The Essential Yoga Sutra Read online

  Want to know if you're still seeing things the wrong way? Look at the clothes you have on right now. Do you own them? Yes. Why? Because you control them. Oh, so can you tell me with certainty that you will own them tomorrow? Or may your family be dropping them off at the thrift shop, on the way to your funeral?

  We don't own anything, not even our own body. It is no servant of ours, and we are not its master. No one is in control who has not yet seen.

  And so we relate to the objects around us as though we owned them: as though we could control them in the moment, oblivious to the fact that we are completely at the mercy of whatever seeds we have planted in the past. Completely at the mercy of how we have treated others.

  Seers don't relate to the world this way. During the period after their initial revelation—during the fourth path—those ancient, powerful seeds of ignorance in their minds still make the things around them seem as if they are happening to them and not from them.

  But seers now know that they can't really be that way. And so, in a way, they see the illusion for what it is—even if they can't stop it yet.

  Seers, because they have seen, possess all the tools they need to destroy all of the Great Mistake. Like a boat, this knowledge carries them through six advanced levels, where they perfect the virtues of giving, ethical living, patience, spiritual effort, deep meditation, and higher wisdom. During the seventh level, they manage to stop things from even looking like they come from their own side.

  For seven higher levels, then, we see the illusion as an illusion, and finally stop things from even looking other than they really are: coming from our own seeds. We then embark on three final stages known as the “pure levels,” where we learn to know all things, and to send ourselves out to guide people in many places at once.

  Our wisdom here is beyond needing to stay mindful even of the illusion. This then is the fourth and final higher truth: the truth of the end of pain.

  The brilliance of Master Patanjali's short book on yoga, the reason it has survived over thousands of years, is that it now gives us a very practical, step-by-step program that all of us—regardless of our abilities or the circumstances we live in—can undertake right now to gain these high goals.

  We now begin these steps: the famous ashta-anga, the eight limbs or parts of the yoga path. As mentioned in the opening line of this second chapter, we cover first the five more externally oriented practices, concrete activities where our progress is easy to measure. These prepare us for the three more inwardly focused practices of the third chapter.

  The first of the eight limbs of yoga is self-control, the ability in a sense to restrain ourselves from our more natural, lower instincts. Only the five most crucial forms of self-control are given.

  The first is simply to avoid hurting other people; and remember that in the ancient books of wisdom, “people” means any living creature, however small or apparently unintelligent, since obviously they all feel pain and seek to avoid it.

  The most serious form of hurting is to kill or cooperate in the killing of a human being. All of the ancient texts also state that a human being begins at conception, as consciousness enters the just-combined sperm and egg.

  Really speaking the truth is difficult: it means never giving someone else even a slightly different impression from what you know to be true. The most serious lie is to make false claims about our spiritual realizations. It's also just generally good to avoid divisive talk, harsh words, and idle pratter.

  Stealing is to take or use other people's property without their permission, which includes sneaking phone calls at work; dirtying up the city that we all pay for with our taxes; or ruining the earth for coming generations.

  Sexual purity, for a person who has made a commitment to remain celibate, means avoiding all forms of sexual activity. When joyfully taken on and maintained, this vow grants extraordinary energy and mental clarity. For others, sexual purity means to strictly honor the bond between two other people who are in a committed relationship.

  Avoiding possessiveness begins with making a determined effort to live simply. It also extends to recognizing and trying to stop our very common, very unfortunate feelings of displeasure when others get something nice, or our strange sense of satisfaction over others' problems.

  These different forms of self-control are not an effort by some organization somewhere to keep us from having fun. The world is a messed-up place. The ultimate form of self-control is to stop thinking that this is someone else's fault: we create it with our own seeds. Avoiding actions that make bad seeds and a bad world is simply a smart thing for us to do.

  It's not at all a matter of what religion or race or nation we belong to. Wise people throughout the history of our planet, in every country, have recognized that controlling ourselves is what truly sets us free.

  Five commitments make up the second limb of yoga. Self-control prevents bad seeds; the commitments plant good ones. These then actually create our success in the six other practices to come.

  Keeping clean means striving all day to see that the world and all those around us are sacred. It also means not cluttering up our day with busyness, the craving for countless shallow interactions with others, and piles of completely meaningless junk lying around the temple of our home.

  Contentment is not wanting the things that we don't have and enjoying the things that we do have. Yogis never complain about whatever food or place they may happen to get.

  But contentment doesn't apply to our spiritual progress. We must be committed to finishing whatever hard work we need to, if it means taking ourselves and others forever out of pain. Regular study, in the old days, meant learning and memorizing the great books at the feet of a true Master. Our relationship with this Master is the greatest commitment of all, for without it we can never drink of the living water passed down from heart to heart, over thousands of generations of teachers and their students.

  So self-control and commitments stop new bad seeds and plant new good seeds. But we must also deal with the old bad seeds, stocked in our mental storehouse. Otherwise they will create obstacles for the other six practices of yoga.

  We may not be able to see what we originally did to plant the seeds we have now, but we can decide what we must have done, from how these seeds are sprouting and creating painful pictures in our current health and relationships. This knowledge allows us to actually go in and destroy those seeds, within our own mind.

  Seeds are planted not only by what we ourselves do, but also when someone else acts on our behalf; or simply if we consciously approve of an action. If a person dies in a war, and we have willingly paid taxes for that war, then the seed is the same as if we ourselves had plunged a knife into the person's chest, with our own hands.

  All seeds for suffering—whether outright pain or happiness that decays into pain—are planted through the Great Mistake, as we respond to the events and people around us with mistaken feelings of liking and disliking things that actually come from ourselves.

  There is a way to stop old bad karma. Otherwise things would be hopeless, since mental seeds constantly multiply in strength. A single acorn produces an oak tree weighing thousands of pounds, and mental seeds are no different.

  Identify the most powerful negative seeds you have. Older ones that are causing a serious pain in your body. Newer ones that you remember planting: a particularly serious harm to someone; something done in extreme emotion; an injury to a powerful karmic object such as a parent or teacher.

  The antidote has four steps: the Four Forces. Sit down first, and quietly review all you understand about seeds. Think about your destiny; simply, saving the world.

  Second, feel some intelligent regret—not guilt—about how this action and its seed will delay your destiny.

  The third and by far most important step is to decide not to repeat the mistake. For a health or relationship problem, you obviously need to strictly avoid any harm to others' well-being or friendships—and so on.

 
The fourth force is to take a positive action to counteract the negative one. Volunteer some time at a hospital, for example. Consciously dedicate all four forces to the seed, and it will die.

  What happens if we get good at managing our mental seeds? Remember first that only we can plant our own karmic seeds, and only we experience them when they sprout. (We can also do a good thing though as a group, and each person in that group plants a similar seed; this accounts for the prosperity and poverty that exist on opposite sides of our imaginary international borders.)

  And so the Master says that “in your presence,” something good will happen. And that's why two people can experience the very same yoga class as either an exhilarating adventure or just a very sore neck.

  The more thoughtful and steadily we work with our own seeds instead of trying to wrestle with bad men on a movie screen, the more obvious it becomes that now we are on the right track.

  The first stage is the surprising: a person who's a problem at work greets you warmly. Then the obvious: almost everybody at work starts to smile at you. Next, the amazing: wars around the world suddenly end. Finally, the miraculous: the process of your body aging clearly stops, and begins to reverse itself.

  We have to get out of the mind-set that says telling a lie is only wrong if there's a good chance you can get caught at it. Or that it's only wrong because our parents said so, or our teachers at school, or because some religion says so.

  The more we begin to understand seeds, the more clear it becomes that doing good things is not just right, but also the only way to get what we want—including what we want for everyone else.

  If we work hard at telling the truth, then everyone else begins to be honest with us too, all the time. (Yet please remember the time gap: seeds need time to ripen, although the sheer understanding of how seeds work speeds this up wildly.) And then anything we ever undertake—be it a new business, a new relationship—just “automatically” works out.

  Money karma can be amazing. Money isn't made at a federal facility somewhere. The value of the world economy—every single cent of it—is created by respecting other people's things. Give it a serious, prolonged try. You'll be laughing all the way to the bank.

  It's no surprise that, karmically speaking (which is the only way that works anyway), we can get the kind of relationship we want with someone of the opposite sex only by being very careful not to damage other people's relationships.

  A simple rule of thumb is always to act around another person's partner as if that other person were standing there too. Again, this is not a matter of what we normally think of as “morality”: it's simply the only way that we can ever find a beautiful relationship ourselves; and if everyone acted this way, then everyone would have an amazing partner.

  It's like respecting other people's things: if everyone understood it, then everyone in the world would have all they need. Poverty would be forever eradicated—and this is the only way it will ever occur.

  The Sanskrit word for “strength” here implies both very good health in general and also a clean personal sexual vigor that gives you energy for everything you do.

  If we learn not to clutter up our lives with things and busyness, the mind becomes so still and clear that we can see future events and even other lifetimes. A wonderful skill for success at every level of life!

  If you continue to be very honest with yourself about the amount of pain that's really going on around us all the time, then the simple act of walking down a busy street can be overwhelming: hundreds of helpless, soon-to-be corpses brushing past us in a single hour.

  If though we maintain a clean and sincere spiritual practice, then the habit of watching out for possible angels among us graduates into direct encounters with these beings. And angels really do exist: the idea may seem a little corny, but all the paintings and descriptions of them around attest to the fact that someone, somewhere, has actually met them.

  If the seed thing really works, and if you push it to its limit, then it stands to reason that eventually you'll be surrounded by such beings, all the time.

  Mental purity and physical simplicity lead to a serene state of mind, no longer enslaved by excesses of food or sex. When the water of a lake is perfectly still, only then can we see the full moon reflected in it: ultimate reality, emptiness.

  Want to get rich? It's easy. Simply purposefully collect the necessary karmic seeds to see yourself that way, and you will be. And so, paradoxically it seems, the only way to get a lot of money is to give a lot away, very purposefully and carefully.

  But when the seeds ripen and it all comes back to you, will you be happy? You see, the seeds for being happy and the seeds for being rich are different seeds—and that explains why wealthy people can sometimes be so utterly unhappy.

  The karmic seed that's planted by training ourselves to be satisfied with any level of material comfort is different. This seed ripens as pure contentment, and it's worth a huge amount of wealth seeds. A person who is contented with simplicity has surpassed wealth itself.

  It really is true that there is no school like being put into difficult situations and learning to excel because of them. Karmically speaking, the decision to commit ourselves to something that is truly meaningful forces a lot of old, very dangerous seeds to go off—prematurely, but much more gently than they would have otherwise. It's sort of like the inconvenience of missing a flight that ends up crashing.

  The serious study of the spiritual classics—burning the midnight oil in the pleasant company of the greatest Masters of history—is not much in vogue in our times. Perhaps it's because knowledge has come to be associated with universities and degrees, rather than years of deeply fulfilling apprenticeship under a true Master.

  At any rate, a real Master will demand from us—often painfully so—that we put our studies into actual practice. Which with yoga means an incessant examination of our inner weaknesses: a joy in exposing them and routing them out.

  As we gradually replace our mental stockpile with an increasingly higher percentage of pure seeds, then our Master begins to come to us in ever higher ways. At a very specific point, she comes to us as the one perfect angel who will guide us personally to our final paradise together.

  This is not some wishful fairy-tale thinking. It is the hard, cold, practical, inevitable result of devoting ourselves to the task of cleaning up the seeds within our own mind.

  These lines are the original source for the physical yoga poses as we know them today. Originally these were mostly different types of meditation postures and a few additional exercises that would give you the strength and flexibility to sit in unmoving meditation for long periods of time.

  Here really begins the idea of working on the heart and mind by working from the outside, on the body. By placing the parts of our body into very specific positions, we purposely affect the inner channels. This facilitates the flow of inner wind, or prana. And because our very thoughts ride upon this prana inside the channels, we bring greater kindness and knowledge to our mind, by using our body.

  Meditation is defined as maintaining a balance that avoids mental lethargy and hyperactivity. It is a delicate process of correction and countercorrection, like the constant left-and-right of our hands upon a steering wheel.

  Through practice, we learn to keep a straight line; then we relax our effort and ride, lest the correcting itself become a distraction. With regular practice, body and mind achieve well-bring that really lasts. Ultimately we attain a higher well-being, as the channels themselves transform into light.

  How exactly does this transformation happen? As well see in the next chapter, there are three primary wind channels within the body. The middle channel runs down the center of the back, following the spine. On either side of it run two lesser channels.

  Remember the Great Mistake: how we try to get the things we want in the wrong way, like a child hitting a bad man on a movie screen. This then plants negative seeds that ripen into our very troubled world.

>   When we see things in a wrong way, the inner winds inside the two side channels are active. This is because they are tied to mistaken thoughts about how our world works, and these thoughts run in the same two channels.

  The incredible magic of yoga is that it actually attacks negative thoughts on a physical level, as the exercises release blockages of inner winds in the side channels.

  These blockages cause us to see things in a polarized way: this and that, me and you, what I want versus what you want. When the blocks are freed, then getting what you want becomes getting what I want, and we are both freed.

  If we are doing our yoga exercises correctly then, the side channels open up, which actually causes us to think more clearly and kindly. If you're not getting this effect with your yoga, then you're not doing it properly. At the bottom of everything are self-control and commitments, the seeds creating the yoga poses: Am I taking care of other people, every day?

  In addition to physical exercises that reach down to open the channels, there is an entire science of breathing that touches the inner winds themselves, linked to our thoughts within the channels. Although our breath is not the inner wind, the two are intimately connected. Whatever happens with one resonates with the other, like guitar strings tuned to the same note.

  And so in one direction, working from the outside in, we can remain in a meditation posture or yoga pose and master our breath, which then calms the inner winds: when you stand and hold a horse's reins, the rider atop it is stilled. From the inside out, we can quiet the thoughts and thus the winds: when the rider is calm, the horse is too.