Patanjali Yoga Sutra - 3

Five functions of the mind

Vritti Sarupyam Itaratra

Vrittayah Panchatayyah Klishtaklishtaha

Pramana Viparyaya Vikalpa Nidra Smritayaha

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When the mind is tranquil, it can grasp the truth. But when the mind is distracted, there is a misunderstanding of the truth in terms of quality and depth. Just as the pure white light of the sun gets refracted into many colours, giving rise to illusionary patterns, a mind that is tossing about does not allow a clear perception of the truth.

There are five activities of the mind. They can be either of help in creating a feel-good factor, or can create a lot of misunderstanding and disturbance.

The five activities of the mind are Pramana - Cognition of, understanding and grasping an object or an idea. Viparyaya - Misapprehension or confusion. Interpreting what one sees in ways it is not actually, misunderstanding. Vikalpa - Imagination. One can imagine a positive situation, for instance - when caught in difficult circumstances, the mind can provide temporary relief by imagining a situation where there are no problems.

Vikalpa can be negative too. For instance, when a person approaches with a good intention, the mind can imagine the person approaching with an ulterior motive behind.

The fourth activity that the mind is capable of is called sleep. When all its faculties go to rest and does not work, the mind is at sleep. The mind is not on its office seat, minding its business of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching - but takes a holiday and shuts shop.

The last capability of the mind as described by Patanjali is memory. Whatever it has experienced through the five senses, is stored as memory in the unconscious and sub-conscious layers of the mind. When the situation requires, the conscious mind can remember and recall the object or situation. This quality of the mind helps us to identify objects and people and helps in calling a computer as a computer and a car as a car. If this faculty was absent, we would be calling the tree a tubelight or a chair as daddy!

(Photograph: Geese wading in a rainwater percolation pond off a Naperville road in Chicago.)

(On Bamboo Wisdom find a verse-by-verse explanation of the Bhagavad Gita and on the Vignana Bhairava Tantra in Cosmic Consciousness - Swahilya Shambhavi. (swahilya.soulmate@gmail.com)

Patanjali Yoga Sutra - 2

If the mind is quiet, so what?

Tada Drashtuhu Swarupe Avasthanam: What happens when there is a quietening of the flow of thoughts? One is able to get an understanding of something that is fundamental, refreshing, infinite, everlasting, original, fresh and unnoticed all the while.

The practice of Yoga in whatever form, whether it is the Yoga with the body, Hatha Yoga, Pranayama - the breath, Karma Yoga - through all the actions performed in a day, Bhakthi Yoga - through emotions of love felt for all and several innumerable forms of Yoga practices, one achieves just a singular goal. At the end of the practice, the mind is quiet as there is a finetuning in the flow of thought frequencies. The actual Yoga happens when the thought waves of the individual merge with the thought waves of the cosmos.

And this is the eternal original essence that one is able to experience when the mind is still. Just as when the river is turbulent, you can see just the ruddy, foaming eddies, gushing in currents. But when the water is tranquil, one gets a much deeper insight into what lies down in the river bed. With a quiet mind around, one is able to see through the world with the tranquil vision of truth. - Swahilya Shambhavi.

(Picture: The campus at the Chicago Law School, University of Illinois.)

Yoga Sutra

Patanjali's insight into Yoga

There are many things that come to us as treasures of the past. The most important of them all are the books that have codified knowledge. The better if they remain undistorted over the centuries, so we can still taste the essence.

One of those texts that is the most spoken about today is the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali. He codified Yoga as we know it today into a garland of aphorisms tied through a connecting thread. He is known to be a person who was human up to his shoulders, a conch in his left hand and a disc on his right, with a sword on each of the other two hands. A snake above his shoulders, he is extremely white in complexion with a thousand hoods. Patanjali was an Avatar (incarnation) of Adisesha, the snake that yields itself as a bed for Lord Vishnu in the ocean of milk.

In modern-day understanding, Patanjali is a sage who sounded the conch which served as a clarion call to the people seeking to live a life of integrity, uniting the individual mind with the cosmic consciousness.

Sutra is a thread. It also means a tight aphorism where words are used with deep brevity. Chanting the lines again and again will produce a certain vibration in the mind that reveals by itself, the many inner layers of meaning that is packed in it. With an increase in intensity of the chanting, the revelation of the meaning is deeper. The brevity has also ensured that the transmission of knowledge happened accurately, without loss in interpretation by the line of descendants.

The Samadhi Padaha is the first part which defines Yoga.

Atha Yoganushasanam: This is Yoga. What a beautiful sentence! This - that is, everything that we hear, see, smell, taste and touch and experience through these senses is Yoga. The being is Yoga. The Universe, with its suns, moons, stars, space and the planets, is Yoga. Everything that is included in the This - is Yoga. And that includes the nothingness and the silence too.

Yogaha Chitta Vritti Nirodhaha: There is some more to the This. Yoga is the stopping of the flow of thoughts. Rather, it is a way of being with the This - the everything, without being carried away by the tiny waves of thoughts in the thin screen of the mind. Yoga means to view the world through the open window and not through a screen which has properties of colour, space, time and characteristics.

The thoughts cannot be stopped. It is like telling all the waves of the ocean to be quiet in order that one can see the ocean! The thoughts will continue to come and go. But Yoga is the art of being like the empty sky. Different moods of the sunlight may reflect on it, in colours of blue, pink, orange, purple and black. Different objects may move past it, clouds, snow, hail, birds, aeroplanes, kites. But the sky remains as it is. Identifying with the unmoving consciousness and witnessing the thoughts go by as clouds in the sky is Yoga. - Swahilya Shambhavi.

(Picture: A cold afternoon in Chicago. When it comes to Yoga, nature is the best teacher. When it is warm, the trees and the earth spring with life. When it is cold and freezing, they shed their leaves and just be!)

(You may wish to look up for update on the Bhagavad Gita on Bamboo Wisdom and on the Vignana Bhairava Tantra. Discussions and questions on any of the posts may also be mailed me at swahilya.soulmate@gmail.com.)

Bhagavad Gita - Chapter VI

Not more not less, but just right

In the sixth chapter, called Athmasamyama Yoga - the Yoga of becoming one with the soul, Sri Krishna continues with techniques of Pranayama, Hatha Yoga and Dhyana. But he cautions in two beautiful verses:

Nathyashnatasthu Yogosthi Nachaikanthamanashnathaha

Nachathi swapnashilasya Jagrato Naiva Charjuna

Yukthahara Viharasya Yuktha Cheshtasya Karmasu

Yukta Swapnavabodhasya Yogo Bhavathi Duhkhaha

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Success in Yoga cannot happen for the person who eats too much or too little. Here lies the caution for those who storm the fast food centres and those who suffer themselves out starving with fasts, diets and rituals. It is also not for those who sleep too much, nor to those who are awake all day.

For one who eats moderately and in using the body, mind and intellect in entertainment and getting entertained, who works in a detached manner, giving one's best but not anxious of the results, who sleeps moderately - a practitioner of such Yoga sees an end to the sorrow of existence.

(For a verse by verse explanation of the Bhagavad Gita and its application in daily life, please log on to Bamboo Wisdom.) - Swahilya Shambhavi.