The Second Book of the Yoga Sūtras opens with the definition of Kriya yoga: tapas, svādhyāya and īśvarapraṇidhāna. As you may remember, we encountered these three elements as part of the 5 niyamas, but here they are considered as separate and an essential part of what has been called “the path of action”. Perhaps a better way to put it is the one suggested by Nishala Devi. She renders it as “yoga in action”. I think this gets straight to the point, since the whole aim of this Second Book is the practice of yoga as a way of life.
The first element of kriya yoga, i.e., tapas, is not easy to translate. As it is usually the case with Sanskrit terms, they are loaded with meaning and history. In the context of the Yoga Sūtras, tapas is usually understood as self-discipline, a rigorous effort, or, in its most ascetic sense, as a practice of submitting the body to austerities. There is a chant in the Vedas, called Nasadiyasukta, which is a beautiful poem about the origin of the universe, about how it all came to be. And there is a line where it describes how, from the depth of darkness, the breathing One emerged out of its own Ardor. This refulgence or shining desire has been traditionally associated with tapas, as a divine inner will or power to emerge, act, or be. This is why tapas is also considered the main component in karma yoga, the path of selfless action, where all our deeds are dedicated to others and the divine in order to overcome the ego. It is thought in Yoga philosophy that when we detach from our own interests, ego or expectation, only then we can connect with a deeper force inside us, that divine will out of which everything comes to be.
In our yoga practice, though, we can relate tapas with self-discipline; the effort that we put (ideally selflessly) not only into our poses and meditations, but also and most essentially, into detaching from the small or big things that distract our mind from remembering that we are beyond our own limitations and dualities. Tapas is also that inner heat felt in the body after or while doing a pose, a pranayama or a meditation.
Svādhyāya is “self study”, but it is traditionally related to the reading and understanding of the sacred or philosophical texts that have as their aim liberation. It makes a lot of sense to relate self-understanding with understanding of sacred texts, for it is through them that we can reflect upon how the teachings relate to our lives. It is not just for the sake of knowing what they say, but for getting to know things of ourselves that otherwise would be harder to grasp. This aspect of kriya yoga is usually associated with the one called jñāna yoga, the path of discernment. The whole idea of “knowing ourselves” is to discern between what we really are, and what we are not. This is a constant idea throughout Yoga, Sāmkhya, Vedānta and other hindu philosophical schools. And we will keep trying to figure out what that really means (of course I do not mean only through these summaries but throughout all our lives)!
The third element, īśvarapraṇidhana or surrender to the Divine, refers to the already mentioned aspect of devotion, the bhakti. We talked about this in the First Book when it was mentioned as one of the options to focus our mind and bring it to a state of nirodha. Here, however, it is not put as an option but as an essential part of the practice. Does this mean that yoga is religion after all? As you may remember when we talked about this topic, I prefer to translate īśvara as the Divine and not as God, because this word is so culturally charged with a meaning that may not be appropriate within this text. The idea of bhakti or devotion in its simplest terms is just to humbly recognize that there is a greater force in the universe that surpasses us, that plays with us, that loves us. Bhakti refers to the loving relation we establish with life and the universe. Some people may want to call it God, and certainly, in its historical expression, the ones who follow the path of yoga emphasizing the bhakti aspect tend to give a name and a personification to such divine force, such as the well known Krishna devotees.
Now, the next few sutras of this Second Book talk about the purpose (arthah) of this practice. “For the experience of samādhi and the attenuation of afflictions” (YS II.2). Notice that the Yoga Sūtras say that practice reduces, rather than eliminates, afflictions. Why? Was it not supposed to take us towards liberation and liberation is that state beyond afflictions and non-afflictions? It is as if the Yoga Sūtras were pointing out to a deeper level of practice or stage beyond kriya yoga that would actually eradicate them. But we may only be able to understand whether afflictions are reduced or eliminated after we talk about the theory of karma.
The afflictions (kleśas) are five (YS II.3): ignorance (avidya), ego (asmitā), attachment to desire (rāga), obsession to avoid unpleasant experiences (dveśa), and fear of death (abhiniveśa). Avidya is considered to be the origin of them all. It is because we forget or mistake our true nature (as pure conscious beings) that we identify with a limited form, description, label. We think we are our personality (our likes, dislikes, believes, desires, etc.), and thus, every experience that threatens it makes us suffer. From the ego, emotions born out of pursuing desire or avoiding pain come just as naturally. And it is because of our deep immersion into this way of living, that we fear death. Abhiniveśa is also translated as “clinging to life”. Etymologically comes from abhi-ni-veśa, “to enter into completely”. So strongly do we settle in our emotions, ideas, mindset, or experience, that we do not want to let them go.
Such afflictive causes are of a very subtle nature (YS II.10), and most of the time they pass unperceived by us. Because they are so subtle, the only way to eradicate them is by bringing the mind back to its original state. But how do we do that? Remember First Book gave us many different ways of focus our mind? The Second Book says it again, the way to bring our mind back to their natural state is through meditation (II.11) There is so much to unpack here! We have come to the core of the Psychology of Yoga:
Every perception we receive from the world gets registered as a vṛtti in our mind (citta). Some vṛttis come and go, but repeated vṛttis stay, not only as memories that we can retrieve, but also as emotional experiences that sometimes we do not remember anymore and go deep in our subconscious mind. They gather together and leave an “imprint” in the mind, a saṁskāra. Those impressions start configuring and shaping the way our mind thinks and perceives the world. Certain beliefs make us do certain things. Experiences, emotions, convictions, etc. make us see the world in a certain way. Our patterns of perception and action create a habit, and such shaping of the mind is called vāsāna. In a sense, we always perceive the world through “lenses”, the lenses of our vāsāna. When we look at the world through lenses we do not see the glasses. We need to do a special effort to look at them, to notice their shape or how clean they are. We usually just take the glasses off and clean them with a cloth, but we cannot take our minds off! Instead, what we can do is try to silence our thoughts, or better said, to find the silence between thoughts. This is what meditation does for us. It brings a different impression to our mind so that it can focus in one thought, in one wave, so that the rest of the mind starts aligning with that focus of attention. Remember that the whole point of bringing the mind to a state of focus is to become aware of our own thoughts and to eventually let them go, in the deepest sense of the word.
As long as we do not let go of those deep impressions, they keep conditioning our experience of the world. They keep determining the way we act, or think, repeating the same patterns that make us suffer or get attached. Sutras II.12, 13 and 14 refer precisely to this cycle of perceptions-impressions-patterns-actions-suffering-perception… This whole cycle, called samsara is geared by ignorance, because the only thing that triggers it is our identification with those states of mind. And for better or for worse, this process does not end with this physical body. The nature of mental impression is not to be stored somewhere in the brain, much more, they are patterns of existence that need to come to fruition. So even though this physical body dies, those mental patterns that were not reduced to the original mind, will still be determining existence whether in this life or in another, whether in this body or another one. That mental pattern will find a place to realize itself, as a type of birth, a span of life, and quality of experience (YS II.13). This is the famous theory of reincarnation and karma. Whatever is in the mind, manifests in life. So if we do not want something to manifest, we need to burn the seed of its cause, the root of those determined and blind actions, that is, the stock of karma or (karmaśaya).
There was a very interesting question-commentary regarding this process. “This is all very deterministic. It seems as if all yoga was about had to do with detaching from this conditioning process of cause and effect. There is no much creativity on this.” In a sense this is true, for it is the distracted mind which is unconsciously determined by its own conditionings. But the way to get out of this is definitely a transformative and creative process. As it was mentioned in class, the best metaphor for this is the one used in the Bhagavad Gita, which puts it in terms of the fighting for the recuperation of the kingdom. The king is ourselves, the kingdom is freedom, and the field of battle is the mind. It is a very creative process because the transformation of our minds brings transformation in our experience and in the world.
As Patañjali will say in the next sutras, the mind in itself is just an infinite realm of possibilities. To take our mind to that state where we realize such infinity is the purpose of meditation. My philosophy teacher at UH, Arindam Chakrabarti, says that the state of ultimate liberation only comes when we, our bodies and minds are dissolved back into the origin, consciousness and matter. In other words, afflictions are ultimately eradicated from our minds when there is no more mind (ultimate death?). This may sound very radical, but perhaps it is a very deep truth that we cannot fully understand. Perhaps the only way to manifest in a finite form such as this body and this experience is through ignorance and ego. Otherwise, there would be no desire to experience anything, for we would know that our true self just is.
This takes us into the topic of the Cosmogony of Yoga, that is, the narration of how it all came to be. But it will have to wait until next post. In the meantime, enjoy your vṛttis.
