Abstract: Yoga as a darshana is not
the yoga of the contemporary fitness world. It is a rigorous philosophical and
practical system developed by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras, which defines yoga
as the cessation of the modifications of the mind, and then systematically
addresses what those modifications are, why they arise, and what eight-limbed
practice produces their cessation. The Yoga Darshana accepts the Sankhya
metaphysical framework of Purusha and Prakriti but adds two significant
developments: it introduces Ishvara, a special Purusha untouched by the
afflictions, as an object of practice, and it provides the most comprehensive
and practical account of the actual discipline that produces liberation
available in any darshana. This article explores Patanjali's definition of
yoga, the five categories of mental modification and the five types of
afflictions that generate them, the eight limbs of practice and their mutual
relationships, and what the tradition means when it describes the goal as
samadhi and ultimately kaivalya.
Keywords: Yoga Darshana, Patanjali,
Yoga Sutras, chitta-vritti-nirodha, Ashtanga Yoga, samadhi, kaivalya, mental
discipline, Purusha, Ishvara, Sanatana Dharma
Introduction
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali opens
with one of the most precisely compressed philosophical definitions in any
language. Four words: yogah chitta-vritti-nirodhah. Yoga is the cessation of
the modifications of the mind. Everything that follows in the Yoga Sutras,
across four chapters and 195 sutras, is the explication of what these four
words actually mean and how to achieve what they describe. The compression is
not brevity for its own sake. It is the tradition's way of saying that the
entire philosophical and practical system that is about to be presented has a
single, clear, directly stateable goal, and that everything in the system is
oriented toward that goal.
Understanding this opening
definition requires understanding all three of its key terms. Chitta is not
simply the mind in the ordinary sense. It is the entire psychic apparatus: the
mind that thinks and doubts, the intellect that discriminates, and the ego that
claims ownership of experience. Vritti means modification, movement, wave, the
particular pattern that the chitta takes on in response to any stimulus from
inside or outside. Nirodhah means cessation, restriction, stilling. Yoga is the
condition in which the chitta has ceased to take on the movements and patterns
that ordinarily constitute conscious life, and in which the Purusha, the pure
consciousness, rests in its own nature.
The Five
Modifications and the Five Afflictions
Patanjali identifies five
categories of chitta-vritti: valid knowledge (obtained through perception,
inference, or testimony), error (misconception or false knowledge),
conceptualisation (knowledge based on words without corresponding reality),
sleep (the modification in which the mind rests in tamas), and memory (the
retention of past experiences). These five cover the entire range of ordinary
mental activity: the mind is always in one or more of these states, and none of
them is Purusha's natural condition.
The five afflictions, the kleshas,
are the root causes of the vrittis that bind consciousness to the cycle of
suffering and rebirth. Avidya, the fundamental ignorance of one's true nature
as Purusha, is the root from which all others grow. From avidya arises Asmita,
the ego-sense that identifies consciousness with the body-mind complex. From
Asmita arise Raga and Dvesha, attraction and aversion, the fundamental
orientations of the bound mind toward what it likes and away from what it does
not. And from all of these together arises Abhinivesha, the clinging to life
and the fear of death.
योगश्चित्तवृत्तिनिरोधः। तदा द्रष्टुः स्वरूपेऽवस्थानम्।
Yogas
chitta-vritti-nirodhah. Tada drashtuh svarupe 'vasthanam.
(Yoga is the
cessation of the modifications of the mind. Then the seer rests in its own
nature.)
Yoga Sutras of
Patanjali, 1.2-1.3
Tada drashtuh svarupe avasthanam:
then the seer rests in its own nature. These seven words state the entire goal
of the Yoga Darshana with complete precision. The seer, the Purusha, the pure
witness consciousness, is always in its own nature. It has never actually been
anything other than what it is. But when the chitta is in constant
modification, the Purusha appears to take on the colour of those modifications,
the way a clear crystal appears to take on the colour of what is placed beside
it. When the modifications cease, the crystal is seen to be colourless. The
seer is seen to be what it always was. This is liberation, and the entire eight-limbed
path is the systematic means of producing this recognition.
The Eight Limbs: A
Comprehensive Architecture of Practice
Patanjali's eight-limbed path,
Ashtanga Yoga, is the most comprehensive and systematically organised account
of spiritual practice available in any darshana. The eight limbs are not a
sequence of stages to be completed in order and then left behind. They are
mutually supporting dimensions of a single integrated practice, each
strengthening the others and all oriented toward the same goal.
Yama and Niyama, the ethical
observances and personal disciplines, are the foundation. The Yamas
(non-harming, truth, non-stealing, continence, non-possessiveness) and Niyamas
(purity, contentment, austerity, self-study, devotion to Ishvara) are not
preliminary requirements to be satisfied before the real practice begins. They
are themselves practice: the systematic cultivation of the quality of
relationship to the world and to oneself that reduces the intensity of the
kleshas and creates the conditions in which deeper practice becomes possible.
Asana, the third limb, in Patanjali's understanding is not primarily a physical
fitness practice but the cultivation of a stable and comfortable seated posture
that allows for sustained pranayama and pratyahara without distraction by
bodily discomfort. Pranayama, the fourth limb, is the regulation of the breath
as a means of influencing the chitta.
यमनियमासनप्राणायामप्रत्याहारधारणाध्यानसमाधयोऽष्टावङ्गानि।
Yama-niyama-asana-pranayama-pratyahara-dharana-dhyana-samadhayo
'shtav angani.
(The eight limbs
are: restraints, observances, posture, breath regulation, withdrawal of the
senses, concentration, meditation, and absorption.)
Yoga Sutras of
Patanjali, 2.29
Pratyahara, the withdrawal of the
senses from their objects, is the hinge between the outer and inner limbs. The
first five limbs work primarily with the person's relationship to the external
world. The last three, dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation), and
samadhi (absorption), work with the inner dimensions of the chitta directly.
Together, the last three are called samyama, and Patanjali devotes considerable
attention in the third chapter to describing what sustained samyama on various
objects produces in terms of direct knowledge of those objects. The final
samadhi, nirbija or seedless absorption, is the state in which the chitta is
completely stilled and the Purusha rests without any object of awareness, in
pure self-recognition.
Ishvara: The
Special Purusha as Object of Practice
One of the most significant
features of the Yoga Darshana that distinguishes it from the Sankhya Darshana
with which it shares its basic metaphysics is the introduction of Ishvara as a
special object of practice. Ishvara in Patanjali's framework is described as a
special kind of Purusha: one who has never been touched by the kleshas, karma,
or their results, one in whom the seed of omniscience is unsurpassed, who is
the teacher of the ancient teachers, unconditioned by time.
Pranava, the sacred syllable Om, is
the symbol or sound that points to Ishvara, and Ishvara-pranidhana, the
surrender or devotion to Ishvara, appears as both a niyama and as one of the
principal means of achieving samadhi. This is the Yoga Darshana's incorporation
of the devotional dimension: the recognition that the practice of surrender to
a form of the divine that is conceived as the supreme form of what the
practitioner aspires to be is itself one of the most effective available
instruments for the chitta's quietening.
Conclusion
The Yoga Darshana is the
tradition's most comprehensive and most practically oriented philosophical
system. It takes the metaphysical framework of Sankhya and builds around it a
complete and carefully articulated account of how the liberation that Sankhya describes
is actually achieved: through what specific practices, in what sequence, with
what understanding of what is being done and why. Nothing in the system is
arbitrary. Every limb addresses a specific obstacle and develops a specific
capacity that the next stage of practice requires.
What Patanjali has produced in the
Yoga Sutras is, in the tradition's own estimation, the most complete available
map of the path from the ordinary condition of bound, distracted,
affliction-driven consciousness to the recognition of the Purusha's own nature.
The map is not the territory, as every teacher of the darshana tradition would
insist. But the Yoga Sutras is the most precise and most practically useful map
the tradition has produced, and its relevance to the actual work of spiritual
development has not diminished across the fifteen hundred or more years since
Patanjali composed it.
तस्यापि निरोधे सर्वनिरोधान्निर्बीजः समाधिः।
Tasyapi nirodhe
sarva-nirodhaan nirbijah samadhih.
(When even that
(the highest cognitive samadhi) is inhibited, by the inhibition of everything,
there is seedless samadhi.)
Yoga Sutras of
Patanjali, 1.51
Nirbijah: seedless. The highest
samadhi leaves no seed for future mental modifications, no residual impression
from which new disturbances could arise. This is the cessation of the
cessations: not the cessation of a particular wave but the cessation of the
capacity for waves. What remains is the Purusha in its own nature, as it always
was, as it will always be. The stilling of the mind's modifications is not the
end of consciousness. It is consciousness's recognition of itself, undistorted
for the first time by anything that it is not.
References and
Suggested Reading
Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (with
commentary by Vyasa and Vacaspati Mishra)
Swami Vivekananda, Raja Yoga (1896)
T.K.V. Desikachar, The Heart of
Yoga (1995)
Georg Feuerstein, The Yoga
Tradition (1998)
S. Radhakrishnan, Indian
Philosophy, Volume 2 (1927)
B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on the Yoga
Sutras of Patanjali (1993)
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