S5E7 Liberation in Classical Yoga
This episode focuses on the idea of liberation in Patanjali's Yoga Sutra (Patanjala-yoga-shastra). We touch a little on how Patanjali's system inherits key aspects from the Upanishads, and then focus on the first four sutras of chapter one, which constitute what is known as the classical definition of yoga. From these foundational sutras, it is possible to get a solid sense of how Patanjali frames a simple definition of Yoga, the nature of the problem of ignorance that Yoga intends to address, and the nature of the liberated state. Crucially, the discussion lends nuance - in a surprising way - to the common notion that Yoga - as "union" - is the desired end of our practices.
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Edited Transcript
Greetings everyone, welcome back. We're continuing this section of episodes in the last part of season five discussing what I call traditional definitions of enlightenment. We're looking at several major traditions that are generally given the name of yoga in some way or other, to see how they all enact the particular idea that liberation and freedom are the goals of yoga, but they don't have the same idea about how that is achieved, nor even what that means when it is achieved.
Last time we discussed the three major interpretations of Vedanta from the three great commentators Shankaracharya, who taught advaita vedanta, or pure non dual Vedanta; Ramanujacharya, who taught qualified non dual Vedanta or vishishtadvaita vedanta, and Madhvacharya, who is a teacher of dvaita vedanta, or the pure dual Vedanta. Now I won't recap everything that we said about the perspectives of these three great commentators, just let me remind you that each centers around the relationship between the individual soul, which we call the atman or the Jiva, and the source of all things, which is known as Brahman. We also mentioned differences of opinion about the ontological status of the temporal world, or the world of our senses: Shankara seems to suggest at times that it's an illusion; and Madhva and Ramanuja both reject that idea. But this concern about how the soul relates to the source, and, what is the reality of the perceived world, are perennial throughout the yoga tradition, and everybody's grappling with those ideas in some way or other.
And we'll see that this is still the case as we begin to move toward the Patanjala-Yoga-Shastra, or Patanjali’s teaching on yoga, and discuss what liberation means, according to him. So if you haven't listened to that last episode, I encourage you to go back and spend some time with it, because some of what I say here goes by way of comparison to the insights that it contains.
Inheritance: Similarities & Differences
Now let me start by listing some similarities and differences between where Patanjali is coming from and the three interpretations of Vedanta that we looked at from Shankara, Ramanuja and Madvacharya, because the yoga sutra comes many hundreds of years after what is called Classical Vedanta in the primary Upanishads. So it inherits many ideas, or a concern for many of the same themes, and we see some of the same players, if you will, in his system.
A major thing that is similar between Patanjali and between Vedanta is the misidentification of the true self with that which is transitory or impermanent. So here we have this idea that ignorance, which is called avidya in Patanjali, means I am suffering a case of mistaken identity, that I believe, and feel, and act as if I am something that I'm not: namely, as if I am something that is transitory or impermanent; something that could come and go; something that could be born; and something that could die. And as we will see, like in most of Vedanta, this is a mistake.
Also, Patanjali’s yoga could be called, like we said last time about Vedanta, gnosiological, or gnostic. And this means that it is heavily dependent on developing discernment between what is true and what is false, or what is real and what is an illusion. Through this discernment, through realizing the ultimate nature of things as a legitimate knowledge that one experiences firsthand. So discernment and realization are keys to Patanjali yoga in the same way that they are in Vedanta.
Now, specifically like Madhvacharya, Patanjali’s cosmology, which means his understanding of the universe (let me just use that word loosely), comes from something called the Sankhya philosophy. And there's a podcast on Sankhya that's well back at the beginning of this entire endeavor that's worth looking into if you don't know much about Sankhya. But this Sankhyan cosmology is dualistic and pluralistic, and so like Madhva, there is a kind of eternal dualism: there is the realm of purusha, or the realm of the eternal, unconditioned, and then there's the realm of prakriti, or nature, or the realm of the conditioned. And in Patanjali’s system, in the same way that is the case for both Madhvacharya and, I believe, Ramanujacharya too, there already exists an infinity of eternal, distinct souls.
Now, unlike Shankaracharya and like Madhvacharya and Ramanuja, for Patanjali, the world, or the realm of prakriti, is real. Specifically for Patanjali, the important thing to realize about nature/the world is that it's not the locus or the ground of our true identity, and its appearance as a changing, moving thing is based on misidentification, or on avidya: the belief, feeling, and the series of actions that emerge when I'm suffering this strange case of misidentification or mistaken identity. That's what makes the world appear for Patanjali, but the world is still real.
Now, in another way, Patanjali shares this idea with Vedanta writ large that action - which Vedanta understood as the Vedic sacrificial ritual - and in Patanjali, action has a little bit of a broader scope than that, but it's still this idea that acting out of desire for a particular reward, any attachment to that kind of action, is a manifestation of ignorance. Ultimately, that is because action involves change, and when you're dealing with the true identity as being the eternally pre- existent soul, it's a mistake to believe that the soul changes. This is really, really revealed in Patanjali’s classical definition of yoga, which we'll look at a little bit more closely in a minute. But let me just go ahead and say it: “yoga citta vritti nirodha”. That means: yoga is the cessation of the whirling in the mind, or in the Chitta. That's a description of stillness. That's a description of what it's like when yoga is happening: things are becoming still and action is being transformed into realization.
For him, also, because of this basic orientation toward action, like Shankara’s Vedanta, Patanjali’s yoga is more on the ascetic or renunciate side of the traditions. He doesn't really give you anything when it comes to what his yoga is about. In fact, he, in chapter three, describes the existence of several miraculous powers that begin to accrue to the practitioner who is sincere over a long period of time, and he recommends very strongly that those powers be ignored, such that one keeps focusing on the goal, which is this discernment between the true and the false, and an ultimate disidentification with that which is false. So he's really more of a pulling back away from the world than he is a kind of “get into things and get your hands dirty”.
Finally, all three great commentators of Vedanta have a devotional element. It's probably stronger in Ramanujacharya and Madhvacharya, and Patanjali also has a devotional element. It's called Ishvara-pranidhana in the second chapter. It's part of his idea of Kriya Yoga, or the yoga of purification. So devotion is indeed part of his project. But you should realize that it's not the focus of his project. It's actually a means to a well rounded approach that includes other things like tapas, or burning intensity/renunciation, and svadhyaya, chanting of the Scriptures, and contemplation of the nature of the self through the traditional revelations. Those three things together aim at the instantiation or experience of Samadhi, the experience of a deep, subtle state of consciousness where attention and concentration are unshakable, and where this unshakability is not a result of personal will. Rather, it's a result of this kind of specific gravity in which things are becoming still, and the lenses through which we perceive are being clarified progressively. So Samadhi is the high and subtle state that will allow discernment, ultimately, to take place, and therefore disidentification from the false to take place. So even though there is a devotional element for Patanjalai it's not the goal for him: it's a means to another end.
Ptanajala-yoga-shastra
Now I'd like to come at Patanjali’s ideas as quickly as I can. There's a lot that we could do when it comes to speaking about the yoga sutra, but we're just going to try to get an idea of its understanding of the problem of ignorance, and how it comes about. This will set us up for discussing what it means to get free in a little bit of detail.
In order to come at this in the simplest way, we should do the first four sutras of the yoga sutra, because really, those first four constitute the classical definition of yoga as is understood by the traditional Hindu darshana. And this is something that I think everyone who's interested in yoga really should be conversant with to some extent. We work really hard here to get our students to be able to recite, in some clear way, the classical definition of yoga.
I'll say these in English. I'm not going to read the Sanskrit just for the sake of time and ease of understanding. Sutra one says, “Now begins the teaching of yoga”. Sutra two is the definition of what it's like when yoga begins to happen: “Yoga is the cessation of the whirling in ‘the mind’”, or in the Chitta. Finally sutra four: When that happens (cessation): “the seer rests or abides in its own form”; “Otherwise (when there is no cessation), the seer is identified with the changing states of mind.”
So quickly again, “Now begins the teaching of yoga. Yoga is the cessation of the whirling in the Chitta (or in the mind). When cessation takes place, the seer rests or abides in its own form. Otherwise, the seer is identified with the changing states of mind”. So let's go through this just a little bit.
Now we've said before that the problem that Patanjali is outlining is: we suffer a case of misidentification: I think I am something that comes and goes, something that is perceivable with the senses; and, all things perceivable with the five external senses are temporal things that come and go, and anyone can pay attention to this at any time. So bondage and ignorance arise from identification, and the Sanskrit word that Patanjali uses to describe identification at the most basic level is samyoga: S, A, M, Y, O, G, A, samyoga. That prefix sam is related to our word the same, or “like”. Samyoga is the yoga of sameness, the yoga of likeness. Sometimes this is translated as conjunction, and sometimes this conjunction is explained as being like a close proximity between the soul and something else. So the problem is that I am “yoga-ed”, as if I were the same as something that is impermanent, and so my soul suffers a case of misidentification. Now, what specifically does this mean?
We mentioned that in Patanjali’s cosmology, which comes from Sankhya, there is the element of purusha, the unconditioned eternal realm. And this is where all the souls are, all the individual atmans are in this eternal, unconditioned realm. Then we mentioned the realm of nature, which itself is eternal. It doesn't come and go itself, but nature is in constant motion, giving birth to objects, and those objects are coming into being and passing away. And this is what nature does. So these two eternal realms are always existing, always already existing. And at certain times, one of the objects that is produced by nature is called the chitta, which means the mind in many contexts. That mind is also called the Anta Karana, or the “inner organ”. This is a very subtle object, but it's something that is born from nature, and it's something that's impermanent and dies.
When the Chitta emerges out of nature, and an individual soul is in close proximity with it, or samyoga-ed to it, the light of the soul, which is eternal (light is the fundamental characteristic of the soul) shines through the Chitta, or the mind, and the world appears: all the things of nature, all the colors, all the smells, all the ideas and feelings that I am a separate individual, and that things are happening to me. I am the experiencer of sorrows and joys and pains, and so on and so forth. But this is actually not the case, because the soul cannot be born and it cannot die, and the Chitta is always born, and it will always pass away. This temporary identification between the two, or this conjunction, or samyoga between the two, is what gives rise to avidya, and therefore, what drives the cycle of birth and death. Freedom from that cycle is, in this context, like In Vedanta, the goal of liberation.
So if we have samyoga, we have the experience of “whirling in the mind”, of constant motion, things coming and going, and the joys and sorrows that come from attaching to those things: we have the hope that they never pass away because they're really pleasurable, or the revulsion to the arising of certain things because those are doubtful, painful things, or scary things, and so on and so forth. So samyoga is coincident with, or an expression of, this whirling of the mind. And remember that yoga, according to Patanjali, is the cessation of that whirling.
Now remember that in sutra four Patanjali says, “otherwise (when there is no cessation of the whirling) the seer is identified with the changing states of the mind”. What is needed in this context is nirodha, or cessation: the beginning of the stilling of this constant movement of the mind.
My teacher translated nirodha as surrender. Some people say cessation. I have seen it translated as control in other places. I don't think that's the best translation myself. The prefix “ni” is not a negation, so it doesn't mean not. Rather, it suggests deep within. So the kind of cessation of the whirling that we're talking about here is something that begins to happen at the deepest part of us, the most subtle part. This is usually a result of, like, an experience of beauty, or an aha-moment, or suddenly being granted insight into a deluded state that I've been suffering under. My teacher also gave examples of experiencing mercy, being shown mercy, or being graced enough to be courageous enough to give mercy. All of these are experiences that kind of stun the mind into a stillness, and that stillness starts at a deep, deep level.
I've mentioned these experiences because I want you to understand that there is a kind of stilling of the mind that happens naturally as a result of just being a human with an attention that is capable of being captured by things that are very profound, as well as things that are not profound and trivial and meaningless. So those profound experiences show us something about the stillness of the mind. Yoga is a kind of practice that wants that stillness to become very instructive, very important for us. So the teachers are hoping that through the practices and orientations that we take on when we begin to do yoga, we will become more conversant with this stillness, and it will be possible to experience it in ways that are very transformative.
In that deep stillness of nirodha, something is possible called Viveka, or discernment. The prefix for the word Viveka is Vi, and that means to distinguish or to separate, like You are cutting one thing away from another thing or seeing one thing as extremely different, or over and against another thing. And the suffix ‘veka’ is related to the word Veda, which has connotations of a kind of knowledge. So this idea of discernment is important, and remember that it arises in this stillness of the mind that is central to Patanjali’s yoga.
When we are discerning, we can see the reality of the eternal soul and the non reality of the transient mind that we are identified with in the state of ignorance, and this means that it is possible for the seer to be dis-identified from the transitory. It's very interesting that Patanjali calls this viyoga, the yoga of separation as it were, the yoga of discernment, or distinction as it were. Remember that ignorance arises from samyoga, the yoga of sameness; now we see that the solution is a kind of discernment arising from a profound stillness of the mind, which allows the possibility of disidentification, where the soul can be abstracted, so to speak, from this identification with the changing states of nature.
Now, in order to give an idea about what this would look like: in identification/ignorance, the light of the soul is shining through the Chitta into the world, illuminating the world and the changing things that happen in the world, and the soul takes itself to be that in some way. But as the mind comes to stillness, because of a series of subtle events that are a little too complicated for me to go in here, the light of the soul begins to be reflected back into the soul itself, and the soul begins to perceive its own eternal Nature, and therefore to see and to clearly know that in contemplation. There is then the realization that I am not the changing states of mind, that I can dis-identify from those states, and realize freedom. This moment where the light of the soul is turned away from the changing world and focused in contemplation of its own eternal nature is what is described in the third sutra that composes our classical definition of yoga: when that happens (cessation of the whirling) the seer rests/abides in its own form”: svarupyam. ‘Sva’ means self, and rupayam comes from rupa, which means form or name.
So notice that the seer is resting or abiding, coming to a kind of profound contemplative stillness, and that also, it is shaped in the way that is proper to it. The form of the soul is what is realized (in ninrodha/samadhi) because in identification, the changing forms of the mind are what the soul takes itself to be. Now that contemplation has been instantiated through a profound stillness, the soul sees exactly what it is, and this is equivalent with resting or abiding in its own form.
This is very interesting, because I think it gives a profound commentary on the diversity of visions of what yoga means. What I mean by that is: we've all heard that the word yoga means union, and I talked about this a little bit in the last episode of the podcast, where, when we look closely at Vedanta, we see that union really is not taken to be 1), the same in all cases, and therefore 2), not ultimately valuable in some cases. In this case, because Patanjali’s Yoga is called the yoga of separation, you can see that samyoga, or the yoga of misidentification/conjunction of the soul with the transitory, is a kind of union that is equivalent with ignorance, and therefore with being trapped in the cycle of birth and death. So for Patanjali viyoga - the yoga of separation - is the goal. He's hoping that the soul will realize its own eternal nature, and that (realization) will equal resting in its form. This will free it from any liability to the birth and death cycle.
Because (in liberation) the light of the soul will be turned toward contemplation of itself, the world eventually will come to a kind of phenomenological stillness, at least. We will not be looking into the world with our light. We will be contemplating our own eternal nature with our light. And so in the advent of liberation, for Patanjali, the world will disappear from our focus. It won't cease to exist; but, because the world has no light of its own, because light only comes from the seer, the world will still be moving and doing what it does, but it's not where the point of focus is.
So it's very important to see that, according to Patanjali, union is the problem. What needs to be the case is that we need to be disidentified from that which we are habitually and unconsciously identified with or unified with. And when this happens, we will realize directly, internally, and intuitively - not through the five external senses - who we actually are; and, we will escape the birth and death cycle, with all of its pain, and all of its uncertainty, and all of the problems that arise with it.
So I hope that this has been interesting. We sure appreciate you listening. Give us a comment somewhere. If you're listening to the podcast, send us a question. We love that. God bless all of you, and we'll see you next time.
