I’m preparing a new book for publication called SUTRA. This book translates and explains the first 122 sūtras of Patañjali’s Yoga-Sūtra, as well as the Buddhist “Heart Sutra” (full title Prajñā-pāramitā-hṛdaya, or “the heart of the teachings on the perfection of wisdom), and also presents a vastly simplified explanation of the twenty Recognition Sutras (from the Pratyābhijñā-hṛdaya).
The intention for this particular book centers on readability as well as accuracy, so it features relatively simple and clear language. Here I present a short excerpt from the book, explaining the second and third sūtras of the Yoga-Sūtra. Please note that this text has not yet been finalized; it will undergo one more edit.
1.2: योगश्चित्तवृत्तिनिरोधः yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ
Yoga is the state in which the mental-emotional fluctuations have become still.
In sutra 1, we learned that the topic of the work is yoga. Many of the ancient works on yoga include different definitions of that term. Sometimes they are very different, and sometimes only a little different. It’s natural at this point that we ask, “What do you mean by yoga, Patañjali?” Sutra 2 answers that question: yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ. This is the most cited sutra of the entire text. However, most translations get it wrong. When we approach a text with an assumption, we often make mistakes. Most people in the modern period approach the text assuming that the word “yoga” refers to a practice or a body of practices. But in Patañjali’s work, this is not the case. We can see this from contextual reading, which means looking at other sources from around the same time. In Patañjali’s time, the word “yoga” primarily meant a state, the result of practice. In the case of the Yoga-sūtra, yoga is the state that results from practicing the eight aids (popularly known as the “eight limbs”). Yoga isn’t the practice of the eight aids (aṣṭāṅga)—it’s what results from practicing them. Once we understand that for Patañjali, yoga is a state, not a practice, we can translate the sutra correctly. The other thing we need to understand is that the word nirodha is a noun, not a verb. Most people translate this sutra as “yoga is stilling the fluctuations of the mind.” But that translation defines it as a practice in which you have to still your thoughts and emotions. That is not what Patañjali is saying, and it would be strange if he was because it is next to impossible to make your mind be still for very long. Quite simply, Patañjali is saying that yoga is the state in which the mental-emotional fluctuations have become still. It’s the state in which all the fluctuations, agitations, churnings, and turnings of the thoughts and emotions have settled down of their own accord. They spontaneously become still as a result of your practice.
Here’s the next important thing to note: Most people translate citta-vṛtti as “fluctuations of the mind.” But citta doesn’t exactly mean “mind.” In Sanskrit, citta is the locus of both thought and emotion. That’s a key point, because many people today conceptualize their thoughts as being in their head and their emotions as being in their heart; two separate loci of inner experience. But in the Indic world, that was never the case. Thoughts and emotions both reside in the same “place,” which is called the citta. Therefore, to translate this sutra correctly, we must say “mental-emotional fluctuations,” not just “mental.” These key and fundamental points are missed in 95% of translations.
Patañjali defines yoga primarily as a state of profound inner stillness that results from disciplined spiritual practice. Why is stillness so central to yoga? Every form of yoga that has ever existed emphasizes the importance of inner stillness. When the mental-emotional fluctuations have become still, it’s much easier to experience yourself as you fundamentally are. Note this important distinction between fundamental nature and what we might call ephemeral nature. The latter refers to the aspects of your embodied being that are always changing, that come and go, as opposed to the aspect of you that is unchanging and that underlies all of those other aspects, and is therefore fundamental. You can’t easily feel what you fundamentally are until the mental-emotional fluctuations have become still.
A simple analogy might help explain this distinction. If you keep throwing rocks into a pool of water, the rocks create waves, and those waves obscure your ability to see to the bottom of the pool. Mental-emotional stimuli are like the rocks that are thrown in the pool and create waves. Thoughts, emotions, opinions, and narratives are all different waves. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with them, but they obscure your ability to see to the bottom of the pool. If you stop throwing rocks in the pool, that’s called meditation. The waves keep going for a while, then slowly die down by themselves and the pool becomes still and clear. That’s when you can see to the bottom without distortion. Of course, this is just a metaphor, because you don’t literally see what you fundamentally are. Rather, what you essentially are is the point from which you do all your seeing. But you can sense it, you can experience it, you can inhabit it. Patañjali argues that you can only fully experience that which you truly are when the mental-emotional fluctuations settle down, come to rest, and become still.
Perhaps one more metaphor can help illustrate what Patañjali means here. Imagine that when you were a little kid, a radio was somehow permanently attached to you. You don’t have control over this radio, and it randomly switches stations. Sometimes it’s only static, and other times, it plays talk radio or advertising jingles. It’s just going all the dang time, but you get used to it because it’s always on. Now imagine that everyone has their own attached radio. But one day you meet someone who says, “Why don’t you turn your radio off?” You would probably say, “What do you mean?” If you’ve never experienced the lack of radio sounds, you wouldn’t know what that person was talking about. Let’s say the person then taught you how to turn your radio off, which involves learning how to not deliver any energy to it. Finally, the radio goes silent, just for a minute, and you hear the most exquisite music. The most heartfelt, subtle, quiet, delicate, but moving melody. “What’s that? Where’s that coming from?” you ask. The person who taught you how to turn the radio off says, “Actually, that music is always there. You just never heard it before because the radio was so loud.”
Patañjali effectively says that we are in a similar situation. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with our thoughts and emotions per se (although many of them can cause us to suffer). The issue is how loud they are. What we fundamentally are is not loud; it’s quiet, and always present, because you can’t stop being what you fundamentally are. You are that right now. It’s not that yoga makes you into a different kind of being. Yoga just helps you realize your true nature. When you abide in and as what you fundamentally are, you experience incredible serenity and the sense that everything is deeply OK. This quiet joy and well-being was always there under the surface, but you never sensed it, or only rarely did, because other stuff was drowning it out. This is why Patañjali says yoga is so important to the spiritual mission of realizing our true nature, and yoga is the state in which the mental-emotional fluctuations have become still.
1.3: तदा द्रष्टु: स्वरूपेऽवस्थानम्
tadā draṣṭuḥ svarūpe ’vasthānam
Then, the perceiver abides in its true nature.
For many people, it takes quite a bit of practice to reach the point where the mental-emotional fluctuations spontaneously settle down and become still. The obvious question arises: Why should we bother? Why should we do all the work that leads to this state of yoga? The answer is sutra 3: “Then, the perceiver abides in its true nature.” This sutra reveals the real point to yoga: When the mental-emotional fluctuations have settled down, we experience our fundamental being. In fact, we could colloquially translate this sutra as: “When yoga happens, we abide in our fundamental being.” The word that’s used here for our fundamental being is the “perceiver” or the “witness.” That term refers to the fact that our essential being has the character of awareness, meaning that awareness and being-as-such are not separable. When you abide in your fundamental being, you are aware of it and as it.
That fundamental being has always been present, throughout your whole life. If you cast your mind back to one of your earliest memories, before you had any idea of yourself, you will find that the feeling of being you and looking out through your eyes was the same then and now. Even though your personality, your body, and your memories have changed, the fundamental feeling of being you and looking out through your eyes has not. Your fundamental being has a wordless awareness. If you can remember back far enough, to before you had much language, this awareness was fully present. Patañjali notes this with the word “perceiver.” Our fundamental being is awareness itself.
This sutra implicitly invites a contemplation of what is most fundamental in all our experiences. What is the thread running through all experiences? What is the single constant in all your experiences? I can tell you that it’s awareness, but the word doesn’t really help you until you investigate what it means for yourself. What is the quality underlying all your experiences? For example, contemplate a happy and joyous experience you had, and compare it to another time where you were sad, heartbroken, or devastated, and maybe also to a third time when you were just bored. Ask yourself: What’s the common element? What’s the constant in all these experiences? That is an experiential investigation. It’s another way of asking the question, “what am I, fundamentally?” Not “who am I?”, which connotes personality and autobiography, but more basic: “What am I?”
The other thing I’d like you to notice is that Patañjali is not saying that our true nature, our inner essence, is hard to attain. How could it be your true nature if it wasn’t what you already are all of the time? In fact, your essence nature is the power by which you’re aware of anything at all. It’s the power by which you’re reading these words right now. One of the most interesting teachings in the yoga tradition is that the truth is always hidden in plain sight. You are always what you are. You can’t stop being what you are. But you don’t yet fully recognize your true nature, and you won’t until those mental-emotional fluctuations can come to rest, even for just a few minutes a day.
What you are is closer than your next breath, yet it’s completely beyond your grasp because it’s not something you can hold as an object. Rather, it’s the point from which all action is initiated. It’s the point from which all seeing is done. It’s the unobjectifiable center of your being. That’s what we’re interested in connecting with through this inquiry called yoga. We learn from the traditional teachings that your essence nature has experiential qualities, namely contentment, serenity, or quiet joy. This experience of pure Being is not neutral, which implies that this contentment or quiet joy is part of our essential nature, not separable from our fundamental being. For the yoga tradition, to abide in your essence nature, even for a moment, is to taste spiritual liberation; that’s the goal of the practice. You can taste the goal many, many times before you continuously abide in it. But here’s the problem: Unless you’re properly oriented to what’s going on, you might regard these moments as just another experience in an endless series of experiences. Sometimes you’re sad, sometimes you’re happy, sometimes you’re bored, and sometimes you experience this simple, quiet contentment. This point is important, though subtle. Tradition says if you regard these moments as just another experience in an endless series of experiences, you don’t recognize your true nature, because you’re focusing on how each experience feels. But to abide in your true nature is not itself an experience; it underlies all experiences. Once you learn how to truly stand in your center and what you really are, you can experience this quiet joy of simply Being while also having any other emotion. Because the joy of Being is part of your essential nature, it’s always there. It’s just often quieter. It’s not an experience, it’s what you are. Notice the word choice in this sutra—it’s very important. Again, you are always what you are, but this is the state of abiding or literally standing in your center. Standing in your true nature, as opposed to being pulled out of your center into an experience by the various phenomena that occur within your mind. That’s the subject of the next sutra.
So this is the point of yoga: When those mental-emotional fluctuations come to rest, what you are is fully revealed. Then, this pure consciousness, this witness, this perceiver abides in its true nature. Tadā draṣṭuḥ svarūpe ’vasthānam. I want to give you a little meditation to help you access this state more directly. You don’t have to wait until you’ve done years and years of yoga. You can get a little taste of it at almost any moment, if you can feel where I’m pointing with the following words. Slow down your breath a little, relax a little bit, and let the body become still. Feel inside to the center of your being, as best you can. Feel into the very feeling of being you. The feeling that’s always been there. Of course, it’s not really a feeling. It’s just that we don’t have a word for it in English. Just relax into it. It’s very, very simple. It’s so simple that if you don’t get it, you’re making it too complicated. Just relax into the feeling, the felt sense of being you. There’s nothing to do. If it helps, you can ask yourself, “What is the one aspect of my being that has always been the same, for as long as I can remember?” There’s no answer to that question in words. Again, just feel into it. “What’s the constant underlying all my experience?” Don’t try to think about it, just feel into it. Just be it, just relax into it. It’s absolutely key that you learn how to relax into that simple sense of Being.