Siddhi means accomplishment.
First, a bit of background: Please tell us what your TM practise consisted of - just TM 2x20 or more than that? how long did you do TM? did you use "advanced" techniques? supplements? TMSP? Please tell us what details you are comfortable discussing. Then: On this basis, can you tell us what have you accomplished as a result of your TM practise.
Were your TM accomplishments positive for you? negative for you? positive for others? negative for others?
How so?
Were you able to observe any kind of directly-TM-related accomplishment(s) in others also doing some aspect of Mahesh's TM program? If you are looking back to former times, what do you think of these accomplishment(s) now? Is it possible they were "real" or something else? (What?)
As William has suggested: what do you think Mahesh/the TM organization has accomplished? in what terms do you think these accomplishment(s) can best be quantified or categorized?
__________________
Perhaps you have since TM practised something else. If you want, can you tell us something about what you feel is your accomplishment outside the boundaries of TM?
Showing posts with label yoga sutras. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yoga sutras. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Experiences!
Advanced TM practice emphasizes "experience," rather than externally measureable phenomena.
Of course only feel-good experiences are valued.
Negative experiences are discredited as "un-stressing."
Some of us (moderators), along with experts in coercive persuasion, agree that many TM "experiences of (so called) higher states of consciousness" were induced through prolonged meditations, pseudo-hypnotic suggestion and group dynamics.
We observed others' "experiences" to the extremes of psychosis, schizophrenic-like symptoms, some leading to mental institutions and suicides. sigh.
The following New York Times article describes studies of induced "out of body experiences."
This is among the first of such neurologic research, using external sensory stimuli to create internal experiences.
Using electronic devices, out-of-body experiences were induced in participants. We hope there will be more such studies to come. Such studies may eventually explain 'siddhi-experiences.'
To read about this, click here.
Of course only feel-good experiences are valued.
Negative experiences are discredited as "un-stressing."
Some of us (moderators), along with experts in coercive persuasion, agree that many TM "experiences of (so called) higher states of consciousness" were induced through prolonged meditations, pseudo-hypnotic suggestion and group dynamics.
We observed others' "experiences" to the extremes of psychosis, schizophrenic-like symptoms, some leading to mental institutions and suicides. sigh.
The following New York Times article describes studies of induced "out of body experiences."
This is among the first of such neurologic research, using external sensory stimuli to create internal experiences.
Using electronic devices, out-of-body experiences were induced in participants. We hope there will be more such studies to come. Such studies may eventually explain 'siddhi-experiences.'
To read about this, click here.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
THINK FREE: 05/22/07
THINK FREE is an irregular feature of TM-Free Blog. It features a summary of news about TM and other orgs labeled "cults" by critics.
Have a hot tip? See something we missed? Email jmknapp53@gmail.com.
- Blogger Insists Patenting Yoga Is a Crime against Humanity www.content4reprint.com
- PBS to Air Segment on Transcendental Meditation as Treatment for ADHD www.medicalnewstoday.com
- Is that Tom Cruise Playing Scientology's Pit Bull? tmz.com
- Scientology Being Taught in Louisiana School MSNBC
- Moonie Group to Get $80K to Celebrate Martin Luther King Day www.dissidentvoice.org
Have a hot tip? See something we missed? Email jmknapp53@gmail.com.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
A consideration of kriyāyogaḥ in the the yoga sutras (10)
Before any more “progress” can be made with respect to sharing my understanding of the yoga sutras (YS), some review is necessary. It is my opinion that the fourth “book”, part, section is a later addition. I cannot prove this, but, to me, the Sanskrit is slightly different. However, no true understanding of the 4th section can come about unless the first three sections are clearly grasped.
The first section clarifies one special thing in particular: citta (mind/consciousness) is obscured by vṛtti (conceptualizations, notions, pre-conceived ideas, that absolute certainty that you knew what you were talking about, when it later turns out that you did not). YOGA is that condition in which the citta has been freed from the influence of vṛtti. Freeing, in this case is nirodha which means stopping or ending. When the vṛtti have been ended, then the citta mind or consciousness functions freely.
The usual image is mistaking a rope for a snake. The vṛtti tell us that we are seeing a snake. The heart rate increases, the adrenal glands fill the bloodstream with sudden vitality to get away. It is, as it were, as if the vṛtti were filters between the sense-doors and the perception (citta). The vṛtti are the lies we believe when we look but do not see.
If we try to read the first section of the YS as meaning that we have to stop the activity of mind, then we have taken a useless turn that will only lead to discontentment. Simply put: if you were able to stop the activity of your mind, how would you turn it back on. How will you say to yourself wake up, wake up, don’t be dead, Dude? When the mind stops there is no more perception. This is not good.
The second section of the YS deals with kriyā. This should not be read in the sense of a predetermined “method”. It should not be confused with the teachings of Yogananda also called Kriya Yoga. In the way that kriyā is used in the YS, we need to understand kriyā more as the means or way we work this out for ourselves. However, the author or redactor who may or may not have added the 4th section, gives some very specific guidelines that, apparently, he felt were vital. These are usually passed over and ignored by practitioners who, then, fail to make headway in the third section of the text.
The third section is generally felt to be about gaining or cultivating magical or supernormal “powers”. Since this particular vṛtti exists, the way the third section is read, like the problem with the rope/snake, becomes obscured and corrupted leading to nothing of any particular value.
The third section does not deal with what we think magical or supernormal “powers” might be. It does not deal with what we imagine, suppose or want. It deals with very specific means to clarify the direct experience of citta. I am very much indebted to Paul Mason for his exacting and perspicacious insight:
As a human I have far more use for cheerfulness and confidence than for supernatural powers.
I think the author or redactor of the YS would wholeheartedly agree. If you have supernormal powers, whatever they might be and do not have clear and direct experience of mind, then you might as well not have supernormal powers. You would be no more than a thoughtless child playing with matches. Public figures who do not make good decisions seem to be fair game for comedians and satirists. I am sure that to many un-sophisticated individuals the President of the United States might appear to have supernormal powers. Would it be so great to be George Bush? Would it be great to be able to zap the people you don’t like or approve of?
If you think that supernormal powers would be a terrific way to get our own way and show other who’s boss, then you have not understood the second section of the YS. You certainly have not understood the very important caveat from the Christian New Testament: what does it profit you to gain the whole world yet sacrifice the vital thing that makes you who you are. [My paraphrase.]
I take exception to ending the second section in the midst of the explanation of the eight limbs of yoga. This, I feel, is someone’s error. The third section ought to begin with “the three together (or “as one thing”) is saṃyama”. The misunderstanding is that the three refers to the last three limbs being described. But the last three limbs are one thing in a progression, namely, attention progressing through the three states or limbs, as explained. This illustrates three conditions of awareness or attention. But, like water, how would you have all three states at once (as one thing), gas, liquid and solid?
The supposed ‘sidhi’ sutras the Mahesh sells as something that is just so great is something I feel is deceitful and misleading on his part. Something certain to deprive you of the direct experience of that vital thing that makes you who you are. They are not powers that turn you into superman/woman, they are means for you to certify the holism or unity of who/what you are, your sense perceptions, and what is perceived.
But further progress cannot be made until the second section of the YS is carefully examined, which comes next.
A consideration of kriyāyogaḥ in the the yoga sutras (11)
The first section clarifies one special thing in particular: citta (mind/consciousness) is obscured by vṛtti (conceptualizations, notions, pre-conceived ideas, that absolute certainty that you knew what you were talking about, when it later turns out that you did not). YOGA is that condition in which the citta has been freed from the influence of vṛtti. Freeing, in this case is nirodha which means stopping or ending. When the vṛtti have been ended, then the citta mind or consciousness functions freely.
The usual image is mistaking a rope for a snake. The vṛtti tell us that we are seeing a snake. The heart rate increases, the adrenal glands fill the bloodstream with sudden vitality to get away. It is, as it were, as if the vṛtti were filters between the sense-doors and the perception (citta). The vṛtti are the lies we believe when we look but do not see.
If we try to read the first section of the YS as meaning that we have to stop the activity of mind, then we have taken a useless turn that will only lead to discontentment. Simply put: if you were able to stop the activity of your mind, how would you turn it back on. How will you say to yourself wake up, wake up, don’t be dead, Dude? When the mind stops there is no more perception. This is not good.
The second section of the YS deals with kriyā. This should not be read in the sense of a predetermined “method”. It should not be confused with the teachings of Yogananda also called Kriya Yoga. In the way that kriyā is used in the YS, we need to understand kriyā more as the means or way we work this out for ourselves. However, the author or redactor who may or may not have added the 4th section, gives some very specific guidelines that, apparently, he felt were vital. These are usually passed over and ignored by practitioners who, then, fail to make headway in the third section of the text.
The third section is generally felt to be about gaining or cultivating magical or supernormal “powers”. Since this particular vṛtti exists, the way the third section is read, like the problem with the rope/snake, becomes obscured and corrupted leading to nothing of any particular value.
The third section does not deal with what we think magical or supernormal “powers” might be. It does not deal with what we imagine, suppose or want. It deals with very specific means to clarify the direct experience of citta. I am very much indebted to Paul Mason for his exacting and perspicacious insight:
As a human I have far more use for cheerfulness and confidence than for supernatural powers.
I think the author or redactor of the YS would wholeheartedly agree. If you have supernormal powers, whatever they might be and do not have clear and direct experience of mind, then you might as well not have supernormal powers. You would be no more than a thoughtless child playing with matches. Public figures who do not make good decisions seem to be fair game for comedians and satirists. I am sure that to many un-sophisticated individuals the President of the United States might appear to have supernormal powers. Would it be so great to be George Bush? Would it be great to be able to zap the people you don’t like or approve of?
If you think that supernormal powers would be a terrific way to get our own way and show other who’s boss, then you have not understood the second section of the YS. You certainly have not understood the very important caveat from the Christian New Testament: what does it profit you to gain the whole world yet sacrifice the vital thing that makes you who you are. [My paraphrase.]
I take exception to ending the second section in the midst of the explanation of the eight limbs of yoga. This, I feel, is someone’s error. The third section ought to begin with “the three together (or “as one thing”) is saṃyama”. The misunderstanding is that the three refers to the last three limbs being described. But the last three limbs are one thing in a progression, namely, attention progressing through the three states or limbs, as explained. This illustrates three conditions of awareness or attention. But, like water, how would you have all three states at once (as one thing), gas, liquid and solid?
The supposed ‘sidhi’ sutras the Mahesh sells as something that is just so great is something I feel is deceitful and misleading on his part. Something certain to deprive you of the direct experience of that vital thing that makes you who you are. They are not powers that turn you into superman/woman, they are means for you to certify the holism or unity of who/what you are, your sense perceptions, and what is perceived.
But further progress cannot be made until the second section of the YS is carefully examined, which comes next.
A consideration of kriyāyogaḥ in the the yoga sutras (11)
Friday, April 27, 2007
A consideration of kriyāyogaḥ in the yoga sutras (9)
I have been working very hard to avoid writing more about the Yoga Sutras. First because writing is hard work and TM certainly isn’t about work of any kind. But it is also difficult to avoid the pitfalls of subtle words and shades of meaning that pepper the Sutras. Many a commentator has fallen victim to discoursing upon the clever meanings found in the words like an epicurean ignoramus pouring condiments on a perfectly served meal.
The Sutras depend upon the words, of course. But to be lost in the dazzle of meanings is to miss the meal, to miss the meaning altogether. The second section of the Sutras begins with the words kriyāyogaḥ. This is a significant departure from the first 51 sutras or statements that basically defined what the author was endeavouring to convey: yoga is the nirodha of the vṛtti of the citta – yoga is the extinguishing of the muddle of the mind. The muddle, the conceptualizing, the vṛtti, of the mind is the point of these first 51 sutras.
If this is not understood, becoming sidetracked by the fascinating shades of meaning – shades that are very important, but whose importance only has significance much later – takes over and the path is missed. Kriya, not to be confused with what Yogananda taught, is the “process” or “path” that is undertaken. This section is about kriya, process, actions, method, path. This section is about the method of allowing the mind to be understood while at the same time allowing oneself to be free of the overshadowing vṛtti that conceal it.
II:1 says that the path requires submission (praṇidhāna, profound religious meditation). Praṇdhāna+an+i = “an” makes praṇidhāna masculine and ‘i’ indicates that it is in the Locative sense: thus in the submission to īśvara, (that great antiquity known to be the teacher of the ancients), i.e. mind, citta.
The author lists in addition, svādhyāya. This means study, scrutiny. Mahesh translated this as sva+adhyāya “awareness opening to self”; but this is not correct. This is bending the words to fit a pre-conceived vṛtti or ideology. It will also not work in this sutra. The author then adds tapaḥ which means “burning” or “consuming”.
You may now wonder why I read the sutra from end to beginning. Many times the author lists several ideas and then ends with the kicker, the conditionality that draws them into a single bolus of meaning.
This sutra then becomes: the path of freedom (yoga, mind free of overshadowing notions) [requires] profound contemplation (praṇidhāna) [of one’s own] essence (īśvara), scrutiny and a burning [desire, but in the sense of commitment/application] -OR- a burning/consuming scrutiny.
Scrutiny (svādhyāya) certainly involves one’s own actions. Sva refers to what is one’s own. Scrutiny of what is one’s own. Ādhyāna is to meditate upon, to reflect upon. It is a curious word in that it has the connotation of sorrowful memory. This is interesting because when one is sorrowful, that occupies the mind fully. It is this total-occupation-of-endeavour that is the kind of meditation/reflection that is going on here.
This and this entire section is so far from what Mahesh made of whatever he got/took from Guru Dev, that one can see clearly from this point onwards that TM and Patañjali are simply not related.
Mahesh made no mention, as far as I know, of anything but the third part of the Yoga Sutras. Obviously, this was for no small reason. Effectively, there are only two parts to the Yoga Sutras, Sutras 1 to 51, forming the first part and from this sutra to the end of what is presented as part three. This kriyāyogaḥ of the second part is one continuous teaching from the beginnings of dawning-essential-realization (mind seeing/knowing mind, not just looking at it) through an entirely different approach to what Mahesh calls “sidhi”, bringing realization to perfection (siddhs).
ADDENDUM:
Two things seem apparent. First Mahesh did not understand Patañjali and second he had to do a lot of experimenting to get something people bought into.
Each "Gov" course was THE "Gov" course same as each TTC was THE TTC but people came away from each “Gov” course and TTC with different information and attitudes.
With regard to understanding Patañjali it is clear that the magical and supernormal powers are described as counterproductive and are not recommended. The siddhi that Patañjali describes in part 3 of his Yogasutras is something altogether different that I feel Mahesh either had no understanding of or wished no one ever to know.
Thus when you get a decent teacher who actually understands what s/he is doing (it is my opinion) you discover, as Mahesh DID NOT, that the "third book" has nothing to do with supernormal powers, magical thinking, magical powers or any of the other such thing that Mahesh is so eager for you buy, buy, buy. (And use to rot your brain.)
The "third book" is all about something entirely different. It is only upon understanding the first two books or parts of the Yogasutra that the third book or part becomes clear. These are methods to free mind/citta from obscuration/vritti on a grand scale and become established on an equally grand scale in the purity of one’s own freedom in primordial mind/citta. This cannot be done by repetition of Patañjali’s instructions any more than opening a can of beans can be accomplished by saying open, open, open, open.
Thus I feel very strongly that Mahesh happily advertises himself as a first rate fraud – at least he does so to those who have understood and shared just a little more than he did.
It appears that this and that Gov and citizen course all tell us only about his inability to live up to his self-granted title "big know it all Mahesh united-with-the-universe-one".
The biggest "sidhi" is Mahesh discovering that some people will pay almost anything in order to get something for nothing.
Mahesh Chandra Shrivastava (aka Maharishi Mahesh Yogi) is no different from any other fundamentalist in pursuit of power and authority over others. But, he has taken his time to build his empire and rather than serving fatally poisoned Kool Aid to his faithful he has doled out the poison in very small doses so that his deluded faithful have built up a tolerance. But poison is still poison, no matter how much he praises himself and it.
S
The Sutras depend upon the words, of course. But to be lost in the dazzle of meanings is to miss the meal, to miss the meaning altogether. The second section of the Sutras begins with the words kriyāyogaḥ. This is a significant departure from the first 51 sutras or statements that basically defined what the author was endeavouring to convey: yoga is the nirodha of the vṛtti of the citta – yoga is the extinguishing of the muddle of the mind. The muddle, the conceptualizing, the vṛtti, of the mind is the point of these first 51 sutras.
If this is not understood, becoming sidetracked by the fascinating shades of meaning – shades that are very important, but whose importance only has significance much later – takes over and the path is missed. Kriya, not to be confused with what Yogananda taught, is the “process” or “path” that is undertaken. This section is about kriya, process, actions, method, path. This section is about the method of allowing the mind to be understood while at the same time allowing oneself to be free of the overshadowing vṛtti that conceal it.
II:1 says that the path requires submission (praṇidhāna, profound religious meditation). Praṇdhāna+an+i = “an” makes praṇidhāna masculine and ‘i’ indicates that it is in the Locative sense: thus in the submission to īśvara, (that great antiquity known to be the teacher of the ancients), i.e. mind, citta.
The author lists in addition, svādhyāya. This means study, scrutiny. Mahesh translated this as sva+adhyāya “awareness opening to self”; but this is not correct. This is bending the words to fit a pre-conceived vṛtti or ideology. It will also not work in this sutra. The author then adds tapaḥ which means “burning” or “consuming”.
You may now wonder why I read the sutra from end to beginning. Many times the author lists several ideas and then ends with the kicker, the conditionality that draws them into a single bolus of meaning.
This sutra then becomes: the path of freedom (yoga, mind free of overshadowing notions) [requires] profound contemplation (praṇidhāna) [of one’s own] essence (īśvara), scrutiny and a burning [desire, but in the sense of commitment/application] -OR- a burning/consuming scrutiny.
Scrutiny (svādhyāya) certainly involves one’s own actions. Sva refers to what is one’s own. Scrutiny of what is one’s own. Ādhyāna is to meditate upon, to reflect upon. It is a curious word in that it has the connotation of sorrowful memory. This is interesting because when one is sorrowful, that occupies the mind fully. It is this total-occupation-of-endeavour that is the kind of meditation/reflection that is going on here.
This and this entire section is so far from what Mahesh made of whatever he got/took from Guru Dev, that one can see clearly from this point onwards that TM and Patañjali are simply not related.
Mahesh made no mention, as far as I know, of anything but the third part of the Yoga Sutras. Obviously, this was for no small reason. Effectively, there are only two parts to the Yoga Sutras, Sutras 1 to 51, forming the first part and from this sutra to the end of what is presented as part three. This kriyāyogaḥ of the second part is one continuous teaching from the beginnings of dawning-essential-realization (mind seeing/knowing mind, not just looking at it) through an entirely different approach to what Mahesh calls “sidhi”, bringing realization to perfection (siddhs).
ADDENDUM:
Two things seem apparent. First Mahesh did not understand Patañjali and second he had to do a lot of experimenting to get something people bought into.
Each "Gov" course was THE "Gov" course same as each TTC was THE TTC but people came away from each “Gov” course and TTC with different information and attitudes.
With regard to understanding Patañjali it is clear that the magical and supernormal powers are described as counterproductive and are not recommended. The siddhi that Patañjali describes in part 3 of his Yogasutras is something altogether different that I feel Mahesh either had no understanding of or wished no one ever to know.
Thus when you get a decent teacher who actually understands what s/he is doing (it is my opinion) you discover, as Mahesh DID NOT, that the "third book" has nothing to do with supernormal powers, magical thinking, magical powers or any of the other such thing that Mahesh is so eager for you buy, buy, buy. (And use to rot your brain.)
The "third book" is all about something entirely different. It is only upon understanding the first two books or parts of the Yogasutra that the third book or part becomes clear. These are methods to free mind/citta from obscuration/vritti on a grand scale and become established on an equally grand scale in the purity of one’s own freedom in primordial mind/citta. This cannot be done by repetition of Patañjali’s instructions any more than opening a can of beans can be accomplished by saying open, open, open, open.
Thus I feel very strongly that Mahesh happily advertises himself as a first rate fraud – at least he does so to those who have understood and shared just a little more than he did.
It appears that this and that Gov and citizen course all tell us only about his inability to live up to his self-granted title "big know it all Mahesh united-with-the-universe-one".
The biggest "sidhi" is Mahesh discovering that some people will pay almost anything in order to get something for nothing.
Mahesh Chandra Shrivastava (aka Maharishi Mahesh Yogi) is no different from any other fundamentalist in pursuit of power and authority over others. But, he has taken his time to build his empire and rather than serving fatally poisoned Kool Aid to his faithful he has doled out the poison in very small doses so that his deluded faithful have built up a tolerance. But poison is still poison, no matter how much he praises himself and it.
S
Thursday, March 22, 2007
a consideration of the yoga sutras (7)
Paul Mason has very generously quoted from Guru Dev on the topic of “salvation”. If I understand correctly, 'anta meM bhii sad.hgati hogii' were Guru Dev’s exact words. First of all, this gave me a much better understanding of what illiteracy might be like. But when we translate from one language into another, our own, the tendency is to find the same concept in our language that we encountered in the language from which we are translating. So, obviously “salvation” in English is assumed to be what Guru Dev was saying. Except, it is very unlikely that Guru Dev meant in Hindi, in India in the first half of the 20th Century, the same thing that someone in the West in the beginning of the 21st century might understand as “salvation”. Therein lies the rub.
If you were raised in a Muslim community, whether in the West or East, “salvation” is unlikely to mean the same thing as it does for a Christian person raised either in the West or East. If you are not a religious person of any persuasion, “salvation” is unlikely to hold any kind of meaning similar to either Christians or Muslims. So, we might ask, what was Guru Dev talking about!
“Salvation” then, as a word or a concept, has no inherent meaning. Assuming that Guru Dev was talking about YOUR understanding of “salvation” is not going to help you understand what Guru Dev was talking about. It all becomes just more vṛtti.
In order to understand what Patanjali is talking about, we must pay very close attention to sutra # 2: yoga is the cessation or absence of vṛtti. Yoga is mind free of conceptualization, pre-conceptions, notions, ideas. Yoga is mind. Just mind.
Patanjali is not talking about what we, you or I, might think yoga is. He (they, whatever and whoever wrote/redacted this text) is not talking about our understanding. First of all, he is making it clear that we have to first have no notions so that we will understand the explanation he is giving.
This is how I see the first three chapters or sections of the Yoga Sūtras, the Yoga Darśana. Patanjali had, in effect, to be careful. Going against the priests whose notions, ideas and control/power was “law” might me awkward, to understate it delicately. Therefore we see the language of the religion of the day with the caveat that we must be free of preconceptions (thus disregard what you think you know and listen to what is being said).
In sūtra 23 he says that by surrender to īśvara, that which is great, yoga comes about. What is “great”? He defines īśvara (that which is great) in 24-26 and then says that praṇava is the signifier/calling-card/clue of īśvara. I translated praṇava as “reverberation”, that which reverberates with our understanding. It’s at best an inadequate translation. What reverberates is not something outside ourselves, something we can point to and say, “this is it”; but it is something within, mind, what he has been talking about from sūtra 2.
In this section, he gives some indication how we might come to a better understanding of that reverberation/praṇava.
28: it (praṇava) is realized by study (japa, repetition). Patanjali very clearly does NOT say “by assuming you already know all about this and have to pay no attention to what I/Patanjali am saying”.
29: and (ca, moreover) obstacles go, as well as (also) cetanā arises from that (see 28, from study/repetition, “japa”). Cetanā is from the root cit. Cetanā means intelligence (NOT IQ), the state or quality of sentience, that what which makes sentient beings sentient. This is another reference to citta. From study of praṇava, from contemplation or curiosity about that which reverberates with what is being discussed (not some vibration about which Patanjali is not talking), obstacles [to] and awareness [of] (cetanā) arises.
30: these are the obstacles that go: “sickness (disease? it is unclear), doubt, carelessness, laziness, hedonism, delusion, lack of progress and inconstance” (quoting from Hartranft). Patanjali cautions that that which distracts (vikṣepā, rouses up) citta is an obstacle, barrier (anatarāyā).
(Thinking Guru Dev was using your definition of “salvation” would be vikṣepā.)
31: these barriers cause problems “distress, depression or the inability to maintain steadiness of posture or breathing” (Hartranft).
32: the means of subduing the distractions follows.
So common: when we set about to do the spring cleaning, go to the gym, go on a diet … suddenly there are so many reasons to do something else. Patanjali was obviously aware of this. Not much new under the sun as the Biblical writer lamented. The good news, however, is that if you really want to set about freeing mind from vṛtti, not getting mucked up with vikṣepā, here’s what you can do to get started:
33: prasādana, calming, settling citta [is as follows]: (you can) radiate friendliness [more about this when we talk about section 3], compassion, delight [or] equanimity toward good/bad, distress/pleasure.
This might sound quite familiar. Those who have been involved in Buddhist teachings recognize this as the Viharas, the divine abidings.
Whether Patanjali borrowed from Buddha or Buddha from Patanjali or they both knew an older source is immaterial. The technique works. Be kind, radiate compassion towards everything whether it is good or bad, painful or pleasant.
OK, not everyone’s cup of tea. Some people are so naturally kind and considerate. For others (no blame here) it isn’t easy and might be such a strain (again, no blame) as to be an obstacle. So …
34: vā, or [thus it follows; “vā” can also mean ‘like’, [it is] like [this]) (one may) vidhāraṇa, suppress, maintain, stop, support the pracchardana exhalation. Hold your breath? Well, that’s what it says. Those familiar with the biography of the Buddha know that he practised holding his breath until his ears rang and he almost passed out. In the Buddha’s later teaching on ānāpānasati (mindfulness, sati, a Pāḷi word coming from Vedic smṛti) of āna (in breath) apāna (out breath), he says to be aware of calmness on the out breath. It is a little more difficult, to begin with, to notice calmness on the in breath.
Very common. When someone is having a bad day, we are likely to tell her or him to just take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Apparently Patanjali and the Buddha knew this too. Thus, if cultivating compassion and equanimity towards good and bad, pleasure and pain isn’t your thing, you can follow, be aware of the calming quality of the outbreath, of just letting go. For the exact words, this might seem a leap. But the Buddha’s teaching and Patanjali’s teachings seem so similar at this point that this seems reasonable. Like Patanjali, the Buddha also taught to be free from the overlay of conceptualizing (vṛtti). So, (34) support the exhalation, note the calm on the exhalation?
35: or/vā (as above) watch/note the steadiness of manasa (faculty of discrimination, the internal organ of perception and cognition) as activity arises in it.
If cultivating compassion and equanimity isn’t your cup of tea, this might not be either. But some students are quicker at some things than others. So some might be able to note that no matter what arises in the mind, the mind in which those things arises doesn’t change.
My observation is this: Patanjali is listing a series of teaching tools, learning tools. The word vā meaning ‘or’ simply indicates something like this – try this and see what happens, or try this and see if it works for you, or try this if other things are difficult. PāḷI
36: vā (another thing that might work for you) notice the luminous, free of sorrow. Jyotiṣmat means luminous, that which has a pure quality, something celestial, in the world of light, the sun (surya, something we’ll talk about when we come to part three). The word comes from jyotis, light, brightness (of the sky). Monier-Williams translates jyotiṣmati as spiritual, pure. Apte, another author of a comprehensive Sanskrit dictionary, translates jyotiṣmati as “a state of mind permeated by sattaguṇa, a tranquil state of mind”.
If we assume we know what luminous is we miss the point. Looking at many definitions, we get a sense of the word that is different from the conclusions we might leap to if we only consider the word as an English word with which we could or might feel comfortable, familiar. Thus, 36 suggests this alternative: just notice that pure viṣokā (sorrowless quality; one of the perfections gained from the study of yoga). Could this be another reference to the Buddhist divine abidings or another reference common to both Patanjali and Buddhist teachings?
Some can notice this clarity/luminosity/brightness, some can’t. There is no blame if you cannot; you simply use it if you can. Patanjali is suggesting you go with what you can; at least, this is what I understand these sūtras to mean.
37: vā/or be aware of things free from attachment (vītarāga, colourless; i.e. things about which you could care less). This seems to be another reference to exactly the same thing or teaching found in the Buddha’s doctrine/Dhamma (Pāḷi from the Sanskrit dharma).
Sometimes, when we are bored numb, aware of things about which we could care less, we notice that there is something behind this, some reverberation/praṇava. Maybe sometimes we notice that there is something (praṇava) other than what we are noticing.
38: vā/or ālambana, (a basis, noting, being aware of, considering [see 37]) jñāna (of, on) sleep (nidrā)/dream (svapna). Jñāna is to know, be aware of. If you think about sleep/dream you have to wonder, I think, where it is taking place. You know you were’t “there”, most adults do; children can have a difficult time of this. If you know it wasn’t “real” (whatever real is), where/what was it? Where does “real” take place?
This will also become clearer, oddly, when we consider “sun” in section three. But for some, it might already be clear what the teaching/technique, exercise is all about.
39: or/vā dhyānāt the ablative (–āt) from-dhyāna, as-a-result-of-dhyana, coming-out-of-dhyāna, serene reflection? Serene reflection is actually a Zen term. Sometimes, when you are just gazing (perhaps) or mentally pondering, just aware of something that is neither compelling nor repulsive, neither attractive nor off-putting, just aware of it without any special labeling of it, that is serene reflection and what I think Patanjali is in reference to here. Dhyāna will, of course, be referred to later in the yoga sūtras. The text says, yathāabhimata, as desired, or more likely “as you please”. The usual translation “on any desired object” doesn’t seem quite right.
Vā, or serene reflection as you please. – Something that is going to work for some and not others.
40: I like Hartranft’s translation here: “one can become fully absorbed in any object, whether vast or infinitesimal”. It is based on his understanding of how he translated the previous sūtra (or through meditative absorption in any desired object). I like it, but it isn’t what these two sūtras say. – (39) Or serene reflection as you please (40) this mastery (skill, ability [if y’got it]) extends from least to greatest. It isn’t a matter of being absorbed in an object. This would be a misunderstanding of citta, īśvara and praṇava as Patanjali has been using these words. Īśvara, praṇava and citta are not objects, not something material, not out there. They/this “awareness” is mind.
If you can do dhyāna/serene reflection, awareness that is non-conceptualizing, then that awareness that is non-conceptualizing extends or reaches from least/faintest to greatest (from the greatest magnitude to the utterly minute). He’s saying it does not have limitations because you have no conceptualizing going on. He is not, I am convinced, referring to dhyāna in reference to or on an object, but to dhyāna in and of itself as a very useful skill. Later in the sūtras, we will see that it is possible to cultivate dhyāna. Here it is just another skill he is helping the student(s) see if they have got so that their progress can be based on what they can do to begin with.
Curiously, the Buddha, the night of his awakening remembered something he had done as a child, just a non-conceptualizing awareness. He did it as a child, but apparently hadn’t been taught it.
41: the vṛtti decrease as these abilities already present are utilized. You find what you can do and, doing that, utilizing that, you progress and this enables a letting go of the vṛtti that cloud clarity of citta. He uses the lovely example of the jewel, maṇi. It is the same word we hear in the Tibetan mantra OM MANI PADME HUNG. But here it is more like a piece of crystal (I doubt glass existed in Patanjali’s time as we have it today, transparent or like crystal, another meaning of maṇi). If you place a small crystal ball (most lapidary stores sell small crystal balls, a pure, clear marble will do the same thing) on a piece of cloth, the crystal is so completely saturated (añjamantā) that it is not present to the eye. The colour or pattern of the cloth is so completely absorbed in, reflected by the unblemished crystal or marble that it doesn’t seem to have any quality of its own. Patanjali is saying that the mind is like this.
There is just this wonderful non-quality-something-ness (praṇava) that makes everything else possible. This is what the sutras from 2 to 41 are trying to get across.
42: (this is almost a little comedy, I think) if mind is overshadowed by what is in it (thought mixed with ideas and meaning), you’ve missed the boat. He doesn’t actually say “you’ve missed the boat”, he says: otherwise (tatra) it’s just thought mixed with ideas and meaning, not pure mind that you’re noticing.
43 to 51 next time.
a consideration of the yoga sutras (8)
If you were raised in a Muslim community, whether in the West or East, “salvation” is unlikely to mean the same thing as it does for a Christian person raised either in the West or East. If you are not a religious person of any persuasion, “salvation” is unlikely to hold any kind of meaning similar to either Christians or Muslims. So, we might ask, what was Guru Dev talking about!
“Salvation” then, as a word or a concept, has no inherent meaning. Assuming that Guru Dev was talking about YOUR understanding of “salvation” is not going to help you understand what Guru Dev was talking about. It all becomes just more vṛtti.
In order to understand what Patanjali is talking about, we must pay very close attention to sutra # 2: yoga is the cessation or absence of vṛtti. Yoga is mind free of conceptualization, pre-conceptions, notions, ideas. Yoga is mind. Just mind.
Patanjali is not talking about what we, you or I, might think yoga is. He (they, whatever and whoever wrote/redacted this text) is not talking about our understanding. First of all, he is making it clear that we have to first have no notions so that we will understand the explanation he is giving.
This is how I see the first three chapters or sections of the Yoga Sūtras, the Yoga Darśana. Patanjali had, in effect, to be careful. Going against the priests whose notions, ideas and control/power was “law” might me awkward, to understate it delicately. Therefore we see the language of the religion of the day with the caveat that we must be free of preconceptions (thus disregard what you think you know and listen to what is being said).
In sūtra 23 he says that by surrender to īśvara, that which is great, yoga comes about. What is “great”? He defines īśvara (that which is great) in 24-26 and then says that praṇava is the signifier/calling-card/clue of īśvara. I translated praṇava as “reverberation”, that which reverberates with our understanding. It’s at best an inadequate translation. What reverberates is not something outside ourselves, something we can point to and say, “this is it”; but it is something within, mind, what he has been talking about from sūtra 2.
In this section, he gives some indication how we might come to a better understanding of that reverberation/praṇava.
28: it (praṇava) is realized by study (japa, repetition). Patanjali very clearly does NOT say “by assuming you already know all about this and have to pay no attention to what I/Patanjali am saying”.
29: and (ca, moreover) obstacles go, as well as (also) cetanā arises from that (see 28, from study/repetition, “japa”). Cetanā is from the root cit. Cetanā means intelligence (NOT IQ), the state or quality of sentience, that what which makes sentient beings sentient. This is another reference to citta. From study of praṇava, from contemplation or curiosity about that which reverberates with what is being discussed (not some vibration about which Patanjali is not talking), obstacles [to] and awareness [of] (cetanā) arises.
30: these are the obstacles that go: “sickness (disease? it is unclear), doubt, carelessness, laziness, hedonism, delusion, lack of progress and inconstance” (quoting from Hartranft). Patanjali cautions that that which distracts (vikṣepā, rouses up) citta is an obstacle, barrier (anatarāyā).
(Thinking Guru Dev was using your definition of “salvation” would be vikṣepā.)
31: these barriers cause problems “distress, depression or the inability to maintain steadiness of posture or breathing” (Hartranft).
32: the means of subduing the distractions follows.
So common: when we set about to do the spring cleaning, go to the gym, go on a diet … suddenly there are so many reasons to do something else. Patanjali was obviously aware of this. Not much new under the sun as the Biblical writer lamented. The good news, however, is that if you really want to set about freeing mind from vṛtti, not getting mucked up with vikṣepā, here’s what you can do to get started:
33: prasādana, calming, settling citta [is as follows]: (you can) radiate friendliness [more about this when we talk about section 3], compassion, delight [or] equanimity toward good/bad, distress/pleasure.
This might sound quite familiar. Those who have been involved in Buddhist teachings recognize this as the Viharas, the divine abidings.
Whether Patanjali borrowed from Buddha or Buddha from Patanjali or they both knew an older source is immaterial. The technique works. Be kind, radiate compassion towards everything whether it is good or bad, painful or pleasant.
OK, not everyone’s cup of tea. Some people are so naturally kind and considerate. For others (no blame here) it isn’t easy and might be such a strain (again, no blame) as to be an obstacle. So …
34: vā, or [thus it follows; “vā” can also mean ‘like’, [it is] like [this]) (one may) vidhāraṇa, suppress, maintain, stop, support the pracchardana exhalation. Hold your breath? Well, that’s what it says. Those familiar with the biography of the Buddha know that he practised holding his breath until his ears rang and he almost passed out. In the Buddha’s later teaching on ānāpānasati (mindfulness, sati, a Pāḷi word coming from Vedic smṛti) of āna (in breath) apāna (out breath), he says to be aware of calmness on the out breath. It is a little more difficult, to begin with, to notice calmness on the in breath.
Very common. When someone is having a bad day, we are likely to tell her or him to just take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Apparently Patanjali and the Buddha knew this too. Thus, if cultivating compassion and equanimity towards good and bad, pleasure and pain isn’t your thing, you can follow, be aware of the calming quality of the outbreath, of just letting go. For the exact words, this might seem a leap. But the Buddha’s teaching and Patanjali’s teachings seem so similar at this point that this seems reasonable. Like Patanjali, the Buddha also taught to be free from the overlay of conceptualizing (vṛtti). So, (34) support the exhalation, note the calm on the exhalation?
35: or/vā (as above) watch/note the steadiness of manasa (faculty of discrimination, the internal organ of perception and cognition) as activity arises in it.
If cultivating compassion and equanimity isn’t your cup of tea, this might not be either. But some students are quicker at some things than others. So some might be able to note that no matter what arises in the mind, the mind in which those things arises doesn’t change.
My observation is this: Patanjali is listing a series of teaching tools, learning tools. The word vā meaning ‘or’ simply indicates something like this – try this and see what happens, or try this and see if it works for you, or try this if other things are difficult. PāḷI
36: vā (another thing that might work for you) notice the luminous, free of sorrow. Jyotiṣmat means luminous, that which has a pure quality, something celestial, in the world of light, the sun (surya, something we’ll talk about when we come to part three). The word comes from jyotis, light, brightness (of the sky). Monier-Williams translates jyotiṣmati as spiritual, pure. Apte, another author of a comprehensive Sanskrit dictionary, translates jyotiṣmati as “a state of mind permeated by sattaguṇa, a tranquil state of mind”.
If we assume we know what luminous is we miss the point. Looking at many definitions, we get a sense of the word that is different from the conclusions we might leap to if we only consider the word as an English word with which we could or might feel comfortable, familiar. Thus, 36 suggests this alternative: just notice that pure viṣokā (sorrowless quality; one of the perfections gained from the study of yoga). Could this be another reference to the Buddhist divine abidings or another reference common to both Patanjali and Buddhist teachings?
Some can notice this clarity/luminosity/brightness, some can’t. There is no blame if you cannot; you simply use it if you can. Patanjali is suggesting you go with what you can; at least, this is what I understand these sūtras to mean.
37: vā/or be aware of things free from attachment (vītarāga, colourless; i.e. things about which you could care less). This seems to be another reference to exactly the same thing or teaching found in the Buddha’s doctrine/Dhamma (Pāḷi from the Sanskrit dharma).
Sometimes, when we are bored numb, aware of things about which we could care less, we notice that there is something behind this, some reverberation/praṇava. Maybe sometimes we notice that there is something (praṇava) other than what we are noticing.
38: vā/or ālambana, (a basis, noting, being aware of, considering [see 37]) jñāna (of, on) sleep (nidrā)/dream (svapna). Jñāna is to know, be aware of. If you think about sleep/dream you have to wonder, I think, where it is taking place. You know you were’t “there”, most adults do; children can have a difficult time of this. If you know it wasn’t “real” (whatever real is), where/what was it? Where does “real” take place?
This will also become clearer, oddly, when we consider “sun” in section three. But for some, it might already be clear what the teaching/technique, exercise is all about.
39: or/vā dhyānāt the ablative (–āt) from-dhyāna, as-a-result-of-dhyana, coming-out-of-dhyāna, serene reflection? Serene reflection is actually a Zen term. Sometimes, when you are just gazing (perhaps) or mentally pondering, just aware of something that is neither compelling nor repulsive, neither attractive nor off-putting, just aware of it without any special labeling of it, that is serene reflection and what I think Patanjali is in reference to here. Dhyāna will, of course, be referred to later in the yoga sūtras. The text says, yathāabhimata, as desired, or more likely “as you please”. The usual translation “on any desired object” doesn’t seem quite right.
Vā, or serene reflection as you please. – Something that is going to work for some and not others.
40: I like Hartranft’s translation here: “one can become fully absorbed in any object, whether vast or infinitesimal”. It is based on his understanding of how he translated the previous sūtra (or through meditative absorption in any desired object). I like it, but it isn’t what these two sūtras say. – (39) Or serene reflection as you please (40) this mastery (skill, ability [if y’got it]) extends from least to greatest. It isn’t a matter of being absorbed in an object. This would be a misunderstanding of citta, īśvara and praṇava as Patanjali has been using these words. Īśvara, praṇava and citta are not objects, not something material, not out there. They/this “awareness” is mind.
If you can do dhyāna/serene reflection, awareness that is non-conceptualizing, then that awareness that is non-conceptualizing extends or reaches from least/faintest to greatest (from the greatest magnitude to the utterly minute). He’s saying it does not have limitations because you have no conceptualizing going on. He is not, I am convinced, referring to dhyāna in reference to or on an object, but to dhyāna in and of itself as a very useful skill. Later in the sūtras, we will see that it is possible to cultivate dhyāna. Here it is just another skill he is helping the student(s) see if they have got so that their progress can be based on what they can do to begin with.
Curiously, the Buddha, the night of his awakening remembered something he had done as a child, just a non-conceptualizing awareness. He did it as a child, but apparently hadn’t been taught it.
41: the vṛtti decrease as these abilities already present are utilized. You find what you can do and, doing that, utilizing that, you progress and this enables a letting go of the vṛtti that cloud clarity of citta. He uses the lovely example of the jewel, maṇi. It is the same word we hear in the Tibetan mantra OM MANI PADME HUNG. But here it is more like a piece of crystal (I doubt glass existed in Patanjali’s time as we have it today, transparent or like crystal, another meaning of maṇi). If you place a small crystal ball (most lapidary stores sell small crystal balls, a pure, clear marble will do the same thing) on a piece of cloth, the crystal is so completely saturated (añjamantā) that it is not present to the eye. The colour or pattern of the cloth is so completely absorbed in, reflected by the unblemished crystal or marble that it doesn’t seem to have any quality of its own. Patanjali is saying that the mind is like this.
There is just this wonderful non-quality-something-ness (praṇava) that makes everything else possible. This is what the sutras from 2 to 41 are trying to get across.
42: (this is almost a little comedy, I think) if mind is overshadowed by what is in it (thought mixed with ideas and meaning), you’ve missed the boat. He doesn’t actually say “you’ve missed the boat”, he says: otherwise (tatra) it’s just thought mixed with ideas and meaning, not pure mind that you’re noticing.
43 to 51 next time.
a consideration of the yoga sutras (8)
Friday, March 16, 2007
a consideration of the yoga sutras (6)
a consideration of the yoga sutras (1)
a consideration of the yoga sutras (2)
a consideration of the yoga sutras (3)
a consideration of the yoga sutras (4)
a consideration of the yoga sutras (5)
We might think that such words as bīja, jāpa, īśvara and praṇava are extremely meaningful here. That, to no small extent is correct. But the understanding of these words, especially in the context of the sutras previous and those to come is not the same understanding we have if the words are taken out of the context of the Yoga Sutras, the Yoga Darśhana.
We must understand these words in the context of the sutras as a whole. Hence, the very first sutra suggests that NOW the study can begin because all of the sutras have been seen in the light of one another, NOW, the whole that is greater than the parts must be studied. See "a consideration of the yoga sutras (1)".
Of all the significant words we might hit upon, it is most likely that praṇidhāna is the most noteworthy. The root of ṇidhā is dhā, “deposit”. It’s prefix, pra means “in front”, “before” or can also mean “fulfilling”. But in Sanskrit usage, ṇidhāna suggests “putting or laying down, depositing, keeping or preserving”.
praṇidhāna or submitting has a much more profound interpretation in the holistic sense of the sutras: a profound or abstract contemplation. Just how this profound or abstract contemplation is to be undertaken is the subject of the first three books or sections of the collection of sutras. To leap to the conclusion that īśvara-praṇidhāna is profound worship of “god” is to leap to a conclusion not part of the sutras.
Such a conclusion is, however, most certainly part of Mahesh’s thinking. In my notes is a statement he made about īśvara-praṇidhāna:
īśvara-praṇidhāna – GC begins; we know god, maintainer of universe; law of being ‘sold out’ to creation begins. Īśvara is governor, maintainer of universe. Two levels: maintainer of relative and of absolute. Praṇidhāna is completely opening one’s self to finest values of relative and absolute. This is the law that structures unity, YOGA; developing supremely celestial relative values and transcendent value.
We may teach that TM is not a religion, but most assuredly Mahesh is a religious thinker and a religious oriented teacher! No doubt, as was Guru Dev.
There is no science in what Mahesh has said here! Science is not in opposition to religion, science is simply a different language about the same thing.
Yet, I am wholly in agreement with Mahesh here; he has expressed exactly what the yoga sutras is all about! Except, he has done it in the language of religion and this language is simply NOT the language of the yoga sutras.
Patañjali and all of the editors and redactors who have left us these instructions called the yoga sutras, the Yoga Darśana, have not spoken in the language of religion but with the language of religion making one thing perfectly clear in sutra 2. This set of instructions is about MIND, citta. Īśvara, that-most-supreme-thing, is citta. It is obvious that all concepts of god can be dispensed with and life does not change. But one cannot dispense with mind. Lacking “god” in your world, your world goes on. Lacking “mind” you have no world.
(23) [yoga comes about] like this, contemplation of that-most-supreme-thing; (24) that-most-supreme-thing is beyond corruption; (25) that-most-supreme-thing is the source of awareness and omniscience [what can you know or do if you do not have mind]; (26) that-most-supreme-thing has always been there and was the teacher of the ancients; (27) that-most-supreme-thing is that ever-present reverberation [the reverberation of which we are subtly aware speaks of/for that-most-supreme-thing]; (28) by studying that-most-supreme-thing it becomes clear. Sutras 27 and 28 can also be understood as saying that since that-most-supreme-thing is always and ever-present, being aware of that “something” is what speaks for that-most-supreme-thing.
29: then we begin to “recognize” yoga and obstacles to yoga fall away … yoga is citta, that-most-supreme-thing, The suggestion in this section is that īśvara, that-most-supreme-thing, has never-not been present in our own lives and has extended to us from the same experience/awareness had by the ancients. The yoga sutras is about praṇidhāna, the work necessary to recognize that-most-supreme-thing so that the obstacles can fall away.
In a TM lecture once, I said that TM made everything easy. My example was: our lives were kind of like watching TV: eventually we began to feel the picture was not clear. So we call the repairman [obviously Mahesh in this case, working through us, the TM teachers]. The repairman examines the TV very carefully and explains that it is working properly and the station is sending out a strong signal.
What, what, we might exclaim! The picture is not good, any fool can see that.
So the repairman takes out a tissue and wipes away the dust from a tiny corner of the screen. Suddenly everything we must do is perfectly clear. His instructions “reverberate” with your understanding.
I am no longer sure it is such a good TM lecture.
But here, in this case the Repairman is Patañjali and the technique is not to worship the repairman or to worship the repairman’s calling card (that which speaks for or of that-most-supreme-thing) but to listen to the repairman who is telling us that the technique is to search out within our own sense of selves, that reverberation that was the teacher even of the ancients.
Reverberation is not some “vibration” that we can link to Mahesh’s vibration technology! It is not “OM” in this context or anything like it. That is simply NOT what Patañjali is teaching, nor is what Mahesh is teaching what Patañjali is teaching.
Here “reverberation” praṇava is used much in the same way a person might way that this or that political candidate reverberates with his or her own feelings about some issue. A particular fashion of dress reverberates with some and not others.
That which speaks of it (the repairman, Patañjali, all the legitimate gurus through time) is NOT the sacred syllable OM but rather that which reverberates with your own sense of what you are seeking, your own mind.
This is, of course, also the context of “know thyself” in the Western tradition.
Patañjali and the Yoga Darśana are teaching the HOW-TO of not only recognizing that reverberation, but how to merge, meld with that reverberation, how to contemplate one’s own mind so that obstacles to yoga will be no more, will fall away, will, as in sutra 2, nirodha.
Ways to begin weakening the grip of the obstacles, as well as beginning to recognize one’s own mind are expressed in sutras 30 through 41. Here fundamental or rudimentary ways of recognizing what mind is while simultaneously weakening the obstacles are outlined. Again, we notice that there is not one way for everyone, but many ways so that the individual may begin to recognize īśvara, that-most-supreme-thing, and get under way.
Sutras 30 through 41 and 42 through 51 can be much more clearly expressed once this section of discussion and the section before it (5) are taken out of the realm of religious thought and context or TM thinking and simply viewed as matter-of-fact statements about ordinary human life. The sutras or instructions of Patañjali are not religious or other-oriented. They are oriented toward the individual’s experience of his own most profound essence, realizing mind.
a consideration of the yoga sutras (7)
a consideration of the yoga sutras (2)
a consideration of the yoga sutras (3)
a consideration of the yoga sutras (4)
a consideration of the yoga sutras (5)
We might think that such words as bīja, jāpa, īśvara and praṇava are extremely meaningful here. That, to no small extent is correct. But the understanding of these words, especially in the context of the sutras previous and those to come is not the same understanding we have if the words are taken out of the context of the Yoga Sutras, the Yoga Darśhana.
We must understand these words in the context of the sutras as a whole. Hence, the very first sutra suggests that NOW the study can begin because all of the sutras have been seen in the light of one another, NOW, the whole that is greater than the parts must be studied. See "a consideration of the yoga sutras (1)".
Of all the significant words we might hit upon, it is most likely that praṇidhāna is the most noteworthy. The root of ṇidhā is dhā, “deposit”. It’s prefix, pra means “in front”, “before” or can also mean “fulfilling”. But in Sanskrit usage, ṇidhāna suggests “putting or laying down, depositing, keeping or preserving”.
praṇidhāna or submitting has a much more profound interpretation in the holistic sense of the sutras: a profound or abstract contemplation. Just how this profound or abstract contemplation is to be undertaken is the subject of the first three books or sections of the collection of sutras. To leap to the conclusion that īśvara-praṇidhāna is profound worship of “god” is to leap to a conclusion not part of the sutras.
Such a conclusion is, however, most certainly part of Mahesh’s thinking. In my notes is a statement he made about īśvara-praṇidhāna:
īśvara-praṇidhāna – GC begins; we know god, maintainer of universe; law of being ‘sold out’ to creation begins. Īśvara is governor, maintainer of universe. Two levels: maintainer of relative and of absolute. Praṇidhāna is completely opening one’s self to finest values of relative and absolute. This is the law that structures unity, YOGA; developing supremely celestial relative values and transcendent value.
We may teach that TM is not a religion, but most assuredly Mahesh is a religious thinker and a religious oriented teacher! No doubt, as was Guru Dev.
There is no science in what Mahesh has said here! Science is not in opposition to religion, science is simply a different language about the same thing.
Yet, I am wholly in agreement with Mahesh here; he has expressed exactly what the yoga sutras is all about! Except, he has done it in the language of religion and this language is simply NOT the language of the yoga sutras.
Patañjali and all of the editors and redactors who have left us these instructions called the yoga sutras, the Yoga Darśana, have not spoken in the language of religion but with the language of religion making one thing perfectly clear in sutra 2. This set of instructions is about MIND, citta. Īśvara, that-most-supreme-thing, is citta. It is obvious that all concepts of god can be dispensed with and life does not change. But one cannot dispense with mind. Lacking “god” in your world, your world goes on. Lacking “mind” you have no world.
(23) [yoga comes about] like this, contemplation of that-most-supreme-thing; (24) that-most-supreme-thing is beyond corruption; (25) that-most-supreme-thing is the source of awareness and omniscience [what can you know or do if you do not have mind]; (26) that-most-supreme-thing has always been there and was the teacher of the ancients; (27) that-most-supreme-thing is that ever-present reverberation [the reverberation of which we are subtly aware speaks of/for that-most-supreme-thing]; (28) by studying that-most-supreme-thing it becomes clear. Sutras 27 and 28 can also be understood as saying that since that-most-supreme-thing is always and ever-present, being aware of that “something” is what speaks for that-most-supreme-thing.
29: then we begin to “recognize” yoga and obstacles to yoga fall away … yoga is citta, that-most-supreme-thing, The suggestion in this section is that īśvara, that-most-supreme-thing, has never-not been present in our own lives and has extended to us from the same experience/awareness had by the ancients. The yoga sutras is about praṇidhāna, the work necessary to recognize that-most-supreme-thing so that the obstacles can fall away.
In a TM lecture once, I said that TM made everything easy. My example was: our lives were kind of like watching TV: eventually we began to feel the picture was not clear. So we call the repairman [obviously Mahesh in this case, working through us, the TM teachers]. The repairman examines the TV very carefully and explains that it is working properly and the station is sending out a strong signal.
What, what, we might exclaim! The picture is not good, any fool can see that.
So the repairman takes out a tissue and wipes away the dust from a tiny corner of the screen. Suddenly everything we must do is perfectly clear. His instructions “reverberate” with your understanding.
I am no longer sure it is such a good TM lecture.
But here, in this case the Repairman is Patañjali and the technique is not to worship the repairman or to worship the repairman’s calling card (that which speaks for or of that-most-supreme-thing) but to listen to the repairman who is telling us that the technique is to search out within our own sense of selves, that reverberation that was the teacher even of the ancients.
Reverberation is not some “vibration” that we can link to Mahesh’s vibration technology! It is not “OM” in this context or anything like it. That is simply NOT what Patañjali is teaching, nor is what Mahesh is teaching what Patañjali is teaching.
Here “reverberation” praṇava is used much in the same way a person might way that this or that political candidate reverberates with his or her own feelings about some issue. A particular fashion of dress reverberates with some and not others.
That which speaks of it (the repairman, Patañjali, all the legitimate gurus through time) is NOT the sacred syllable OM but rather that which reverberates with your own sense of what you are seeking, your own mind.
This is, of course, also the context of “know thyself” in the Western tradition.
Patañjali and the Yoga Darśana are teaching the HOW-TO of not only recognizing that reverberation, but how to merge, meld with that reverberation, how to contemplate one’s own mind so that obstacles to yoga will be no more, will fall away, will, as in sutra 2, nirodha.
Ways to begin weakening the grip of the obstacles, as well as beginning to recognize one’s own mind are expressed in sutras 30 through 41. Here fundamental or rudimentary ways of recognizing what mind is while simultaneously weakening the obstacles are outlined. Again, we notice that there is not one way for everyone, but many ways so that the individual may begin to recognize īśvara, that-most-supreme-thing, and get under way.
Sutras 30 through 41 and 42 through 51 can be much more clearly expressed once this section of discussion and the section before it (5) are taken out of the realm of religious thought and context or TM thinking and simply viewed as matter-of-fact statements about ordinary human life. The sutras or instructions of Patañjali are not religious or other-oriented. They are oriented toward the individual’s experience of his own most profound essence, realizing mind.
a consideration of the yoga sutras (7)
Sunday, March 11, 2007
a consideration of the yoga sutras (5)
a consideration of the yoga sutras (1)
a consideration of the yoga sutras (2)
a consideration of the yoga sutras (3)
a consideration of the yoga sutras (4)
The YS isn't simple; it is complex and not written a language anything like English. So far, I hope, I have illustrated that this path to spiritual development, what else can it be called, isn't a simple natural process of paying money and being taught how to think a mantra. It should as well, be obvious that the YS does not suggest that it’s all going to be automatic and effortless on our part.
What is yoga?
Yoga is bringing the colourations/obscurations of the mind to naught (2). On a foggy day, the fog obscures your ability to see very far. Driving a car is risky. Even walking could end you up in a ditch! The fog is there, yet you cannot grab a handful. Most certainly, you have no power to make it go away. You are in it and yet it eludes your grasp.
This is vṛtti.
On its own, without some kind of intervention, things will remain just like this. Imagining you know where you are going, using reason to guide you in this fog, is unwise. But when the sun comes out, the fog gradually (slowly or rapidly) “comes to naught” (nirodha). The trees, lampposts, buildings and so forth appear. But they were never not there as far as the fog is concerned. They therefore do not appear; it is your perception that becomes un-obscured. The perception/mind (citta, sutra 2) is perfect and always present, of course, so nothing happens to it anymore than anything happens to reality when the fog is or is no more (nirodha).
In one simple sutra (2) Patanjali has laid it all out. Yoga is what you are; your mind is what you are; yoga and mind are synonymous. If there were no yoga, how could you be?
If the fog cleared and you found that you were in the middle of nothingness, where would you go to look for reality? How would you go about the business of just looking? But this situation cannot be because you and reality are inseparable. The arrangement and pattern we perceive in nature isn’t just there because it’s pretty. That we are able to perceive the organization of nature is what yoga (and the yoga sutras) is all about; this sense of sensing order in reality is the essential evidence leading us to be able to understand what governs the external reality and in this context it enables us to recognize how to penetrate that internal reality of citta, mind.
Yoga is what is.
The long explanations of what-is-to-be-understood is necessary, otherwise what Patanjali (as a person or as a series of editors) is explaining would be like using reason to guide you in a thick fog or smoke filled room, in a blizzard or dense forest.
Therefore the sutras from 3 through 22 help us understand what needs to be grasped before progress can be made.
Then comes the BUT [in the sense of: it is like this].
Sutra 23: [literally] īśvara-praṇidhāna + at (submission + -ing/out of submission [to]) it-is-like-this (vā also means ‘or’)
=> A note about Sanskrit: an ‘a’ (ending of one word) before a word beginning with ‘a’ means that the two a’s change to ‘ā’. The final ‘t’ of “at” changes to “ad” before ‘v’. Thus praṇidhāna + at (a suffix forming a present and future participle) changes to praṇidhānād (submitting). But, to complicate matters, an ‘a’ before an ‘ā’ changes a+ā to ‘ā’. So the suffix could be ‘āt’, the ablative form of a masculine or neuter word. But the meaning is the same “from (out of) (ablative) submission” so the sutra could be translated submitting [to] īśvara, it-is-like-this. In Sanskrit, ablative is not like ablative in Latin which gives the sense of ‘with’ or ‘by’. Ablative is more the sense of “coming from/coming out of” almost always translated with from.
So, what about īśvara – we all know it means god, right!
Not really. Just for starters the word īśvara can mean “god”, but it can also mean a powerful ruler, Self, able to do, capable of, liable, exposed to, master, lord, prince, king and so on including ātman and the idea of an eternal self.
This sutra functions much like sutra 20; see part 4.
To understand īśvara as Patanjali appears to intend it, we must look at the next sutra, 24: this īśvara is that distinctive purity of perception untroubled by the store of ripening intent (karma). This īśvara operates, or simply just is, whether there is fog/vṛtti/obscuration or whatnot. You might have done some good or bad things out of bad intent or good intent. That action (karma) will ripen (cause vṛtti in future) without having an effect on īśvara (that which empowers you, mind or mind-self). It was īśvara that was already being talked about in sutra 3 (when this is accomplished, realization has taken place; when this is accomplished, the one who sees is).
Your own perception can be likened to the sun. The sun shines and the fog is no more. Your own perception comes to fullness and that which obscured it is no more. Presto, chango, nirodha. Voilà. YOGA. Sounds simple enough, at least in the abstract. In striving to be free of vṛtti, however, it is something a little more challenging.
We can read 23, but [it-is-like-this] submitting to (or from/out of submission),[is] īśvara (our own power, your own mind, citta [grasped, known] and 24, this īśvara is that distinctive purity of perception untroubled by the store of ripening intent (karma).
25: when you know this, everything is possible.
As if!
It is not a simple matter, this “knowing”. There’s more to the word “know” here. Sarva is everything and jña is to-know, to-be-familiar-with and also means wise. The suffix tva adds the sense of “ness” as used in English. Yes, the sutra contains, as well, the word bīja, but it means “source”; it has nothing to do here with ‘seed mantras’.
So, 25: the source of this all-encompassing wisdom (perception [mind/yoga/reality] free of the obscuration of vṛtti,) [is] unsurpassed.
26: this īśvara was the ideal of the ancient ones. (Not some new invention or idea.)
27: tasya (tad + ya) ‘this’ + ‘to be’ or “thus it follows” [lit having become thus], vācak, the speaker [the one who gives expression to this], is praṇava.
Thus it follows, the one (that which) who expresses this, is praṇava. The one (that which) expresses this is not some leap into a dense-fog-guess like “oh, I know, the guru” (?), god (?), OM (?).
Think it through.
What is Patanjali talking about in sutras 23-26? He/we are talking about the human being having and being in possession of an innate perception, a reality of perception that is clouded over by vṛtti. This is a storehouse not only of karma, but of the conclusions we have drawn from a lifetime of experiences which clouds, measures, cramps, predicts, limits and otherwise colours and obscures our innate reality.
I see a connection here between vṛtti and karma. I think it’s worth exploring; but at this time I am going to pass on that.
When we are free from this “fog” of vṛtti, as Patanjali again and again drives home, we have perception that has no limitations. We are no longer limited by the fog of our own-created limitations. No matter what kinds of limitations we have, the reality is still there. The thicker the “fog” the harder the work to bring it to nirodha, sutras 21 and 22.
The ancients knew this; it is not something new.
Patanjali is telling us what the ancients knew, namely that this “reverberation” has always been there. This reverberation, something we have always sensed, has always been there and has always been pointing us towards this. AND has always been available to teach us.
Maybe you were thinking that praṇava (reverberation) was om and by muttering om, everything was going to just be dandy.
Not likely.
If it was that easy, then the world wouldn’t be in such a mess. If it was that easy, why, you might consider asking yourself, would Patanjali go to all the bother of such a lengthy explanation if he could have just written “mutter om and everything will be nice”. Why would he do that?
Mahesh did this very thing, more or less; how nice is everything?
So, praṇava is a way of indicating that faint, distant itch on the tip of your tongue, in the back of your mind, that pestering sense of something that has always been there but has more or less been forgotten in the process of getting on with your life and creating more and more karma and vṛtti.
26: this great power was the ideal or teacher of the ancient ones.
27: it is that reverberation that is always present.
To this point the YS illustrates the hard work to be faced (thus explaining the mess, because who does hard work). It’s just our nature to look for something easy, a shortcut, something instant – or to imagine we can see/reason our way through the fog.
Few are those with dedication, commitment and purpose-driven desire for awakening from the fog.
28: jāpa repetition. But one of the oldest meanings of jāpa is study, not just simple repetition – and yet the connection is obvious, the meaning is clear: by jāpa, by studying, going over it (3-27) again and again until the message sinks in, tadartha (therefore) bhāvanam [it] comes [to be/is]. Union, knowing, realization of one’s own mind is what comes to be.
This just isn’t a description of Mahesh’s TM. Mental repetition of a bīja, a mantra, the special name of some god simply isn’t the issue, subject or teaching here.
This section extends to sutra 33; but I am going to stop here because this is a lot to digest. We have to go back to sutra 23 now and re-consider the word submit. We have to understand how “submission” operates. The word praṇidhāna indicates profound religious meditation, abstract contemplation and profound aspiration. But, it now seems, in the context of 23, the context of this section, in light of sutras 2 –22, what we have to do is sincerely, energetically and purposefully contemplate our own minds (reality) until the “fog” begins to clear. As it does, the object, the mind/reality (citta, sutra 2), becomes clearer. No magic mantra, meaningless sound to take us skidding off into dissociative states of muzzy awareness and meaningless daydreaming; increased meaninglessness is increased vṛiti!
(to continue in part 6).
Just a parting question to consider before launching into the how of “submit”: if you muttered the special name of a god, why would the god give a tinker’s fart? What kind of a “god” is under ‘your’ control that you can have such expectations of getting his or her blessings by being, basically, a pain in the butt?
a consideration of the yoga sutras (6)
a consideration of the yoga sutras (2)
a consideration of the yoga sutras (3)
a consideration of the yoga sutras (4)
The YS isn't simple; it is complex and not written a language anything like English. So far, I hope, I have illustrated that this path to spiritual development, what else can it be called, isn't a simple natural process of paying money and being taught how to think a mantra. It should as well, be obvious that the YS does not suggest that it’s all going to be automatic and effortless on our part.
What is yoga?
Yoga is bringing the colourations/obscurations of the mind to naught (2). On a foggy day, the fog obscures your ability to see very far. Driving a car is risky. Even walking could end you up in a ditch! The fog is there, yet you cannot grab a handful. Most certainly, you have no power to make it go away. You are in it and yet it eludes your grasp.
This is vṛtti.
On its own, without some kind of intervention, things will remain just like this. Imagining you know where you are going, using reason to guide you in this fog, is unwise. But when the sun comes out, the fog gradually (slowly or rapidly) “comes to naught” (nirodha). The trees, lampposts, buildings and so forth appear. But they were never not there as far as the fog is concerned. They therefore do not appear; it is your perception that becomes un-obscured. The perception/mind (citta, sutra 2) is perfect and always present, of course, so nothing happens to it anymore than anything happens to reality when the fog is or is no more (nirodha).
In one simple sutra (2) Patanjali has laid it all out. Yoga is what you are; your mind is what you are; yoga and mind are synonymous. If there were no yoga, how could you be?
If the fog cleared and you found that you were in the middle of nothingness, where would you go to look for reality? How would you go about the business of just looking? But this situation cannot be because you and reality are inseparable. The arrangement and pattern we perceive in nature isn’t just there because it’s pretty. That we are able to perceive the organization of nature is what yoga (and the yoga sutras) is all about; this sense of sensing order in reality is the essential evidence leading us to be able to understand what governs the external reality and in this context it enables us to recognize how to penetrate that internal reality of citta, mind.
Yoga is what is.
The long explanations of what-is-to-be-understood is necessary, otherwise what Patanjali (as a person or as a series of editors) is explaining would be like using reason to guide you in a thick fog or smoke filled room, in a blizzard or dense forest.
Therefore the sutras from 3 through 22 help us understand what needs to be grasped before progress can be made.
Then comes the BUT [in the sense of: it is like this].
Sutra 23: [literally] īśvara-praṇidhāna + at (submission + -ing/out of submission [to]) it-is-like-this (vā also means ‘or’)
=> A note about Sanskrit: an ‘a’ (ending of one word) before a word beginning with ‘a’ means that the two a’s change to ‘ā’. The final ‘t’ of “at” changes to “ad” before ‘v’. Thus praṇidhāna + at (a suffix forming a present and future participle) changes to praṇidhānād (submitting). But, to complicate matters, an ‘a’ before an ‘ā’ changes a+ā to ‘ā’. So the suffix could be ‘āt’, the ablative form of a masculine or neuter word. But the meaning is the same “from (out of) (ablative) submission” so the sutra could be translated submitting [to] īśvara, it-is-like-this. In Sanskrit, ablative is not like ablative in Latin which gives the sense of ‘with’ or ‘by’. Ablative is more the sense of “coming from/coming out of” almost always translated with from.
So, what about īśvara – we all know it means god, right!
Not really. Just for starters the word īśvara can mean “god”, but it can also mean a powerful ruler, Self, able to do, capable of, liable, exposed to, master, lord, prince, king and so on including ātman and the idea of an eternal self.
This sutra functions much like sutra 20; see part 4.
To understand īśvara as Patanjali appears to intend it, we must look at the next sutra, 24: this īśvara is that distinctive purity of perception untroubled by the store of ripening intent (karma). This īśvara operates, or simply just is, whether there is fog/vṛtti/obscuration or whatnot. You might have done some good or bad things out of bad intent or good intent. That action (karma) will ripen (cause vṛtti in future) without having an effect on īśvara (that which empowers you, mind or mind-self). It was īśvara that was already being talked about in sutra 3 (when this is accomplished, realization has taken place; when this is accomplished, the one who sees is).
Your own perception can be likened to the sun. The sun shines and the fog is no more. Your own perception comes to fullness and that which obscured it is no more. Presto, chango, nirodha. Voilà. YOGA. Sounds simple enough, at least in the abstract. In striving to be free of vṛtti, however, it is something a little more challenging.
We can read 23, but [it-is-like-this] submitting to (or from/out of submission),[is] īśvara (our own power, your own mind, citta [grasped, known] and 24, this īśvara is that distinctive purity of perception untroubled by the store of ripening intent (karma).
25: when you know this, everything is possible.
As if!
It is not a simple matter, this “knowing”. There’s more to the word “know” here. Sarva is everything and jña is to-know, to-be-familiar-with and also means wise. The suffix tva adds the sense of “ness” as used in English. Yes, the sutra contains, as well, the word bīja, but it means “source”; it has nothing to do here with ‘seed mantras’.
So, 25: the source of this all-encompassing wisdom (perception [mind/yoga/reality] free of the obscuration of vṛtti,) [is] unsurpassed.
26: this īśvara was the ideal of the ancient ones. (Not some new invention or idea.)
27: tasya (tad + ya) ‘this’ + ‘to be’ or “thus it follows” [lit having become thus], vācak, the speaker [the one who gives expression to this], is praṇava.
Thus it follows, the one (that which) who expresses this, is praṇava. The one (that which) expresses this is not some leap into a dense-fog-guess like “oh, I know, the guru” (?), god (?), OM (?).
Think it through.
What is Patanjali talking about in sutras 23-26? He/we are talking about the human being having and being in possession of an innate perception, a reality of perception that is clouded over by vṛtti. This is a storehouse not only of karma, but of the conclusions we have drawn from a lifetime of experiences which clouds, measures, cramps, predicts, limits and otherwise colours and obscures our innate reality.
I see a connection here between vṛtti and karma. I think it’s worth exploring; but at this time I am going to pass on that.
When we are free from this “fog” of vṛtti, as Patanjali again and again drives home, we have perception that has no limitations. We are no longer limited by the fog of our own-created limitations. No matter what kinds of limitations we have, the reality is still there. The thicker the “fog” the harder the work to bring it to nirodha, sutras 21 and 22.
The ancients knew this; it is not something new.
Patanjali is telling us what the ancients knew, namely that this “reverberation” has always been there. This reverberation, something we have always sensed, has always been there and has always been pointing us towards this. AND has always been available to teach us.
Maybe you were thinking that praṇava (reverberation) was om and by muttering om, everything was going to just be dandy.
Not likely.
If it was that easy, then the world wouldn’t be in such a mess. If it was that easy, why, you might consider asking yourself, would Patanjali go to all the bother of such a lengthy explanation if he could have just written “mutter om and everything will be nice”. Why would he do that?
Mahesh did this very thing, more or less; how nice is everything?
So, praṇava is a way of indicating that faint, distant itch on the tip of your tongue, in the back of your mind, that pestering sense of something that has always been there but has more or less been forgotten in the process of getting on with your life and creating more and more karma and vṛtti.
26: this great power was the ideal or teacher of the ancient ones.
27: it is that reverberation that is always present.
To this point the YS illustrates the hard work to be faced (thus explaining the mess, because who does hard work). It’s just our nature to look for something easy, a shortcut, something instant – or to imagine we can see/reason our way through the fog.
Few are those with dedication, commitment and purpose-driven desire for awakening from the fog.
28: jāpa repetition. But one of the oldest meanings of jāpa is study, not just simple repetition – and yet the connection is obvious, the meaning is clear: by jāpa, by studying, going over it (3-27) again and again until the message sinks in, tadartha (therefore) bhāvanam [it] comes [to be/is]. Union, knowing, realization of one’s own mind is what comes to be.
This just isn’t a description of Mahesh’s TM. Mental repetition of a bīja, a mantra, the special name of some god simply isn’t the issue, subject or teaching here.
This section extends to sutra 33; but I am going to stop here because this is a lot to digest. We have to go back to sutra 23 now and re-consider the word submit. We have to understand how “submission” operates. The word praṇidhāna indicates profound religious meditation, abstract contemplation and profound aspiration. But, it now seems, in the context of 23, the context of this section, in light of sutras 2 –22, what we have to do is sincerely, energetically and purposefully contemplate our own minds (reality) until the “fog” begins to clear. As it does, the object, the mind/reality (citta, sutra 2), becomes clearer. No magic mantra, meaningless sound to take us skidding off into dissociative states of muzzy awareness and meaningless daydreaming; increased meaninglessness is increased vṛiti!
(to continue in part 6).
Just a parting question to consider before launching into the how of “submit”: if you muttered the special name of a god, why would the god give a tinker’s fart? What kind of a “god” is under ‘your’ control that you can have such expectations of getting his or her blessings by being, basically, a pain in the butt?
a consideration of the yoga sutras (6)
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
a consideration of the yoga sutras (4)
a consideration of the yoga sutras (1)
a consideration of the yoga sutras (2)
a consideration of the yoga sutras (3)
Sutras 1-15 have laid out the undertaking. Now 16-22 clarifies more detail. The difficult word in sutra 16 is puruṣa (purusha). Fortunately, we all know what Purusha is; it’s Mahesh’s monastic thing, young guys wearing wet diapers so they don’t get erections. Ah, vṛtti spotted. A preconceived notion can really be a limitation. Mahesh’s Purusha either hadn’t been invented when I started my translation project or, more likely I didn’t know about it.
In Sanskrit, puruṣa means many things. These days, it’s easy to check on-line dictionaries for many languages. When I started my project, however, there was no “on-line”, so I bought many, many dictionaries of Sanskrit, Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, Pāli, Chinese (because many Sanskrit texts were translated into Chinese and knowing what the ancient translators in China thought the equally ancient Sanskrit words meant is quite valuable).
So, puruṣa; here I think the word just refers to the individual person. But in the sense spoken of in the preceding 15 sutras. Not just the ordinary person, but much more likely, the essence of the individual person. The sutra could be read: this [is] the essence of non-attachment (referring to vṛtti), the ultimate clarity of the individual (what is the essence of the individual person, mind, of course, just mind, clear mind, unclouded by preconception).
17: this is an explanation of 16 – [the essence of non-attachment is the ultimate clarity of the individual (mind)] [i.e. this] samprajñāta (insight or clear sight) is accompanied by awareness, happiness and reflection (as in thought or contemplation, pondering; any yet, not exactly the same as thinking).
Meditation becomes a matter of clarity of a fully awake mind. Curiously, Hartranft’s text add’s rūpa, but Taimni does not. No one makes this easy. Do not leap to the conclusion or vṛtti that Patañjali is talking about pure consciousness in TM terms. He is definitely talking about pure awareness, pure consciousness in terms of the always awakened mind being free from all obstruction of perception. The mind seeing things just as they are, not as bad, or ugly, or nice, or possess-able or any such thing. He is talking about just seeing/perceiving.
18: the remnant of impressions left from before is no more. The pratyaya (tendencies or propensities) is no more.
The author is talking about proper training, something involved both in intellectual understanding of what to do, where to aim and how to do as well as doing it with intent and purpose. One does not learn to realize clarity of mind by thinking a meaningless thought.
19: those/for those [who are] absorbed in the natural (prakṛti) videha (dead?, probably not, more like “no-more-ness”) [i.e. those who by diligent practise achieve (merge with) calm and clarity, videhaprakṛtilayānām)] become.
I don’t think bhava here means to take birth. That doesn’t seem to fit. The meaning seems to be that those who are diligent in applying the lessons presented here achieve awakening, something like “realization of” their calm and clarity which then becomes that in effect is what could be seen as taking birth.
20: others, people who do not have the advantage of this teaching may achieve this “birth” or achievement of clarity and consciousness by faith, diligence, mental-purposefulness (smṛti), trance (samādhi … lots of meanings for this word, but I think that at this stage the author is talking about just plain ‘spacing-out’ which really does generate insight sometimes, which we all know from experience) or wisdom (prajñā). Some people are just very wise, have penetrating understanding. We’ve all met them. They’re just that way. For the rest of us, there’s hard work and application (as directed).
21: it is near for those who are seeking it.
Obviously, be careful what you wish for. The sutras lay out the definitions and the procedures. There is a clarity here, difficult to wade through, granted. But what to do and how to recognize the correctness of what one is doing as well as how to recognize the goal and whether or not it is being achieved is here. It's a cookbook and the author is at pains to make sure you know how to pay attention to the directions (if, of course, you are paying attention to begin with).
22: how near? That depends on you. Like somewhat outdated computer language, GIGO. You get out of it what you put into it.
a consideration of the yoga sutras (5)
a consideration of the yoga sutras (2)
a consideration of the yoga sutras (3)
Sutras 1-15 have laid out the undertaking. Now 16-22 clarifies more detail. The difficult word in sutra 16 is puruṣa (purusha). Fortunately, we all know what Purusha is; it’s Mahesh’s monastic thing, young guys wearing wet diapers so they don’t get erections. Ah, vṛtti spotted. A preconceived notion can really be a limitation. Mahesh’s Purusha either hadn’t been invented when I started my translation project or, more likely I didn’t know about it.
In Sanskrit, puruṣa means many things. These days, it’s easy to check on-line dictionaries for many languages. When I started my project, however, there was no “on-line”, so I bought many, many dictionaries of Sanskrit, Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, Pāli, Chinese (because many Sanskrit texts were translated into Chinese and knowing what the ancient translators in China thought the equally ancient Sanskrit words meant is quite valuable).
So, puruṣa; here I think the word just refers to the individual person. But in the sense spoken of in the preceding 15 sutras. Not just the ordinary person, but much more likely, the essence of the individual person. The sutra could be read: this [is] the essence of non-attachment (referring to vṛtti), the ultimate clarity of the individual (what is the essence of the individual person, mind, of course, just mind, clear mind, unclouded by preconception).
17: this is an explanation of 16 – [the essence of non-attachment is the ultimate clarity of the individual (mind)] [i.e. this] samprajñāta (insight or clear sight) is accompanied by awareness, happiness and reflection (as in thought or contemplation, pondering; any yet, not exactly the same as thinking).
Meditation becomes a matter of clarity of a fully awake mind. Curiously, Hartranft’s text add’s rūpa, but Taimni does not. No one makes this easy. Do not leap to the conclusion or vṛtti that Patañjali is talking about pure consciousness in TM terms. He is definitely talking about pure awareness, pure consciousness in terms of the always awakened mind being free from all obstruction of perception. The mind seeing things just as they are, not as bad, or ugly, or nice, or possess-able or any such thing. He is talking about just seeing/perceiving.
18: the remnant of impressions left from before is no more. The pratyaya (tendencies or propensities) is no more.
The author is talking about proper training, something involved both in intellectual understanding of what to do, where to aim and how to do as well as doing it with intent and purpose. One does not learn to realize clarity of mind by thinking a meaningless thought.
19: those/for those [who are] absorbed in the natural (prakṛti) videha (dead?, probably not, more like “no-more-ness”) [i.e. those who by diligent practise achieve (merge with) calm and clarity, videhaprakṛtilayānām)] become.
I don’t think bhava here means to take birth. That doesn’t seem to fit. The meaning seems to be that those who are diligent in applying the lessons presented here achieve awakening, something like “realization of” their calm and clarity which then becomes that in effect is what could be seen as taking birth.
20: others, people who do not have the advantage of this teaching may achieve this “birth” or achievement of clarity and consciousness by faith, diligence, mental-purposefulness (smṛti), trance (samādhi … lots of meanings for this word, but I think that at this stage the author is talking about just plain ‘spacing-out’ which really does generate insight sometimes, which we all know from experience) or wisdom (prajñā). Some people are just very wise, have penetrating understanding. We’ve all met them. They’re just that way. For the rest of us, there’s hard work and application (as directed).
21: it is near for those who are seeking it.
Obviously, be careful what you wish for. The sutras lay out the definitions and the procedures. There is a clarity here, difficult to wade through, granted. But what to do and how to recognize the correctness of what one is doing as well as how to recognize the goal and whether or not it is being achieved is here. It's a cookbook and the author is at pains to make sure you know how to pay attention to the directions (if, of course, you are paying attention to begin with).
22: how near? That depends on you. Like somewhat outdated computer language, GIGO. You get out of it what you put into it.
a consideration of the yoga sutras (5)
Friday, March 02, 2007
A consideration of the yoga sutras (3)
a consideration of the yoga sutras (1)
a consideration of the yoga sutras (2)
Sutras 4 through 11 address the curious questions raised by sutras 2 and 3.
Sutra 2 seems to indicate that yoga is mind control. But cittavritti (in Sanskrit, the ‘ch’ phoneme is generally represented as ‘c’ and the more difficult sound ‘chh', as in church house, is represented by ‘ch’) is two words, the second (vritti) the modifier of the first (citta). When we say “polishing the red apple” are we referring to the apple or the colour red? The apple does not change, but the appearance, the vritti, changes.
Thus, it seems much more helpful in understanding the difficulties posed by this album of wise direction to see that the ancient teachers who pioneered the difficult terrain of understanding what goes on in our heads and how that affects our lives were referring to something quite profound: yoga is not mind control. Yoga is nirodha of the vritti of the mind. Mind is just mind, however. What comes into the mind and what goes out from the mind are both filtered by vritti.
Yoga, the subject of this text is a free mind, something a little different. When the vritti are nirodha (eliminated) then mind is free, mind just is. Sutras 4 through 11 define this vritti business and the obvious, problematic qualities of vritti modifying citta. A modified citta is not a free citta is not yoga.
Happy folks seem to see everthing through rose-coloured glasses; miserable folks seem to see everything through very clouded, foggy glasses. These are vritti, filtres to be nirodha. Then seeing is just seeing, in other words perception is no longer filtered through vritti of any kind and perception is just perception. There is nothing to modify what comes to the mind, things just as they are are perceived just as they are.
This is the free citta.
Otherwise, sutra 3, the seer, the one who sees, the yogi will not be able to stand in his own nature. Until the vritti modifying/masking incoming date to the citta are nirodha, the seer will have no idea what his own nature is.
It is the mind, of course.
One’s “own nature” is a free mind, a mind freed of the colourations of vritti. This is the implication. A cook book can give you an implication of deliciousness and this collection of teachings is definitely a cook book. In and of itself, however, neither a cook book nor this anthology can supply nutrition.
At one time, Mahesh talked to a very small group of us interested in translation. His first suggestion was not to go learn the language you want to translate, although that certainly has its merits. He suggested something else, something very interesting that I still utilize. He said to compare some very good translations and see where your own experience from meditation tells you some word or idea is not quite right, then start checking on the meaning of that word.
This is how I came to compile a dictionary and a word-by-word translation, sutra-by-sutra, noting, considering if my understanding of the first sutra was supported by the second and so on.
If you have the idea, the vritti, that yoga is mind control and the collection of sutras will tell you how to control your mind, then that vritti is not freeing the mind to follow the teachings.
So, first, sutras 4 through 11 must be understood and then, sutra 12, a new section of teaching, can make sense.
There is a very interesting Sufi teaching that is quite valuable to keep in mind here: what you have to learn is different from what you expect to learn and the way you have to learn it is different from the way you expect to learn it.
Sutra 12: the vritti are nirodha by knowing what to do and by not clinging (to your vritti).
Sutra 13: what you have to do is become calm and quiet.
Sutra 14: this takes time and commitment – I see, here, no reference to easy, natural method.
Sutra 15 (explaining “by not clinging” in sutra 12): the quick translation is LET GO OF EVERYTHING which can also be rendered CLING TO NOTHING.
Sutra 15 suggests something very, very difficult and in conjunction with Sutra 2 and the implications of sutra 14 very, very clearly tells us that we will have our hands full. We must have an alertness (sañjña, from jña, to know; sañjña is the knowing aspect of mind) that is free from every kind of desire, a mind free from all desire for any/everything. The sutra calls this the supreme consciousness.
a consideration of the yoga sutras (4)
a consideration of the yoga sutras (2)
Sutras 4 through 11 address the curious questions raised by sutras 2 and 3.
Sutra 2 seems to indicate that yoga is mind control. But cittavritti (in Sanskrit, the ‘ch’ phoneme is generally represented as ‘c’ and the more difficult sound ‘chh', as in church house, is represented by ‘ch’) is two words, the second (vritti) the modifier of the first (citta). When we say “polishing the red apple” are we referring to the apple or the colour red? The apple does not change, but the appearance, the vritti, changes.
Thus, it seems much more helpful in understanding the difficulties posed by this album of wise direction to see that the ancient teachers who pioneered the difficult terrain of understanding what goes on in our heads and how that affects our lives were referring to something quite profound: yoga is not mind control. Yoga is nirodha of the vritti of the mind. Mind is just mind, however. What comes into the mind and what goes out from the mind are both filtered by vritti.
Yoga, the subject of this text is a free mind, something a little different. When the vritti are nirodha (eliminated) then mind is free, mind just is. Sutras 4 through 11 define this vritti business and the obvious, problematic qualities of vritti modifying citta. A modified citta is not a free citta is not yoga.
Happy folks seem to see everthing through rose-coloured glasses; miserable folks seem to see everything through very clouded, foggy glasses. These are vritti, filtres to be nirodha. Then seeing is just seeing, in other words perception is no longer filtered through vritti of any kind and perception is just perception. There is nothing to modify what comes to the mind, things just as they are are perceived just as they are.
This is the free citta.
Otherwise, sutra 3, the seer, the one who sees, the yogi will not be able to stand in his own nature. Until the vritti modifying/masking incoming date to the citta are nirodha, the seer will have no idea what his own nature is.
It is the mind, of course.
One’s “own nature” is a free mind, a mind freed of the colourations of vritti. This is the implication. A cook book can give you an implication of deliciousness and this collection of teachings is definitely a cook book. In and of itself, however, neither a cook book nor this anthology can supply nutrition.
At one time, Mahesh talked to a very small group of us interested in translation. His first suggestion was not to go learn the language you want to translate, although that certainly has its merits. He suggested something else, something very interesting that I still utilize. He said to compare some very good translations and see where your own experience from meditation tells you some word or idea is not quite right, then start checking on the meaning of that word.
This is how I came to compile a dictionary and a word-by-word translation, sutra-by-sutra, noting, considering if my understanding of the first sutra was supported by the second and so on.
If you have the idea, the vritti, that yoga is mind control and the collection of sutras will tell you how to control your mind, then that vritti is not freeing the mind to follow the teachings.
So, first, sutras 4 through 11 must be understood and then, sutra 12, a new section of teaching, can make sense.
There is a very interesting Sufi teaching that is quite valuable to keep in mind here: what you have to learn is different from what you expect to learn and the way you have to learn it is different from the way you expect to learn it.
Sutra 12: the vritti are nirodha by knowing what to do and by not clinging (to your vritti).
Sutra 13: what you have to do is become calm and quiet.
Sutra 14: this takes time and commitment – I see, here, no reference to easy, natural method.
Sutra 15 (explaining “by not clinging” in sutra 12): the quick translation is LET GO OF EVERYTHING which can also be rendered CLING TO NOTHING.
Sutra 15 suggests something very, very difficult and in conjunction with Sutra 2 and the implications of sutra 14 very, very clearly tells us that we will have our hands full. We must have an alertness (sañjña, from jña, to know; sañjña is the knowing aspect of mind) that is free from every kind of desire, a mind free from all desire for any/everything. The sutra calls this the supreme consciousness.
a consideration of the yoga sutras (4)
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
a consideration of the yoga sutras (2)
a consideration of the yoga sutras (1)
Paul asked about the first 4 sutras. In celebration of Paul’s continued interest in the Blog I wanted to address these. Are they sufficient unto themselves. What is sufficient depends upon factors relative to the individual practitioner.
1 now yoga [is] explained
2 yoga is the nirodha (ceasing) [of] vritti (stuff the mind does, such as conceptualizing, judging, planning, daydreaming and so on)
3 then (when this is accomplished) [the] drashta (the one who sees, experiences) [is/knows] sva-rupa (his own being, mind (?) “own-form” would be literal, but this is a kind of colloquialism so I felt “being” might be appropriate)
4 [the] vritti sarupyam (complex word possibly best translated as ‘reflect’ or take-on-the-characteristics-of or the qualities-of), otherwise (or possibly ‘elsewhere’ meaning outside the experience of knowing or merging the knowing mind with one's own being)
So, 2 explains 1, 3 explains 2 and 4 explains 3. How I interpret this and how others interpret this simply demonstrates the nature of the sutras to show us, like a mirror, what we wish to see. Hence, a guide is necessary and, in part, the sutras fulfill this function. The more one's vritti cling to a particular interpretation, the more difficult headway in understanding/practising the sutras becomes. There are no shortcuts. You either “do” the sutras on their own terms or you fail to make sense of any of it. – This is the first lesson the sutras taught me. I tried to make my translation efforts conform to my theories. This simply did not work. Theory must reflect facts and alter when new facts or new understanding of facts becomes clear.
Sutra 5 starts a new idea: here we see an explanation of "vritti".
6 clarifies 5 and 7 clarifies the first item of 6.
Following the sutras very carefully, abandoning your own preconceptions about what the sutras are going to tell you and carefully adjusting your thinking to what you find them actually telling you is the first order of business. It’s almost impossible. I translated the sutras 9 times in a ten-year period, compiling a dictionary of meanings from many sources for each word, tracking where each word occurred and the meaning I felt it had in the context of each sutra in which it appeared. I continue to update my dictionary when a new way of looking at a difficult word becomes clear or takes on a clarity I had not before considered.
If you could simply abandon all your preconceptions about everything and anything and just see things just as they are (that is, experience what the senses tell you without overlaying your notions, preconceptions, conceptualizing tendencies), then you wouldn't need the rest of the sutras. But the process of letting go of anything, let along our preconceptions is a difficult an arduous task.
Sanskrit is a very precise language related to Greek and Latin. It uses endings on words rather than the function words (in, of, by, to, from, through and so on) that we use in English to express relationships between words. Most of the sutras in parts 1, 2 and 3 have no verbs; like Russian, “is” or the relationship of this/that is implied. This makes the sutras easier and sometimes harder to sort out. Like French, modifiers come after (apple red) rather than before (red apple) as in English.
Sanskrit does not use capital and lower case letters and punctuation is confined to (stop) and (full stop) or end of idea end of group of ideas or end of sentence end of paragraph.
a consideration of the yoga sutras (3)
Paul asked about the first 4 sutras. In celebration of Paul’s continued interest in the Blog I wanted to address these. Are they sufficient unto themselves. What is sufficient depends upon factors relative to the individual practitioner.
1 now yoga [is] explained
2 yoga is the nirodha (ceasing) [of] vritti (stuff the mind does, such as conceptualizing, judging, planning, daydreaming and so on)
3 then (when this is accomplished) [the] drashta (the one who sees, experiences) [is/knows] sva-rupa (his own being, mind (?) “own-form” would be literal, but this is a kind of colloquialism so I felt “being” might be appropriate)
4 [the] vritti sarupyam (complex word possibly best translated as ‘reflect’ or take-on-the-characteristics-of or the qualities-of), otherwise (or possibly ‘elsewhere’ meaning outside the experience of knowing or merging the knowing mind with one's own being)
So, 2 explains 1, 3 explains 2 and 4 explains 3. How I interpret this and how others interpret this simply demonstrates the nature of the sutras to show us, like a mirror, what we wish to see. Hence, a guide is necessary and, in part, the sutras fulfill this function. The more one's vritti cling to a particular interpretation, the more difficult headway in understanding/practising the sutras becomes. There are no shortcuts. You either “do” the sutras on their own terms or you fail to make sense of any of it. – This is the first lesson the sutras taught me. I tried to make my translation efforts conform to my theories. This simply did not work. Theory must reflect facts and alter when new facts or new understanding of facts becomes clear.
Sutra 5 starts a new idea: here we see an explanation of "vritti".
6 clarifies 5 and 7 clarifies the first item of 6.
Following the sutras very carefully, abandoning your own preconceptions about what the sutras are going to tell you and carefully adjusting your thinking to what you find them actually telling you is the first order of business. It’s almost impossible. I translated the sutras 9 times in a ten-year period, compiling a dictionary of meanings from many sources for each word, tracking where each word occurred and the meaning I felt it had in the context of each sutra in which it appeared. I continue to update my dictionary when a new way of looking at a difficult word becomes clear or takes on a clarity I had not before considered.
If you could simply abandon all your preconceptions about everything and anything and just see things just as they are (that is, experience what the senses tell you without overlaying your notions, preconceptions, conceptualizing tendencies), then you wouldn't need the rest of the sutras. But the process of letting go of anything, let along our preconceptions is a difficult an arduous task.
Sanskrit is a very precise language related to Greek and Latin. It uses endings on words rather than the function words (in, of, by, to, from, through and so on) that we use in English to express relationships between words. Most of the sutras in parts 1, 2 and 3 have no verbs; like Russian, “is” or the relationship of this/that is implied. This makes the sutras easier and sometimes harder to sort out. Like French, modifiers come after (apple red) rather than before (red apple) as in English.
Sanskrit does not use capital and lower case letters and punctuation is confined to (stop) and (full stop) or end of idea end of group of ideas or end of sentence end of paragraph.
a consideration of the yoga sutras (3)
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