The Course on the Yogasutras of Patanjali along with Sutra 1.1, a comparative and comprehensive study of six bhashyas now available.
You can also listen to them on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. [Do check back in a bit for the latest episode to upload]
INTRODUCTION TO PATANJALI YOGASUTRAS
Welcome to the course on a comparative study of Patanjali’s Yogasutras. In this course we will be looking at six bhashyas in comparative format.
Each lesson will explain one sutra as it is understood by each of the six gurus. Each sutra capsule is of or just under 20 minutes for easy listening and retention. You’ll be able to take the course on our website where you will have access to the PDFs, and additional resources. You will also be able to listen to parts of it on YouTube, and as a podcast on Spotify, Apple and where you get your podcasts. Those who access it via the website as a course will also be invited to the open Q&A interactive sessions once a month.
The Masters or gurus whose bhashyas we will be considering are Maharishi Ved Vyasa as translated by Sanskrit scholar Ganganatha Jha, Swami Satyananada, Swami Vivekananda, BKS Iyengar, Osho and Barbara Stoller Miller. Of course there are many more commentaries you could refer to, the more well-known ones being by Shri Vachaspati Mishra, Shri Ramananda Saraswati, Shri Ramanujacharya, King Bhojadeva, etc however these are the ones I have chosen to work with. By the end we will have a strong view of both traditional and modern interpretations of the original yoga sutras of Patanjali, such that we will have an understanding of the range, scope and breadth of their application and interpretation.
Why should we do this? There is an insightful line in BKS Iyengar’s commentary in which he points out that in the yoga sutras, the seer is the object of knowledge, unlike say, the brahma sutras, in which brahman is the object of knowledge, and as such, in this quest to find the seer and the doer, which is the self, the yoga sutras become a subjective art, philosophy and science. As such the yoga sutras are open to interpretation and are mutable within the framework of individual practice. There is a tendency in the modern world as the connotations of yoga spread far and wide and become even modular where you can do a 220 hours, 550 hour teacher training and gain a certificate, or even claim to be certified in kundalini yoga, without accessing the spiritual foundations or principles of it. While it is true that in the traditional forms, yoga is a practice, not theory, even so there is a need to understand the theoretical framework inside which we may operate. Because there is one and we cannot gain the mind of the yogi by discarding the framework. We have to climb up through the framework in order to reach the state of yoga by which the framework is discarded and in the modern context we seem to think it’s the other way around. The Master’s commentaries or bhashyas reinforce that framework for us, and the range of them show us that there is still flexibility to the interpretations within the context of the discipline.
Of all the bhashyas the introductions of Swami Satyananda and BKS Iyengar and Barbara Stoller Miller are the most systematic and provide a comprehensive context for gaining the knowledge. Each goes into the definitions of yoga, the categorisations into the bahiranga or external practices of yoga i.e. Yama – social code, Niyama – personal code, Asana – seating power, Pranayama – control of prana, Pratyahara – sense withdrawal, that prepare one for the antaranga or the inner practices that are attained in the last three stages of yoga - Dharana, concentration, Dhyana, meditation, Samadhi, super consciousness.
Swami Satyananda sees Patanjali’s yoga sutra as a categorisation within a larger framework of raja yoga, which includes kundalini, kriya, mantra, and dhyana yogas, while others see Patanjali yoga as inclusive of these and as the same. The eight limbs steady the five koshas – annamaya, pranamaya, manomaya, vijnanamaya and anandamaya koshas i.e. the physical, the pranic, mental, intuitive and that which has the nature of bliss.
The five yamas are Satya, truthfulness, Ahimsa, non-violence, Asteya, honesty, Brahmacharya, abstinence, Aparigraha or non-possessiveness. The five niyamas are Shoucha, cleanliness, Santosha, contentment, Tapas, austerity, Swadhyaya, self-study, and Ishwara pramidhana, surrender to the divine will. The yamas create external equilibrium and the niyamas create internal equilibrium and between them they encompass the sum of our engagements with the world.
Osho correctly points out in his commentary that even if you can recite the sutras backwards and forwards you do not become a yogi by study alone. You have to be centred, you have to have gained the capacity to be. And yoga is not about asana alone, it is about the capacity to be. Discipline, becoming a disciple, is what in the practice of yoga gives you the capacity to be.
Collectively, BKS Iyengar points out, the yoga sutras come after Patanjali’s study of grammar and ayurveda, and these three together are known as the moksha sastras. So there is an inherent progression, from lucidity of speech which can only come from lucidity of thought, health of the bodily form, and it is on that base that we can start using body and mind to reach a yoga, or communion, a state of oneness. To him the four padas coincide with the four ashramas of life, and the four gunas or states of life.
Barbara Stoler Miller defines yoga as ‘that system which yokes one’s consciousness to a spiritually liberating discipline’. What Patanjali is doing is offering us the possibility of complete psychological transformation through the discipline of yoga. In the Indian view the practitioner of yoga is not a passive person, but a spiritual hero who is active and potent. From Patanjali’s perspective the truth of the human condition cannot be known rationally.
So what are the yoga sutras?
There are 195 sutras, or aphorisms, each concise, pithy and meaningful, and divided into four sections – Samadhi pada, Sadhna pada, Vibhuti pada and the Kaivalya pada. The Samadhi pada has 51 sutras and instructs us on definition, practice, obstacles, concrete and abstract communion. The Sadhna pada with 55 sutras deals with the kleshas or afflictions and goes into an overview of the eight limbs with a focus on the first three. Vibhuti pada has 56 sutras and details the five remaining limbs and the development of the siddhis or psychic powers. Kaivalya pada, which has 34 sutras is the deployment of all that has been attained towards clarifying perception and attaining liberation.
Swami Satyananda says Brahma, Hiranyagarbha is the formulator of the yoga sutras through the agency of Patanjali in the 4thcentury. Dates differ. Some says 50 AD, others say, 400 BC, etc. He isn’t certain the Patanjali who wrote the treatises on Grammar and Ayurveda. The basis of the yoga sutras is based in the foundational Samkhya philosophy of sage Kapila. It existed before the time of Gautama the buddha, who studied Samkhya yoga in the ashram of Alarkalam, pointing out the similarities between the Samkhya eight stages of Yoga and the Buddha’s eight-fold path. Swami Satyananda concludes that yoga existed long before Patanjali who made them aphoristic and concise.
Barbara Stoler Miller in her introduction tells a very interesting story of the origins of the tantra of yoga, which we often forget is a tantra, and has a strong feminine aspect to it as well. The name of sage Patanjali, she says, is derived from the small serpent that fell into the hands of his mother as she was offering worship to the sun. ‘Pata’ meaning ‘serpent’ and also ‘fallen’, and ‘anjali’, meaning ‘offering’. Thus sage Patanjali was born of a spiritually cognisant and aware woman, suggesting the tantric underpinnings of yoga. In tantra, the norms of society are overturned to liberate practitioners from worldly constraints, she points out. This releases energy. This releasing of locked energy is the process and purpose of yoga.
While each of the commentators focuses on different aspects as more important than the other, and many differ on etymological interpretations, historical origins, categorisations, you will find several points of resonance between them. That yoga existed before Patanjali. That he gathered this vast and scattered and fragmented knowledge and gave it a concise shape and form. Even so much of it is ambiguous and cryptic. Again pointing to its tantric nature – knowledge that is only revealed by the initiation of a guru, even when the words and practices seem present and apparent, ripe for the picking. That yoga is common to Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism and their aim to free humanity from suffering. That yoga is to be practiced as a continuum with bhakti yoga, the elevation through devotion, jnana yoga, the pursuit of knowledge, and karma yoga, right action in the worldly sense. Swami Satyananda in his commentary points out that having derived from the Samkhya philosophy of Purusha and Prakriti, Patanjali’s uses the term ‘viyoga’, the ‘separation’ of Purusha from Prakriti, the Seer from the Seen, untying the knots and thus deconstructing the act of creation itself.
Yoga’s origins and references, and evolution can be traced through the Mahabharata, the Rig Veda, the Bhagavad Gita, in various Upanishads from the Tejo Upanishad, Yoga Tattva, Yoga Chudamani, Varaha, Darshana Upanishads etc etc…
Thus, as you can tell, the purpose of this course is also to help a student understand that yoga is more than just an exercise or a posture, an asana. As my own guruji puts it, even a monkey can contort himself. Yoga is much more and cannot be divorced from its philosophy or made modular and fragmented. That is going against the spirit in which the Yogasutras were created by Patanjali. It is a wholeness of understanding, pure perception, consciousness, practice and being, that a yogi aspires to.
Thank you for listening. Do also check out Sutra 1.1 now available on the website and shortly on podcasts.
Gayatri,
Mysuru
11/1/2024
Why we study six bhashyas