The Essential Yoga Sutra Page 7

  Meditating upon how things really work functions to destroy the storehouse of negative seeds, as we saw at the end of the first chapter. Gardening is both planting flowers and stopping weeds.

  If our lives are actually run by old seeds sprouting in our mind, then logically life would be a little frustrating. Many of the immediate actions that we take then to get what we want simply wouldn't work out. And isn't that just the way it is?

  Gardening your reality means taking back control over your life. It means knowing exactly how to get the things you want, because you now understand precisely what seeds to plant and how they will ripen. This is yoga; this is true practice.

  Most people are constantly and blindly planting three kinds of seeds in their mental garden: many moment-to-moment little black negative seeds; a lot of “neutral” seeds that are planted by our constant, fundamental misunderstanding of things; and the occasional nice white seeds, from helping someone.

  You must understand that even white seeds planted without understanding cause pain, because they wear out. Millions of white seeds have created your life, and it is leaking away as you read these words. True practitioners do the same good deeds with understanding; instead of planting impure white or black seeds, they plant only pure white ones, and thus run their lives themselves.

  You can recollect or think about your fantastic vacation spot right now, but it's not the same as being there—it's only a mental picture of being there. So if everything is just mental pictures anyway, why isn't it the same as being there?

  When we think about a nice place, a seed has ripened in our mind to imagine it. When we are sitting in a nice place, a seed has sprouted to be there. And so (as you may have noticed) it doesn't matter how much you want to be there, you're not going to get there just by wanting to be.

  The only way to get there is to purposefully plant the right seeds—say by providing a nice vacation for someone else. Then sit back and wait for the fireworks.

  A person who's gotten very good at mental gardening though utilizes a powerful inner catalyst of knowledge and wanting to help others. She can then frame even distant events mentally, and thereby be there. She reaches backward and ahead into infinite time with nothing left unknown.

  When misunderstanding stops, the old storehouse collapses, replaced by self-perpetuating, pure seeds.

  Here's another easy demonstration of emptiness. The boss bursts into your office and yells at you for blowing a customer's order.

  In reality his face is only some reddish color, and his voice a certain number of decibels. But the seeds in your mind go off and impose upon this the finished image of an unpleasant person.

  Someone else in the room may feel that he's being quite reasonable. That person's seeds are laying a different picture on him. Neither image is necessarily correct. It's not that unpleasantness or pleasantness is flowing from the boss. And that's his emptiness.

  Ancient meditators were able to establish that the impression of time passing only occurs because of sixty-five separate images that go off in our mind every fingersnap; interestingly, about the number of frames per second in a film.

  Time itself is just like the boss. How fast we see it pass—at the dentist or with a good friend—depends only upon our seeds. Those who see these subtle details can define their own time, by gardening.

  Because emptiness is the foundation underlying all events, we are all capable of seeing everything that happens, in this one moment.

  If emptiness is the most important thing—the foundation allowing all other things to happen—why is it so difficult for us to grasp?

  For the answer, we return to the Great Mistake. We've said all along that—on one level—every single perception we ever have is mistaken. But if our mind is making some fundamental error every moment of our lives, then how can we ever catch ourselves making this mistake? The very instrument we're using is itself defective.

  Some people claim that we never can see the truth with this defective mind. Others say we can, if we work by way of our self-awareness: a little independent corner of our mind that listens to and watches it, even though the mind itself never sees anything correctly.

  The great Masters of history say that both of these ideas are silly. As Master Patanjali himself mentioned in the opening verses, there are two other routes for approaching the foundation truth of emptiness. One is reasoning—like an actor in a movie who explains to the audience how the movie can't be real. This leads to a direct, correct experience of ultimate reality during meditation, triggered by the purest of seeds.

  If you think about it a moment, it's clear that the only way we can say something exists is if we, or someone, know it. Perhaps not always directly, but at least through its effects: we “see” the wind blowing through the trees.

  If there is a higher reality that saves us and underlies all things, then it must also support a perception of it. Objects depend upon subjects, and subjects rest upon objects. Neither can exist without the other. It's not true we can never see the truth.

  The mind is like a mirror: place an object in front of it, and the mirror assumes the likeness of that object. It's not true that we can't watch our own mind simply with our own mind—even without some exotic bystander—to discover how it's making the Great Mistake. Everyone, regardless of her spiritual level, is watching her mind work all the time, including those on both routes to truth.

  Our physical senses detect outer stimuli; our mental sense detects inner images and thoughts. In a millisecond, these as a group are presented to the mirror of our mind—and we see the world and ourselves.

  Subjects and objects then are necessarily different, and separate. The ancient Masters said that the mind is like a knife: it cannot cut itself If the mind could see itself in a single moment, it couldn't be what was being seen, or what saw it.

  Now, this doesn't at all contradict what we said back in the second chapter about the perception of separate subjects and objects being what causes all our problems. But here “separate” refers only to subjects and objects that aren't coming from the same place: from the seeds within our own minds.

  It's important to realize that it's not at all the case that we are just living in our own minds, confined there forever. Outer objects and other people may be a result of images that I am creating, but that doesn't mean they're not real, that they don't exist “out there.”

  The seeds create them as out there. If you don't think so, go out and stand in front of a moving car. Its steel bumper, which your seeds are projecting, will strike your leg—which you are also projecting—and you'll go to a projected hospital and get a very real projected hospital bill.

  But if the mind cant see itself, how then can I be aware of myself at all? How can I listen to myself think?

  Take a moment to think about how you hear yourself think. Listen to the thoughts in your mind.

  Now—a question. Are you the one who is saying what you hear? Or are you the one listening to what you hear? You see the problem.

  We are indeed though undeniably hearing ourselves think. What's actually happening is that seeds from how we have treated others are going off in our mind and presenting thoughts to the mirror of our mind. We are not thinking our thoughts—the seeds are.

  But if that's the case, am I forever to be simply a helpless witness of what the seeds present to me—whether it's the outside world or my own thoughts? What happened to free will?

  Come on, that's what this whole book has been about. You can't control the present moment. It's happening to you. It's like dry cement.

  But you have every power and right—and you must use this power and right—to select what new seeds you plant in the garden of your mind.

  We've established then that the mind sees everything it sees—even itself—only when objects are presented to it, the subject.

  Here the Master reminds us of where all these objects—and of course even the mirror itself—are coming from: countless seeds within our minds, planted th
ere by how we have treated others. And so if you think about it, it makes perfect sense that real yoga doesn't begin with the third limb of yoga—the yoga exercises. Rather, it begins where it must: with the first limb, self-control, taking care of others.

  You see, it's not that the physical yoga can do anything for you. It can't. It's empty: it could break your neck as easily as reduce your waistline. Whether yoga works on you—whether medicine works for you, whether your car starts today, whether the sun itself comes up tomorrow—all depends upon how the seeds organize your reality.

  Nothing does anything to anything else. Nothing has any power to do anything. If anything works at all, it is only because we have cared for others.

  In Master Patanjali's time, people didn't relate to books the way we do: to read once from cover to cover, put away, or toss out. A relationship with a really meaningful book was like a marriage. You sat down and read it, studied it—probably memorized most or all of it. You kept it with you, as a friend and help-mate, your entire life.

  Now that you've read this book, you need to use it. You need to get through the five paths that every seeker must travel.

  First you probably need a personal disaster—a divorce, or personal illness, or loss of a loved one—to get you asking questions, to pick the book up.

  Second you need to study it carefully; seek out “live” guidance if you can. Spend a lot of time thinking about the seeds, and especially that idea of emptiness. You'll need to plant new seeds to grasp all this. Be good to people, dedicate it to understanding.

  Third part: learn to meditate properly, work toward gaining ultimate love and seeing ultimate truth. About twenty minutes in this gets you to the fourth path, discriminating now between how things seem and how you know them to be different.

  If the third path happens in minutes, traveling the entire length of the fourth path may take you a lifetime or more.

  This is a period when, by tradition, the physical practices of yoga are very important: working from the outside in, as well as the inside out. Banging on the outside of a blocked pipe to clear it, as you push a stick down the inside at the same time. Working to loosen the choke hold of the side channels, the misunderstanding of subjects and objects: ourselves and our world.

  At this point we possess the tools for working on the storehouse, but our work is still imperfect. The work itself can trigger minor explosions in the interim, like clearing an old minefield. We encounter obstacles, but we have seen how the end will be, and there is no despair.

  Say you meet an angry person. How much longer can you get upset, knowing first that you have created him; and second that your old, natural reaction is precisely the one that will keep him in your world?

  So first the negative emotions go, and then gradually all the seeds related to them—all killed by sheer understanding.

  We spoke before about ten high levels of spiritual development. We reach the first one when we first see ultimate reality on the third path. Up through the seventh level, we are on the fourth path using what we understood about ultimate reality, keeping our mind on the distinction between what seems real and what is real.

  Toward the end of the fourth path we pass through those three final levels—the “pure” levels—and destroy the last subtle seeds that limit us: everything at all related to old negative thoughts and actions. Whatever we have ever done wrong, in countless lifetimes, is forever cancelled and erased.

  The tenth and final level—the very end of the fourth path—is called the “galaxy of the teachings.” We are already capable of visiting the perfect paradises of angels who have come before us, to learn from them. We are on the threshold of releasing billions of copies of ourself into the universe, to share the teachings of this small book in showers of wisdom that spread like galaxies.

  As a culture, we tend to think that we know more than people did before us because—well—we know more things. But there is also knowing a thing well: knowing how it really works. If we know this one thing, then knowing all the things there are to know, across the breadth of the ocean of this entire universe, becomes no more than stepping over a puddle of water.

  Please don't be fooled by life, and by the small-minded people of the world, by skeptics, into believing that you are not capable of this, of becoming an actual angel, who sees all things and helps all living creatures.

  This little book on yoga has lasted for two thousand years, because it works. In our modern times the ideas you've studied here may not be widely discussed or accepted, but if you're honest with yourself, you have to admit they make a lot of sense.

  It's not just that these ideas may apply to some small part of your life. They are pointing you to your entire destiny—to the very reason you came into this world—and now it's up to you to fulfill that destiny.

  We crave the idea of a beginning—it makes us feel more comfortable. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Where did the first seed come from?

  A seed is always planted by reacting to the product of an earlier seed: every person who has ever hurt you came from a seed that was planted when you hurt someone who hurt you before. There is no first seed, such a thing cannot be. We have been here forever, because we have always hurt back those who hurt us.

  It seems like a cycle that could never be stopped. But one thing will save us: something we call a “spiritual antidote.” If two ideas are struggling to win a single heart, and if one of them is false and the other is ultimately true, then truth will always prevail.

  The ultimate antidote for all the pain of the entire world is emptiness: things that do things simply aren't there, and never were. We don't need to struggle with them anymore. We don't need to flail away at the bad man on the movie screen.

  Things work only because they come from us, from our seeds— from taking care of each other.

  Geshe Michael Roach is the first westerner in 600years to pass the rigorous test for the title of Geshe, or Master of Buddhism, at Sera Mey Tibetan Monastery, after twenty years of study in the yoga and philosophy of India and Tibet. He is an honors graduate of Princeton University and has received the Presidential Scholar medal at the White House. Geshe Michael is the author of over thirty translations of ancient texts, as well as books such as the international bestseller The Diamond Cutter and The Tibetan Book of Yoga.

  Christie McNally is a translator and teacher of ancient Tibetan and Sanskrit texts. She is a graduate of New York University, and has trained at Tibetan monasteries in Nepal and India. She is a professor at Diamond Mountain University and has studied yoga extensively with some of the greatest Indian, Tibetan, and western masters. She recently completed the traditional Great Reatreat of three years, three months, and three days in the high desert of Arizona.

  The authors would like to express their special thanks to Ms. Kimberley Veenhof, director of the Yoga Studies Institute (YSI), for her constant encouragement and assistance in completing The Essential Yoga Sutra.

  All proceeds from this book are being donated to YSI, a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to preserving the ancient manuscripts of yoga; translating them; and presenting this authentic wisdom to the modern world, in yoga schools and centers of all traditions, around the globe.

  YSI provides seminars that bring alive the Yoga Sutra—and other authentic ancient yoga classics and techniques. Please contact the Institute at yogastudiesinstitute. org for information about having a YSI event at your local yoga school or center.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Roach, Michael, 1952–

  The essential Yoga sutra : ancient wisdom for your yoga / Geshe Michael Roach and Christie McNally—1st Three Leaves Press ed. p. cm.

  In English and Sanskrit (romanized); includes translation
from Sanskrit.

  Includes index.

  (alk. paper)

  1. Pataäjali. Yogasatra. 2. Yoga—Early works to 1800. I. McNally, Christie. II. Patañjali. Yogasutra. English & Sanskrit. III. Title. B132. Y6P24337 2005 2004062090

  eISBN: 978-0-307-49997-4

  Copyright © 2005 by Geshe Michael Roach and Christie McNally All Rights Reserved

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