PHILOSOPHY

AN INTRODUCTION TO

PATANJALI AND THE

YOGA SUTRAS

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Patanjali is one of the most influential pragmatic yoga philoso-phers who has survived the test of time. His work the Yoga Sutras, literally ‘the threads of yoga’ was probably written about 200ce, making it almost 1800 years old.

There are lots of different versions of Patanjali’s work around, I’ve written a reappraisal of the sutras which you can get off my web-site. Whichever version you choose, have a copy of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras to hand and read through it as we go through this se-ries of articles. In my view it’s good to formulate your own views through study and it will help you to go deeper into this key yoga text which is an invaluable resource.

Patanjali was clearly an adept of yogic practice and a wise philos-opher who was very aware of the deeper yogic teachings of his time. Of all the many teachings of yoga, Patanjali’s have survived the tests of time to become one of the root teachings of yoga.

Scholars have pointed out the similarity between Buddha’s teach-ings and the Yoga Sutras. Buddha himself was a yogin, whose teachings were prevalent in Indian culture, courtesy of Emperor Asoka who became a Buddhist and spread Buddha’s teachings across the Indian subcontinent.

Patanjali writing 5 to 700 years after Buddha was influenced by Buddhist teachings on the nature of mind, and by the old Sam-khya schools of yoga as well as the emerging theistic and devo-tional schools of yoga. Patanjali in his turn influenced all of these through his work.

Patanjali, the author of the Yoga Sutras, is also said to have writ-ten an important grammatical text called the Maha-Bhashya as well as being a great Ayurvedic practitioner and teacher. Mythol-ogy places Patanjali as the reincarnation of the divine serpent Ananta, upon whom the great god Vishnu reclines. Vishnu is the maintainer, the one who preserves and cares for the cosmos, so Patanjali’s work is about healing, wellbeing and good living. Pa-tanjali is honoured as the great being who brought the powerful skills of grammar, medicine and yoga to humankind.

‘Pat’ means to ‘fall’ and ‘anjali’ is the ‘palm of the hand’, ‘anjali’ is also the ‘palms joined in prayer mudra for the guru’. So Patan-jali could be understood as falling from heaven in answer to the prayers of humanity who wanted good health, wise speech and enlightened minds.

Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras consists of 195 or 196 verses dependent on the version. These verses or aphorisms are called sutras. ‘Su-tra’ literally means ‘thread’; it is the same word we get the English word ‘suture’ from. These essential threads of teaching are divid-ed into four chapters or paths (padas). The four chapters are all on the nature of freedom and how to directly experience this. Since the whole work is aimed to help you directly experience freedom it is eminently practical. The only problem is we have to practise!

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Through lifestyle and appropriate

methods of yoga practice it suggests

that even the disturbed mind can have

momentary glimpses of awareness that

can lead us deeper into yoga.

““

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WRI

TTEN

BY

CHRISTOPHER GLADWELL CHRISTOPHER HAS PRACTISED AND STUDIED WITH MANY GREATS AND DEVOTED HIS LIFE TO YOGA, MEDITATION AND AWAKENING FOR 35-YEARS. HE IS A CERTIFIED TRAINER AND PRACTITIONER OF HYPNO-PSY-CHOTHERAPY AND NLP, WITH A WIDE EXPERIENCE OF MEDITATIVE AND MINDFULNESS PRACTICE, INCLUD-ING DREAM YOGA AND DZOGCHE, AND TEACHES THE NATURE OF MIND FROM EAST¬ERN AND WESTERN PERSPECTIVES. HE IS THE AUTHOR OF FIVE YOGA BOOKS. CHRISTOPHERGLADWELL.COM

The first chapter is titled ‘Samadhi-pada’. This is the path of ecstasy, and is for the student with samahita citta or balanced-absorbent mind, with only occasional wan-dering. It acknowledges mind as a tool, which can work for us towards cultivating a deeper relationship with the source of our being. Here subtleties of meditation are suggested for students at their most adept.

The second chapter ‘Sadhana-pada’ or the path of prac-tice is for the vyuthita student or those with disturbed (froglike) mind with occasional moments of steadiness and lucidity. For this froglike mind, the methods of yoga practice are presented in chapter two that assist us to harness our mind’s potential. Through lifestyle and ap-propriate methods of yoga practice it suggests that even the disturbed mind can have momentary glimpses of awareness that can lead us deeper into yoga. This chap-ter focuses on the methods of yoga practice, including the physical practice of asana, that help calm the busy mind. Asana is the third limb of the Ashtanga yoga sys-tem presented in Patanjalis’ Yoga Sutras. The first five of these now famous eight limbs that focus the wandering mind are presented in this second chapter.

The third chapter or ‘Vibhuti-pada’ is the path of fruits. This third chapter discusses the aspects of practice that will facilitate deeper meditational awareness as well as the fruits of practice. The practices in this chapter include the three meditative inner limbs of the Ashtanga system.

The fruits of practice are presented here as supernor-mal powers or siddhis. These include being able to see through the web of space time, read minds, understand the movement of the stars such as in astronomy and as-trology and know aspects of the future. These siddhis arise naturally with the synergy of the inner three limbs of the Ashtanga system, dharana, dhyana and samadhi. It is by non-attachment to these naturally arising powers and going deeper in practice that one enters into authen-tic freedom or kaivalya. Siddhis are simply the fruits of practice for the steady and absorbed mind. Getting at-tached to these siddhis stunts our spiritual development. Moving beyond them allows the arising of freedom.

The fourth chapter, the ‘Kaivalya-pada’ or path of libera-tion, takes us beyond the practices of chapter three to-wards the ultimate goal and realisations of yoga, to ex-perience formless awareness as the root of mind and the nature of our essential being that is distinct from mat-ter. This is the absoluteness that is without qualities, the cosmic reality that is a realisation of unlimited beingness; this is yoga.

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