Patanjali

The teaching

Taught from the Yoga Sutras in their four chapters, with their oldest commentary, the Yoga Bhashya.

The stilling of the mind, and its five turnings

Yoga is the stilling of the turnings of the mind; then the seer rests in its own nature. The eight limbs by which it is reached, from the five restraints to absorption, are taught one by one on the page of the eight limbs, among yoga, qigong and tai chi, and the Lord's word, the syllable Om, with the obstacles it clears, on the page of the syllable Om. The rest of the Sutras follows here.

The mind's turnings are five. Right knowledge comes by perception, by inference and by trustworthy testimony. Error is knowledge that does not rest on the true form of its object, as when one moon is seen as two. Imagination is a knowing that follows words with no thing behind them. Sleep is the turning that rests on the absence of content, and memory is the not losing of an object once known. Even right knowledge is a turning, a movement of the mind and not the seer, and so it too is stilled.

The seer and the seen

Behind the teaching stands the old account of Samkhya. There is the seer, pure seeing, consciousness that only witnesses; and there is the seen, nature, woven of three strands: light, activity and inertia, sattva, rajas and tamas. From them come the elements and the senses, and all of it exists for the seer, for its experience and for its freeing. The seer, though pure, looks out through the mind and takes the mind's turnings for its own.

The commentary sets the whole teaching in the order of medicine: as medicine knows the disease, its cause, health and the remedy, so this teaching knows the round of births, its cause, freedom and the means to it. To one who discerns, everything is suffering, because of change, of anxiety and of the habits that pain leaves behind, and because the strands are always at odds. The suffering that has not yet come is the one to be avoided. Its cause is the joining of the seer with the seen; the cause of that joining is ignorance; when ignorance ends the joining ends, and that is the seer's aloneness, kaivalya. The means is discernment that does not waver.

The five afflictions

Five afflictions bind the mind: ignorance, the sense of I am, attachment, aversion and clinging to life. Ignorance is the field of the others, whether they lie dormant, worn thin, held back or in full play. It is taking the passing for the lasting, the impure for the pure, pain for pleasure and what is not the self for the self. The sense of I am is to take the power that sees and the instrument it sees by as one. Attachment follows pleasure, aversion follows pain, and clinging to life flows on by its own force, present even in the wise.

In their subtle form the afflictions are ended by tracing them back into their source; in their active form, by meditation. Actions rooted in them leave a store that ripens in lives seen and unseen, and while the root remains it bears fruit in three things: the kind of birth, the length of life and its experience, sweet or bitter as the deeds were good or ill.

The Lord, and the four attitudes

Devotion to the Lord is one way to absorption. The Lord, Ishvara, is a particular seer untouched by afflictions, by actions, by their ripening and by their store. In him the seed of all-knowing has no equal, and, not limited by time, he is the teacher even of the first teachers.

For a clear mind Patanjali gives four attitudes towards others: friendliness towards the happy, compassion towards those who suffer, gladness at the good, and equanimity towards those who do wrong. Cultivated, they make the mind clear and settled. Among other supports he names the inner light that is free from sorrow, a mind turned towards one who is free of passion, and meditation on whatever one finds good.

The clear crystal and the truth-bearing wisdom

As the turnings dwindle, the mind becomes like a clear crystal, which takes the colour of whatever is set beside it: it coalesces with the knower, the knowing or the known, and shows each as it is. Absorption first holds an object with its name and idea mixed in, then the object alone; first coarse objects, then subtle ones. In the clearness of the last stage there dawns a wisdom that bears only truth, unlike what is learned from hearing or inference, because its object is the particular itself. The impression it leaves holds back other impressions; when even that is stilled, all is stilled, and the absorption is without seed.

The powers, and the farmer

The third chapter lists what samyama, concentration, meditation and absorption held on one object, brings to light. On the sun, knowledge of the worlds; on the moon, of the order of the stars; on the pole star, of their motions; on the circle of the navel, of the body's order; on the heart, knowledge of the mind. Yet these are obstacles to absorption, powers only to the mind turned outward; and when the high beings themselves invite the yogi to enjoy them, he is to feel neither attachment nor pride, for that would bring back what is unwanted.

Powers arise, the fourth chapter says, by birth, by herbs, by mantra, by austerity or by absorption. It is a list of causes, not counsel, and only the mind born of meditation leaves no store of karma behind. Nor do practices make a new nature. They remove what blocks it, as a farmer breaks the bank of a field and the water flows in by itself.

The mind is seen, and the seer is alone

The mind is not its own light, because it is seen, and it cannot know itself and its object in one moment. So there must be a seer beyond it, unchanging, which knows every change of the mind. The mind's habits have no beginning, because the wish to live has none; but they hang on causes, and when the causes go they go. For one who sees the difference between the mind and the seer, the longing to know what the self is comes to an end, and the mind, bent towards discernment, flows towards aloneness. At the last comes the absorption called the cloud of dharma; the strands, their work for the seer done, return into their source, and the seer stands in its own nature.