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." > 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: Yoga sutras cross-reference Below are links to individual English translations: BonGiovanni Charles Johnston (unclear to me) Chip Hartranft (good) James Woods Manilal Nabhubhai Dvivedi (good) Osho (long-winded) Swami Prabhayananda and Christopher Isherwood (good) Sri Swami Satchidananda (good) Swami Vivekananda (unclear to me) author: Hartranft, Chip detail: LOC: B132.Y6 P24313 source: tags: ebook,scripture,spirit,yoga title: The Yoga-Sūtra of Patañjali Tags ==== ebook scripture spirit yoga