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.)