Mental Habitats: Five Sources of Torment

[Exploring Life] The Five States of Mind: Pantanjali (2nd century B.C.) is a pioneer of the mind. The uncharted terrain he ventured into was the inner landscape of the mind. His method was the direct observation of his own mind. In this sense, Pantanjali was both scientist and artist of the inner realm of existence. The very essence of yoga lies is the contemplation of the nature of our mind. One of his main concerns in the Yoga Sutras was to clearly identify and describe problems that occur in the mind.

A mental problem is innately linked to the nature of thought being produced in the mind. Our thinking is not neutral with respect to its effects on our individual feelings and sense of well being. Thoughts carry with them an energy that permeates our body; thought determines how we choose to interpret our experiences. In this sense, the mind permeates the entire body in what Candace Pert refers to as the bodymind. Though we might think of the mind as an emergent property of the brain, the word “mind” is used to here refer to the entire sphere of intelligence throughout the entire body. A problem that occurs in the mind affects our entire experience of living, and understanding the problems that can occur provides a foundation for the improvement and development. Pantanjali describes five basic mental states, from problematic through to ideal states of mind.

The heart of yoga is the cultivation of equilibrium in mind and body so that one can wake up to the reality of being alive, which includes not just joy and health but impermanence, aging, suffering, and death.
-Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga

The Five States of Mind: Pantanjali identified five states of mind which provide an overall framework for mental development.

1. Wandering (ksipta): This is lowest and weakest state of mind. A person with a wandering mind is highly agitated and unable to think, listen, or keep quiet. In Buddhism, the term “monkey-mind” is often used to characterize this kind of mental state in which we are literally trapped in addictive self-induced cycles of suffering. Extreme mental anguish causes life to become painful and miserable. We all experience this state of mind at some point in our lives during periods of inevitable intense hardship and trial. Within this state of mind we are quite literally “not ourselves.” By this I mean that the environment of the mind is not in a natural state of repose, and our ability to embrace equanimity and resilience is dangerously fragile.
2. Dull (mudha): A dull mind is a mind that is forgetful and lacks awareness. Though it may not be as agitated as the wandering mind, we are in a state of somnambulism in which mindlessness and a general lack of awareness dominates. Even this state of attention deficit, however, is a significant improvement over the ceaseless painful rampage of the wandering mind. We are bored with life, but don’t really know why. Activities that were once innately enjoyable are joyless. Our sensibilities perceive everything as a stark, grey, and hard landscape that is void of rhythm, texture, and variation. We are confined within the midst of our own self-imposed lethargy and feel powerless and incapable of finding our way out. Life is quite literally dull, repetitive, tiresome, and dismal.
3. Restless (vikspita): Unlike a dull mind, the restless mind is more aware of its situation and circumstances. There is a desire for a deeper experience in living, but the mind remains surrounded by a constant state of confusion and the individual has difficulty deciding what to do. As potential options and solutions appear, they quickly fall into disregard. We ruminate over the past, the future, or things we have no ability to control. As with wandering and dull states of mind, the restless mind is a form of suffering. In this state we actively seek new activities and alternatives in life and embrace them for a time only to realize they are unsatisfying. This breeds frustration and agitation since it seems as though everything we attempt amounts to nothing and we feel as though we are not getting anywhere. The crucial ability missing from the mind is the power of discernment; options appear in the mind but there is little ability to distinguish between them.
4. Focused (ekagra): Pantanjali’s fourth state, focused, is the first desirable state of mind in his five-part framework. One reason is that the first three states, wandering, dull, and restless, are absent. The mind is no longer in a state of agitation and this presents itself in our experience as being perfectly comfortable in the present moment with life exactly as it is. The mind is both relaxed and aware, but it is no longer striving and seeking attachments. In a focused state of mind, concentration embraces an effortless quality as the mind is not confounded and confined by excessive thinking. The environment of the focused mind changes the rhythm and quality of our thoughts naturally. We don’t think our way into being focused, we simply are focused. More to the point, we are effortlessly centred in the present moment.
5. Mastered (nirodha): The mastered mind is able to concentrate on a single focus for extended periods of time. The person is fully engaged in direct and immediate experience and remains undisturbed by the confluence of everyday life. Equanimity, that cherished ability to remain calm in the midst of unexpected turmoil, is now a solid foundation for navigating difficult experiences in life. This does not mean that our thought processes or emotional responses lack colour and vibrancy, but it does mean that we are no longer hijacked by them. The larger perspective of what it means to be alive, and the gift that we have been given as well as the immensity of the mystery we have been plunged into, is the guiding perspective within our experience. The mastered mind is a mind that has found belonging and relationship with the essence of life.

Relating to the Five States of Mind: The five states of mind form the essential foundation of yoga. In other words, everything we do in a yoga practice must be designed to help us to move up the continuum of mind described by Pantanjali. In my own experience I have found that is is possible to experience a variety of states of mind over a relatively short period of time. In experiencing the loss of my parents, I was amazed at how easily grief can cause the mind to slide back into the painful state of wandering. It is clear to me that all five states of mind remain possible at a given point in our lives. However nice it would be to live out our lives in a focused or mastered state of mind, the power of life will challenge even those with a highly developed capacity for equanimity, resilience, and gratitude. The five states of mind are, for me, fluid and we will perpetually move in and out of them to some degree.

Perhaps a realistic goal is to reduce the amount of time experiencing a wandering, dull and restless state of mind, and increase the amount of time we experience focused and mastered states of mind. The key to building a relationship with the five states of mind is to first be aware that they exist. I wonder how many yoga students, even those that have been taking classes for several years, would be able to identify the five states of mind, which are the essence and foundation for yoga. There is an unfortunate tendency to treat yoga as a form of exercise that improves flexibly and promotes relaxation. This outcomes are valuable, but fall far short of Pantanjali’s intent. In the absence of his ideas about the psychology of mind and the ethical foundations of life, the practice of asanas, breathing techniques, and relaxation, do not comprise a complete yoga experience even though there is obvious benefit.

…problems are nothing but a state of mind, a state of consciousness, we may say, which has arisen on account of certain pressures that have been generated by various conditions, all of which have to be investigated carefully.
- Swami Krishnananda

Once we are able to identify the presence of the five states of mind within our own experience, we give ourselves a vital opportunity and that is to contemplate the environment of the mind itself. In doing so we learn that the specific content of our thinking is a direct result of the state of mind we are in. In other words, what we think about while we are in the midst of a wandering state of mind is different from what we think about in a restless state of mind. It almost as if Pantanjali was foreshadowing Marshall McLuhan’s famous, “The medium is the message.” In this case, the medium is the inner world of the mind itself, and the message is the actual content of our thoughts.

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 or encourage us to develop conceptual knowledge; yoga critically engages us in discovering, exploring, and investigating these states of mind within ourselves. In traditional education we focus on the acquisition of predetermined abstract concepts; in yoga we learn to perceive the operation of the mind in the light of our own direct, immediate, and authentic experience. In this sense, the five states of mind are a strategy for developing the powers of concentration, attention, awareness and perception.