The Yoga Sūtras

The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali are a collection of 196 aphorisms (sūtras) in Sanskrit, composed or compiled probably between the second century BCE and the fifth century CE — most scholars now favour around 400 CE. They are the root text of Yoga (darśana), one of the six orthodox schools of Indian philosophy, and the most influential treatise on meditation ever written in India. In four short chapters they define the goal of yoga, analyse the mind and the causes of suffering, lay down a path of eight “limbs” from ethics to deep absorption, describe the extraordinary powers that meditation is said to produce, and explain liberation as the “isolation” of pure consciousness from the restless activity of nature. Like all sūtra texts, they are almost telegraphic — written to be memorised and explained by a teacher — and they have been read for fifteen centuries through their commentaries.

Background

The Sūtras build on the metaphysics of Sāṃkhya: two irreducible realities, puruṣa (pure consciousness, the “seer”) and prakṛti (nature, the “seen”), which includes not only the body and the world but also the mind (citta) with all its thoughts, feelings and memories. Suffering arises because the seer identifies with the seen; liberation comes when the identification ends. Where Sāṃkhya relied on discriminating knowledge alone, the Sūtras supply a method — a training of the mind — and a personal God as an aid.

They also draw on a shared culture of meditation that included Buddhist and Jain practice. Many terms — kleśa (affliction), saṃskāra (impression), nirodha (cessation), the four attitudes of friendliness, compassion, joy and equanimity — are common to Buddhist texts, and some sūtras of the fourth chapter appear to argue with Buddhist idealism.

What the Sūtras teach

The definition

The text opens: “Now, the teaching of yoga” (1.1). Then comes the definition: “Yoga is the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind” (yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ, 1.2). “Then the seer abides in its own nature. Otherwise, it conforms to the fluctuations” (1.3–4).

The mind’s fluctuations are of five kinds, “painful or not painful”: valid knowledge, error, verbal conceptualisation, sleep and memory (1.5–11). The surprising inclusion of correct knowledge and even sleep shows that the goal is not merely to replace bad thoughts with good ones. Every modification of the mind, true or false, is something the seer mistakenly takes as itself.

Practice and dispassion

“They are stilled by practice and dispassion” (1.12). Practice (abhyāsa) is effort toward steadiness, “firmly grounded when cultivated for a long time, without interruption and with devotion” (1.14). Dispassion (vairāgya) is freedom from craving for objects seen or heard of — including heavenly pleasures promised by scripture; its highest form is indifference even to the guṇas themselves, from knowledge of puruṣa (1.15–16).

The kinds of absorption

The first chapter describes samādhi, absorption, in its stages: with reasoning, with reflection, with bliss, and with the sense of “I am” (1.17), all of which still have an object (samprajñāta); and a higher absorption without object (asamprajñāta), where only latent impressions remain (1.18). Some reach it easily, by birth; for others it comes through faith, energy, mindfulness, absorption and wisdom (1.20) — a list identical with the Buddhist “five faculties”.

God and Oṃ

“Or by devotion to Īśvara” (1.23). Īśvara is “a special self, untouched by afflictions, actions, their fruits and their residues” (1.24), in whom the seed of omniscience is unsurpassed, the teacher of the most ancient teachers, unlimited by time (1.25–26). “His expression is the sacred syllable” — Oṃ — and its repetition with contemplation of its meaning brings inward consciousness and removes obstacles (1.27–29).

Obstacles and remedies

The obstacles that scatter the mind are listed: sickness, dullness, doubt, carelessness, laziness, sensuality, false perception, failure to reach a stage, and instability (1.30), accompanied by suffering, depression, trembling of the body and irregular breathing. Remedies include focusing on a single principle, and cultivating four attitudes: friendliness toward the happy, compassion toward the suffering, gladness toward the virtuous, and equanimity toward the wicked (1.33). One may also steady the mind by regulating the breath, by meditating on a luminous inner light free from sorrow, on a mind free from desire, on the content of a dream, or “on whatever one finds agreeable” (1.39) — a remarkably open-minded provision.

The afflictions

The second chapter turns to practice for those whose minds are not yet steady. It begins with kriyā-yoga, the yoga of action: austerity, self-study and devotion to Īśvara (2.1). Its aim is to weaken the afflictions (kleśas): ignorance, egoism, attachment, aversion and clinging to life (2.3).

Ignorance (avidyā) is the root: “taking the impermanent, impure, painful and not-self to be permanent, pure, pleasant and self” (2.5). Egoism (asmitā) is the identification of the power of seeing with the instrument of seeing (2.6). Attachment follows pleasure; aversion follows pain (2.7–8). Clinging to life (abhiniveśa), “flowing by its own momentum, is established even in the wise” (2.9) — the commentators take its presence even in newborns as evidence of past deaths.

The afflictions are the root of karma, which ripens in birth, lifespan and experience (2.12–13). And then a striking verse: “To the discerning, all is suffering” (2.15) — because of change, anxiety and habit, and the conflict of the guṇas. Therefore: “The suffering that has not yet come is to be avoided” (heyaṃ duḥkham anāgatam, 2.16). Its cause is the conjunction of seer and seen (2.17), and its remedy is unwavering discriminative discernment (2.26).

The eight limbs

Then come the eight limbs (aṣṭāṅga, 2.29): restraints (yama), observances (niyama), posture (āsana), breath control (prāṇāyāma), sense-withdrawal (pratyāhāra), concentration (dhāraṇā), meditation (dhyāna) and absorption (samādhi).

The five restraints — non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing, celibacy, non-possessiveness — are “the great vow” when universal, “not limited by birth, place, time or circumstance” (2.30–31). The Sūtras give each a result: when one is established in non-violence, hostility ceases in one’s presence; in truthfulness, one’s words come true; in non-stealing, jewels appear; in non-possessiveness, one knows the how and why of one’s births (2.35–39). The five observances are purity, contentment, austerity, self-study and devotion to Īśvara (2.32). When troubled by harmful thoughts, one should cultivate their opposite (pratipakṣa-bhāvana, 2.33) — a technique often compared with modern cognitive therapy.

Of posture, the text says only: “Posture should be steady and comfortable” (2.46), achieved by relaxing effort and meditating on the infinite; then one is no longer disturbed by the pairs of opposites, heat and cold (2.47–48). Breath control follows, and then sense-withdrawal, in which the senses follow the mind inward (2.54).

The powers

The third chapter defines the last three limbs — concentration as binding the mind to one place, meditation as a continuous flow toward it, absorption as the object alone shining forth “as if empty of its own form” (3.1–3) — and calls them together saṃyama (3.4). Most of the chapter then lists the vibhūtis or siddhis, the powers that saṃyama on particular objects is said to bring: knowledge of past and future; understanding of the cries of all creatures; knowledge of past lives; knowledge of other minds; invisibility; knowledge of the moment of death; the strength of an elephant; knowledge of the universe by saṃyama on the sun, of the stars by saṃyama on the moon; freedom from hunger and thirst; entering another’s body; levitation; and more. But the text warns: “These are obstacles to samādhi, though powers in the waking state” (3.37), and liberation comes only by giving up even the highest of them (3.50).

Liberation

The fourth chapter is the most philosophical. It explains that powers may come from birth, herbs, mantras, austerity or samādhi (4.1); discusses karma and latent impressions; and argues, against an idealist position usually identified with Buddhist Yogācāra, that objects exist independently of the minds that perceive them: “An object is not dependent on a single mind; if it were, what would become of it when not perceived by that mind?” (4.16). The mind is not self-luminous; it is an object seen by the seer (4.19).

When discriminative discernment is perfect, the mind “inclines toward discrimination and gravitates toward isolation” (4.26). In the “cloud of dharma” absorption (dharma-megha samādhi), afflictions and karma cease (4.29–30). The sequence of the guṇas’ transformations comes to an end. And the text closes:

Isolation (kaivalya) is the return of the guṇas to their source, being empty of purpose for puruṣa; or it is the power of consciousness established in its own nature. (4.34)

Reception

The Sūtras dominated Indian discussion of meditation for a thousand years, and even schools that rejected Yoga’s dualism — Advaita Vedānta, Kashmir Śaivism — adopted its methods. The Persian scholar al-Bīrūnī translated them into Arabic in the early eleventh century. Their twentieth-century fame began with Vivekananda, and their phrases now circulate wherever yoga is practised, often detached from their ascetic, dualist and liberationist context. Modern scholars, from Gerald Larson to Edwin Bryant and David Gordon White, have restored that context, and philosophers of mind have read them as a sophisticated phenomenology of attention.

The Sūtras in conversation

“The suffering that has not yet come is to be avoided” (2.16) is the most practical sentence in Indian philosophy. And when unsettled by hostile thoughts, the Sūtras’ advice is simple and modern: cultivate their opposite (2.33).