancient Indian saying, the lotus grows in muddy waters
but shows no trace.
# The Yoga-Sūtra in light of early Buddhism
Apart from the structures of their metaphysical systems, which are
often at odds, their descriptions and prescriptions are generally
compatible.
While a detailed comparison of classical yoga and Buddhism lies
beyond the scope of this book, it can be generally stated that from a
technical standpoint, the foundational yogic practices of the two
teachers are much the same, with certain differences of emphasis.
One of the central disagreements between the two traditions has to do
with their somewhat different analyses of suffering.
As similar as the Buddhist and yogic paths are, one aspect of their
metaphysical models is difficult to reconcile. Siddhartha Gautama,
living at a time of Upaniṣadic influence, carefully but repeatedly
rejected the Vedantic notion that there is any changeless soul entity
(ātman) abiding in the midst of the phenomenal world and its flux.
This would put him at odds with Patañjali, at least as interpreted
in the traditional Vedantic style most prevalent today. ... One might
well ask, though, What is it that knows the nature of
unsatisfactoriness, impermanence, selflessness, and nirvāṇa? Both
Patañjali and Siddhartha Gautama would agree that nothing resembling
a self, or even an "it," is involved.
# The Yoga-Sūtra in light of contemporary scientific knowledge
Regardless of one's respect for the depth of Patañjali's
phenomenological inquiry, it might be difficult, and perhaps unwise,
for the modern yogi to embrace the entirety of the Yoga-Sūtra's
scientific paradigm uncritically. For example, we now know that most
natural phenomena occur beyond the range of human perception. The
greater part of nature unfolds in the form of events that are either
too slow, too fast, too great, or too tiny to observe directly.
# Kriyā-yoga, the path of action
Thus the Yoga-Sūtra emphasizes kriyā-yoga, or yogic action, whose
three components are intensity (tapas), self-study (svādhyāya), and
orientation (praṇidhāna) toward īśvara, the divine exemplar of
pure awareness.
Thus, to effect change requires energy, converted to the heat of
intense discipline, or tapas. In Patañjali's formulation of yogic
action, or kriyā-yoga, one enforces yoking through tapas, generated
at many levels of human experience. In daily life, this means
placing realization at the center of one's priorities, not only by
practicing constantly and with complete engagement to enter the
stilling process (nirodha) through daily meditation, but also by
bringing every aspect of one's work and relationships into alignment
with the awakening process. In the stilling practice, tapas is the
energy fueling both the persistent returning to focus (abhyāsa) and
the willingness to see all experiences with clarity instead of
reaction (vairāgya). ... Each time we can observe without reacting
as an impulse to think or act out according to conditioned and
well-worn patterns of suffering arises, we are in effect practicing a
small but significant austerity that unlocks immeasurable energy.
And only by dying to what we thought we were can we enter the sublime
realm of what truly is.
# About the text and translation
Yet there is one more reason, perhaps the most compelling of all, why
the Yoga-Sūtra can prove so difficult to absorb. Beyond its
profusion of technical terms and also the seeming contradictions that
have marked most commentaries, ancient or new, the greater barrier,
by far, is that most readers have not traveled very far on the path
to realization and therefore can relate to the Yoga-Sūtra only as
philosophy instead of as a way of being in the world. This problem,
coupled with the inconvenient fact that Patañjali begins with an
elaborate and highly detailed discussion of the yogic end-states,
immediately puts the work beyond the reach of many.
Thus it follows that most of the millions who today practice yoga
worldwide are unfamiliar with even the basic concepts of the
Yoga-Sūtra.
It is doubtful that Patañjali envisioned the Yoga-Sūtra as a
stand-alone work, either philosophical treatise or yoga primer, for
the general public. More likely he intended it for yogis in
training, to provide concise reminders applicable to every area of
contemporary yogic knowledge, including those domains in which he
himself shows relatively less interest.
# Online English translations
Below is a human and machine-readable cross-index of a few English
translations:
Below are links to individual English translations:
BonGiovanni
Charles Johnston (unclear to me)
James Woods
Manilal Nabhubhai Dvivedi (good)
Swami Prabhayananda and Christopher Isherwood (good)
Sri Swami Satchidananda (good)
Swami Vivekananda (unclear to me)
author: Hartranft, Chip
detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Yoga_Sutras_of_Patanjali
LOC: B132.Y6 P24313
tags: ebook,scripture,spirit,yoga
title: The Yoga-Sūtra of Patañjali
# Tags
ebook
scripture
spirit
yoga
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