Yoga: The Yoga Sutras

[Explor­ing Life] The Yoga Sutras writ­ten by Pan­tan­jali in the 2nd cen­tury B.C. is con­sider to be one of the pri­mary texts of yoga. The word Yoga is derived from San­skrit root yujir mean­ing to join or to unite. Another impor­tant trans­la­tion comes from the root yuj mean­ing to con­tem­plate. A sutra is an apho­rism, or a brief state­ment designed to con­tain a deep insight, pow­er­ful obser­va­tion or an impor­tant truth about life. The Yoga Sutras are there­fore insights and obser­va­tions into the nature of unity and con­tem­pla­tion of life.

There are 196 sutras divided into four chapters:

1. Con­cen­tra­tion (51 sutras);
2. Meth­ods (55 sutras);
3. Power (54 sutras); and
4. Absolute Inde­pen­dence (34 sutras).

Trans­lat­ing of the Yoga Sutras from San­skrit (the orig­i­nal lan­guage of the Yoga Sutras and one of the old­est Indo-European lan­guages, dat­ing back to approx­i­mately 1500 BC) into Eng­lish is a chal­leng­ing task. Con­cepts flu­idly expressed in one lan­guage may be exceed­ingly dif­fi­cult to express in another. Fur­ther, a con­cept com­mon to one lan­guage may have no direct cor­re­la­tion in another lan­guage. For these rea­sons, trans­la­tions from San­skrit to Eng­lish are challenging.

The Yoga Sutras are the foun­da­tion for build­ing a Yoga prac­tice. The mean­ing embed­ded within a sutra is illu­sive and requires that we con­stantly exam­ine and test our under­stand­ing of it in the light of our own expe­ri­ence. To do this we must increase our capac­ity for con­tem­pla­tion, med­i­ta­tion, mind­ful­ness, con­cen­tra­tion, and reflec­tion. To com­pre­hend a sutra means that we per­ceive its pur­pose and rel­e­vance in rela­tion to our own expe­ri­ences in life. In this way, the Yoga Sutra is a strat­egy for inter­pret­ing and trans­form­ing our expe­ri­ences in life. The Yoga Sutras, like the Bible and other sacred texts, are sources of inspi­ra­tion that encour­age peo­ple to con­tem­plate the deeper ques­tions about life in order to secure a state of equa­nim­ity and contentment.

Chap­ter One: Concentration

Pan­tan­jali sought to under­stand the mind by iden­ti­fy­ing it var­i­ous states:

1. Wan­der­ing (ksipta): This is low­est state of mind, the per­son is highly agi­tated and unable to think, lis­ten, or keep quiet. The term “monkey-mind” is often used to char­ac­ter this state and the per­son is trapped in addic­tive cycles of pain and suffering.
2. Dull (mudha): In this state of mind the per­son is for­get­ful and lacks aware­ness of their own thoughts and expe­ri­ences. Their mind is in a state of som­nam­bu­lism in which habit dominates.
3. Rest­less (vikspita): The mind has become more aware but is in a con­stant state of con­fu­sion and the indi­vid­ual has dif­fi­culty decid­ing what to do.
4. Focused (eka­gra): The mind is both relaxed and aware. The inter­nal chat­ter has sub­sided and the per­son is able to main­tain their aware­ness of the present moment.
5. Mas­tered (nirodha): The mind is able to con­cen­trate on a sin­gle focus for extended peri­ods of time. The per­son is fully engaged in some­thing and remains undis­trib­uted by the sit­u­a­tions and cir­cum­stances of life.

The essence of yoga lies is the con­tem­pla­tion of the nature of our mind.

Con­tem­pla­tion of the Five States of Mind

: Appre­hend­ing the five states of the mind within our own being is an impor­tant basis for con­tem­pla­tion. The five states of mind path­ways intended to help the prac­ti­tioner to pen­e­trate the work­ings of their own mind. Thus, the Yoga Sutras require con­tem­pla­tive read­ing, or read­ing in which we con­stantly test the truth of what is being said in ref­er­ence to our own state of mind. Yoga encour­ages us to per­ceive the truth of the wan­der­ing, dull, rest­less, focused, and mas­tered mind within our own experience.

At an ele­men­tal level, learn­ing or prac­tic­ing Yoga means that we turn our atten­tion inward and train our con­cen­tra­tion on the inner work­ings of our own mind. Yoga does not ask us to develop our con­cep­tual under­stand­ing; yoga crit­i­cally engages us in find­ing these states of mind within our­selves. In tra­di­tional edu­ca­tion we focus on the acqui­si­tion of abstract con­cepts; in Yoga we learn to per­ceive the oper­a­tion of the mind in the light of our own expe­ri­ence. In this sense, the five states of mind are a strat­egy for devel­op­ing the pow­ers of con­cen­tra­tion, atten­tion, aware­ness and per­cep­tion. They offer a frame­work for con­tem­plat­ing the mind, its effects on our body, and how we choose to inter­pret expe­ri­ence. To enter yoga tech­nique deeply, we must first explore our minds through contemplation.

An impor­tant foun­da­tion of a yoga prac­tice is the effort to cul­ti­vate a steadi­ness of mind. This steadi­ness is cen­tred on awak­en­ing to the truth of imper­ma­nence — or uni­ver­sal death. The essen­tial unity of life and death takes us straight to the core of the expe­ri­ence of yoga. Con­tem­pla­tion, or the power to observe the oper­a­tions of the mind and body with deep aware­ness, is the psy­cho­log­i­cal ground of yoga.

Yoga is the restraint of men­tal mod­i­fi­ca­tions.
(Rad­hakr­ish­nan and Moore 1973)

The idea of restraint is of cen­tral impor­tance in the Yoga Sutras. A men­tal mod­i­fi­ca­tion refers to an abnor­mal state of mind, or a state of mind that induces some form of suf­fer­ing within. The main task of con­cen­tra­tion is the restraint of men­tal mod­i­fi­ca­tions. There­fore a fun­da­men­tal aim of yoga is to con­trol, limit, restrict and sup­press the thoughts and feel­ings we have that lead to pain and suffering.

Pan­tan­jali describes five types of men­tal modifications:

1. Com­pre­hen­sion: The ways in which we per­ceive, talk and infer about our experiences;
2. Mis­ap­pren­hen­sion: The ways in which we appre­hend beyond our senses (intu­ition, pre­mo­ni­tion, etc.);
3. Imag­i­na­tion: our inte­rior thought world, men­tal self-talk;
4. Sleep: The ways which we con­nect to dreams and our sub­con­scious being;
5. Mem­ory: The ways in which past habits, con­di­tion­ing, and knowl­edge influ­ence our present experience.

If a men­tal process is truth­ful, it orig­i­nates in the aware­ness of the imper­ma­nence of all life. If a men­tal process is painful it is caused by one of the five afflic­tions (igno­rance, ego­ism, attach­ment, aver­sion, and fear of death) — or those things that cause us to believe we are sep­a­rate and unique in life. The idea of restrain­ing men­tal mod­i­fi­ca­tions means that we are engag­ing with our minds in way that is designed to free us from igno­rance, ego­ism, attach­ment, aver­sion and fear of death, so that we may open our­selves to the uni­ver­sal truth of impermanence.

…prac­tice is the effort to secure steadi­ness. (Yoga Sutra, 1–13)

The pur­pose of a yoga prac­tice is to secure steadi­ness of mind. In other words, the pur­pose of a Yoga prac­tice is to resolve the five afflic­tions so that we may secure a sense of steadi­ness through­out the cir­cum­stances and sit­u­a­tions we face. The word steadi­ness indi­cates that our qual­ity of thought, and there­fore our emo­tion, is free from waver­ing and inde­ci­sion regard­less of the sit­u­a­tions and cir­cum­stances we find our­selves in. In this sense, our minds are securely and immov­ably fixed in a place of contentment.

There are nine obsta­cles to men­tal steadi­ness: dis­ease, lan­guor, inde­ci­sion, care­less­ness, sloth, sen­su­al­ity, mis­taken notion, fail­ure, and inabil­ity to main­tain. There are four effects on our mind cre­ated by these nine obsta­cles: men­tal and/or phys­i­cal pain; sad­ness or dejec­tion; rest­less­ness and anx­i­ety; and irreg­u­lar­i­ties in breath­ing. Under the influ­ence of the nine obsta­cles and their effects our thought pat­terns remain dis­turbed and our atten­tion remains frag­mented. These obsta­cles to men­tal steadi­ness are a nat­ural and pre­dictable chal­lenge in a yoga practice.

For their [the nine obsta­cles] pre­ven­tion, habit­u­a­tion to one truth.

By cul­ti­vat­ing habits of friend­li­ness, com­pas­sion, good­will, and indif­fer­ence towards hap­pi­ness, mis­ery, virtue and vice, respec­tively, the mind becomes pure. (Rad­hakr­ish­nan and Moore 1973)

Habit­u­a­tion to the con­trary is the method to remove the nine obsta­cles and their effects. As we develop our power of con­cen­tra­tion and develop aware­ness of the pres­ence of the nine obsta­cles within our mind they imme­di­ately begin to lose their effect on us. The act of bring­ing a men­tal obsta­cle into clear focus and atten­tion is an ini­tial step in reduc­ing its effect. We come know the obsta­cle more inti­mately and can then begin to habit­u­ate the mind to the con­trary. Stated in another way, men­tal steadi­ness is the habit­u­a­tion to one truth (also described as one-pointedness). This is an impor­tant foun­da­tion for med­i­ta­tion. There are two key strate­gies involved:

1. Through con­cen­tra­tion we learn to observe the pres­ence of the nine obsta­cles and their four effects with­out becom­ing attached or sub­servient to them. When we heighten our aware­ness of them and sense their pres­ence within we also choose to remain detached from them. Aware­ness is achieved when we feel as though we are an out­side observer of our own expe­ri­ences. By deep­en­ing our capac­ity for aware­ness we learn to wit­ness our thoughts and feel­ings with­out becom­ing influ­enced by them, or defin­ing our own sense of being through them.
2. The sec­ond stage, and the key to habit­u­a­tion to the truth, is to inter­rupt the pres­ence of an obsta­cle by focus­ing on a new intent. The nine obsta­cles and their four effects are not some­thing we set out to repress, attack or destroy — we sim­ply allow them to be with­out being seduced by them. We do act, how­ever, in the sense that we choose to inter­rupt them. When we sense an obsta­cle within, we choose to focus on its con­trary. For exam­ple, if we are tor­mented by a sense of fail­ure in our lives, then we choose to habit­u­ate our­selves to the con­trary by focus­ing on the open accep­tance of life as it is.

… the mind acquires the power of thought-transformation. (Rad­hakr­ish­nan and Moore 1973)

Men­tal steadi­ness is achieved by deep­en­ing our sense of aware­ness so that we can wit­ness men­tal obsta­cles and their effects as an impar­tial observer, and then in the pres­ence of an obsta­cle we con­sciously choose to focus on an inten­tion that cul­ti­vates friend­li­ness, com­pas­sion, good­will, and indif­fer­ence to tran­si­tory states of being. When we learn Yoga, the first thing we must do is learn to develop the power of con­cen­tra­tion and focus that con­cen­trate inward to become aware of men­tal obsta­cles and habit­u­ate our­selves toward the accep­tance of imper­ma­nence. These are the basic asanas for the mind that pro­vide a foun­da­tion for trans­form­ing our minds and pur­su­ing the devel­op­ment of men­tal focus and clarity.

Chap­ter Two: Methods

The sec­ond chap­ter of the Yoga Sutra focuses on meth­ods (sad­hana) for achiev­ing the qual­i­ties of men­tal con­cen­tra­tion described in the pre­vi­ous chap­ter. It is impor­tant to note that Pan­tan­jali has, to this point, made no men­tion of asanas, or the phys­i­cal poses of Yoga.

Purifi­ca­tory action [tapas], study, mak­ing God the motive of action, con­sti­tute the yoga of action. (Rad­hakr­ish­nan and Moore 1973)

The focus of the meth­ods or tech­niques of a yoga prac­tice is the burn­ing of impu­ri­ties, or purifi­ca­tory action (i.e. — tapas) in the mind. Pantanjali’s method there­fore orig­i­nates in a psy­cho­log­i­cal per­spec­tive that focuses on reliev­ing our suf­fer­ing by embrac­ing it and mak­ing it the focus for the devel­op­ment of con­cen­tra­tion. Tapas, the burn­ing of impu­ri­ties in the mind, body and spirit, is there­fore the foun­da­tion and essence of Pantanjali’s Yoga method. Tapas are the rea­son why we assume a phys­i­cal posture.

Pan­tan­jali describes five afflic­tions that we must learn to hold within the fire of tapas.

1. Dor­mancy: Lazi­ness of mind;
2. Delu­sion: Mis­tak­ing the non-eternal, the impure and the painful to be the eter­nal, the pure and the pleasurable.
3. Ego­ism: The mis­taken belief that we are our ego.
4. Attach­ment: The habit­ual attach­ment to that we inap­pro­pri­ately believe to be pleasurable;
5. Aver­sion: The habit­ual repul­sion from that we inap­pro­pri­ately believe to be painful.

The habits (cycles or pat­terns of thought, emo­tion, and behav­ior) of within our own mind is the deci­sive fac­tor in how we per­ceive and under­stand our own expe­ri­ence. Tapas means that we learn to per­ceive and under­stand our expe­ri­ence in new ways.

The vehi­cle of actions has its ori­gin in afflic­tions, and is expe­ri­enced in vis­i­ble and invis­i­ble births.

It ripens into life-state, life-time, and life-experience, if the root exists (Rad­hakr­ish­nan and Moore 1973)

It may sound as if tapas are focused on restrain­ing and con­fin­ing the mind. They are. It is the restraint of harm­ful qual­i­ties of mind that cre­ates the space for new pos­si­bil­i­ties of mind. To restrain that which is harm­ful cuts off the chronic cycles of reac­tiv­ity that pre­vent us from being more open to the real­ity of life. We can­not avoid the anx­i­ety caused by tapas since we are being asked to burn up and purify that which has habit­u­ally caused suf­fer­ing. The mind and body seem hap­pier when habits are allowed to con­tinue with­out inter­rup­tion, even if those habits do not serve us well. But per­haps the most painful and potent change is that of becom­ing self­less, or see­ing that the ego and there­fore our own iden­tity has been the source of our suf­fer­ing and pain all along. Tapas are uncomfortable.

The fire of tapas is some­thing that lit­er­ally has felt-meaning through­out the mind, body and spirit. The pres­ence of tapas is imme­di­ate and per­va­sive. Tapas embraces change from deep within, and this kind of change does not come with­out the pres­ence of men­tal, emo­tional, and phys­i­cal dis­com­fort. Those that pur­sue feel­ings of hap­pi­ness and enjoy­ment in life are those in pur­suit of imper­ma­nence and chain them­selves to habit­ual cycles of pain and dis­ap­point­ment. Thus, the Yogi learns to embrace their most painful and dif­fi­cult moments in life in the fires of tapas, for these are the pre­cisely moments which offer us our great­est oppor­tu­nity to grow and transform.

The Eight Limbs of Yoga

The eight limbs of Yoga as out­lined by Pan­tan­jali present the frame­work for the devel­op­ment of a sus­tained and bal­anced prac­tice. A com­pre­hen­sive Yoga prac­tice involves the inves­ti­ga­tion of each limb in which each limb is treated as a log­i­cal step-by-step pro­gres­sion. Ulti­mately a bal­anced Yoga prac­tice will nat­u­rally evolve toward the simul­ta­ne­ous inves­ti­ga­tion of the eight limbs as we begin to per­ceive the inter­con­nect­ed­ness and inter­de­pen­dence of them.

On the destruc­tion of impu­rity by the sus­tained prac­tice of the acces­sories [i.e. — parts or limbs], the light of wis­dom reaches up to dis­crim­i­na­tive knowledge.

Restraint, obser­vance, pos­ture, reg­u­la­tion of breath, abstrac­tion of the senses, con­cen­tra­tion, med­i­ta­tion, and trance are the eight acces­sories of yoga. (Rad­hakr­ish­nan and Moore 1973)

The pur­pose of a sus­tained prac­tice of Yoga is the destruc­tion of impu­ri­ties of the mind. A sus­tained prac­tice is achieved by the sen­si­tive devel­op­ment of the eight limbs of Yoga. The impu­ri­ties Pan­tan­jali refers to are the five afflic­tions described above (igno­rance, ego­ism, attach­ment, aver­sion, and fear of death).

The first limb is focused on exter­nal retraints (yamas), in which we seek clar­i­fi­ca­tion of our rela­tion­ship with the out­side world of peo­ple, places and things. We inves­ti­gate this limb through five prac­tices: non­vi­o­lence, being truth­ful, not steal­ing, the wise use of energy, and not accu­mu­lat­ing things that are not essen­tial in our lives. The sec­ond limb is focused on inter­nal restraints (niya­mas), in which we refine per­sonal prin­ci­ples that lead to the cul­ti­va­tion of insight. We inves­ti­gate this limb through five prac­tices as well: purifi­ca­tion, con­tent­ment, dis­ci­pline, self-study, and ded­i­ca­tion to the devel­op­ment of pure awareness.

The first and sec­ond limbs form the eth­i­cal foun­da­tion of Yoga and are the both the rea­son and moti­va­tion for the prac­tice of asanas (phys­i­cal pos­tures) and pranayama (the reg­u­la­tion of breath). Pantanjali’s approach focuses on the root prob­lems in our exis­tence, which are the atti­tudes, behav­iours and actions that per­pet­u­ate suf­fer­ing. In essence, Yoga works to cul­ti­vate clar­ity of per­cep­tion and con­scious­ness, and there­fore asana and pranayama prac­tice are direct exten­sions of that pur­pose. Through a bal­anced prac­tice of Yoga we seek to grasp the truth of the human condition.

Asana and pranayama prac­tice are direct exten­sions of exter­nal and inter­nal restraints. More specif­i­cally an asana is a pos­ture and ener­getic cul­ti­va­tion of non­vi­o­lence, being truth­ful, not steal­ing, the wise use of energy, and not accu­mu­lat­ing things that are not essen­tial in our lives (i.e. — exter­nal restraints), as well as purifi­ca­tion, con­tent­ment, dis­ci­pline, self-study, and ded­i­ca­tion to the devel­op­ment of pure aware­ness (i.e. — inter­nal restraints). The phys­i­cal prac­tice of asanas and pranayama is simul­ta­ne­ously the psy­cho­log­i­cal and spir­i­tual prac­tice of the first two limbs. As we place our body into var­i­ous pos­tures through asana prac­tice, we also place our mind and spirit into var­i­ous pos­tures in the midst of our every­day expe­ri­ences. In this sense, there is no dis­tinc­tion between Yoga on or off the mat.

The remain­ing four limbs focus more on the inter­nal devel­op­ment of the mind through abstrac­tion of the senses, con­cen­tra­tion, med­i­ta­tion, and trance. Abstrac­tion of the senses means that our per­cep­tion is not held cap­tive by the sit­u­a­tions and cir­cum­stances of our life. The senses are restrained in the sense that they are con­sciously con­trolled rather than habit­ual sense per­cep­tion that is repet­i­tive, ran­dom, and uncon­trolled man­ner. At this point our sense, like our mind and body, have become restrained and are there­fore pre­pared for pur­su­ing deeper lev­els of con­cen­tra­tion, med­i­ta­tion and trance.

Chap­ter Three: Attainments

Pan­tan­jali char­ac­ter­izes the remain­ing three limbs, con­cen­tra­tion, med­i­ta­tion, and trance, as samyama, or inner dis­ci­plines. Con­cen­tra­tion is the the devel­op­ment of a stead­fast of mind on a sin­gle point of focus. For exam­ple, we can might learn to cul­ti­vate our pow­ers of con­cen­tra­tion by focus­ing on our breath until our field of aware­ness becomes sin­gu­lar and focused on it. Med­i­ta­tion is a con­tin­u­a­tion of con­cen­tra­tion in order to achieve one-pointedness, or the abil­ity to hold a sin­gle undis­turbed point in your mind. In med­i­ta­tion we lose the dis­tinc­tion between our ego and the object of med­i­ta­tion. Trance refers to the sus­tained expe­ri­ence of con­cen­tra­tion in which sub­ject and object are com­pletely inte­grated and uni­fied. In this sense, trance means we are at one with the object of contemplation.

[To be fur­ther developed]