art+science
The Royal Path
by
Witold Fitz-Simon
(Excerpt
from "Practicing Freedom: The Yoga Sutra of Pata–jali" by Witold
Fitz-Simon, $14.95, available now from amazon.com or directly from the publisher.)
We
know next to nothing about Pata–jali, the author of the Yoga Sutra. Tradition tells us he is an incarnation
of the serpent-god Ananta who descended from heaven to teach yoga to the world
and is often represented in traditional statuary as a serpent, or as having a
hood of many serpent heads. Many
texts have been attributed to men of the name Pata–jali, most significantly an
exposition on Sanskrit grammar and a treatise on medicine, both of which are
also ascribed to the author of the Yoga Sutra in India Tradition. Scholars date these texts as having
come from widely different periods of history, however, with the Yoga Sutra
thought to be the latest of them.
This means he would have to have lived for several hundred years to have
written all three.
Scholarly
opinion dates the Yoga Sutra as being from the second century of the Christian
Era. From the text we can see that
Pata–jali had a deep understanding of contemporary philosophy, coupled with
great skill as a teacher. In
his work he was able both to synthesize and add to the body of knowledge of the
time. As a rule, yogis tend less
to the intellectual and more to the practical side of philosophy. Their concern is to experience directly
the higher states of consciousness that lead to emancipation from the
continuous and eternal suffering of the material world. Pata–jali seems to have combined the
best of both, providing the how and the why of yogic practice. He outlines, with surprising clarity
and detail for such a short work, the underlying rationale of the yogic
perspective without getting lost in minutiae. More importantly, perhaps, is the attention he pays to the
actual practices the seeker must work on in order to achieve the desired freedom. It is for this reason that the Yoga
Sutra has survived for two thousand years and has been referred to and adapted
to fit into the schemas of many other philosophical traditions of the Indian
subcontinent.
The
development of Yoga itself is inextricably tied to the ancient Vedic
sacrificial religion, dating back some six thousand years. What we think of as yoga today most
likely bears little resemblance to the yoga of Pata–jaliÕs time. In the earliest days the union of man
with the divine came in the form of elaborate ritual. As time passed a substantial body of work emerged as the
great sages of the Vedas retreated into the forest to ponder the nature of
reality. Eventually they theorized
that the sacrificial rituals could be internalized in personal
disciplines. A person could
achieve a union with the divine through prayer, meditation and the consuming of
specialized herbs enabling him to transcend material existence and rebirth.
There
are three principle ways of thinking about yoga. Though to be derived from the Sanskrit verb ÒyujÓ - to yoke, to join, to
fasten together Ð the word can be used as a general term for any form of
spiritual or meditative technique or practice. By bringing the mundane and the eternal together, the
practitioner is able to realize the transcendent in our impermanent world. Over the centuries this idea has been
applied to many of the different belief systems that have emerged from the
foundations of Vedic literature.
Thus we have Buddhist yoga as well as Jain and Hindu varieties.
Over
the millennia, different approaches to liberating spiritual practices have
emerged. These can be thought of
not as different denominations, but as different bodies of technique. There are five major categories that are still
practiced today:
Bhakti
Yoga Ð
The yoga of devotion. Involves
chanting, religious ceremony and ritual sacrifice.
Karma
Yoga Ð
The yoga of action. Involves
surrendering the individual sense of self to a larger cause. This involves not only charitable
works, but an attitude of surrender and service in everything the yogin does.
J–ana
Yoga Ð
The yoga of wisdom. This is a
highly intellectual mode of yoga.
It involves careful study and deduction to discriminate between the
transient and the eternal.
Hatha
Yoga Ð
The forceful yoga. By cultivating
what the ancients termed a Òdiamond bodyÓ, the practitioner aims to effect
change on both the physical and spiritual plane through the practice of postures
and breath work.
R‰ja
Yoga Ð
The royal yoga. Following the
techniques put forth by Pata–jali in the Yoga Sutra, the yogin achieves freedom
through the application of will power in the form of meditative practices.
In
writing his seminal text, Pata–jali codified existing yogic philosophy and
practice, adding to it his own gloss and ideas. From this, emerged a whole body of philosophical literature
in the form of commentaries and expositions that evolved into one of the six
orthodox philosophies of Indian thought, or darshanas. Classical Yoga, so named to
differentiate the system from the many other interpretations of yogic ideas,
shares with its sister philosophy, Shamkhya, the dualist concept
that the eternal and the material are forever separate and it is the
realization of this that allows the yogin to free himself from the misery of
continued rebirths. Strictly
speaking, Classical Yoga does not exist as a separate entity in the present
day. Its teachings have survived,
but have been re-interpreted to serve the predominant monistic (all reality is
one) philosophy of Vedanta and the body-centered transformative practices of
Hatha Yoga.
The
word ÒsutraÓ
means ÒthreadÓ, and refers to the ceremonial thread that members of the
priestly caste, the brahmin, wear.
The sutra
style of writing is common in the main texts of the six classical darshanas. The author lays down a number of terse
aphorisms to convey his ideas.
These sutras are often no more than strings of words that do not even
make up a full sentence. This
makes the text easier to memorize, useful in what is primarily an oral
tradition, with the added benefit of obscuring the meaning, requiring a teacher
to interpret it for the student.
A Note On The Translation
In
many of the currently available English versions, translators attempt to stay
close to the sutra
style. The result is often
unwieldy and difficult to read. In
this rendition I have done my best to present the concepts in a readable
fashion. Wherever possible I have elaborated
the sentence structure to deepen the meaning, but without loading the text with
too much interpretation, saving that for the following section. In both parts, as in the study guide, I
have tried to present Pata–jaliÕs concepts in a linear fashion that will allow
the reader to master the ideas for him or herself. There are some sections that I have elaborated more
completely and some that I have glossed over. The Yoga Sutra is not something that you read once and put
away. It is a text that requires
continual study, that one must return to year after year. The ideas are profound and must be
lived to be fully understood.
As
a teacher and practitioner, I come to the material not from a scholarly
perspective, but from a practical and personal one. I began this project purely for myself. I felt a need to get inside the text
and think through Pata–jaliÕs meaning for myself that I could understand it
better. My hope is to provide a
rendition that is easy enough to read casually, but one that also carries
sufficient meaning as to serve as a guide for those who wish to mine its
depths. There are many excellent
scholarly translations that parse and dissect Pata–jaliÕs words, putting them
in philosophical and historical context, some of which are listed in the
bibliography. I encourage you to
seek them out if you are of a mind to learn more. Most of us are not so academically inclined, however. It is with this in mind that I offer
ÒPracticing FreedomÓ up to you.
Enstasy
One
final thought before we proceed with the text. Wherever possible I have tried to present easily useable
English words to stand in for many of Pata–jaliÕs technical terms. The word samdhi presents a problem,
however. It is often translated as
ÒintegrationÓ or ÒecstasyÓ. Though
not exactly incorrect, they do not embody the full meaning of the word. In his book ÒYoga: Immortality and
FreedomÓ, Mircea Eliade coined the term ÒenstasyÓ, from the Greek, to refer to
samadhi. Whereas in an ecstatic
state the practioner elevates consiousness to a higher state by going outside
the body, in an ÒenstaticÓ state, higher consciousness is achieved by going
within. Though the word ÒenstasyÓ
is not a common word, samdhi is not a state that bears any resemblance to
mundane life. For this reason I
have chosen to use it in the text.
(Excerpt from "Practicing Freedom:
The Yoga Sutra of Pata–jali" by Witold Fitz-Simon, $14.95, available now
from amazon.com or directly
from the publisher.)
©
2006 Witold Fitz-Simon.
This
article can be found online at http://www.yogaartandscience.com/yphilo/ysutra/ysutra.html