Yoga Sutra Study
admin on Mar 17 2009
An exploration of the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali
Welcome to the beginning of an on-going exploration of the seminal teachings of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra.
Our reference will be the new Translation and Commentary, The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, by Chip Hartranft (2003 Shambala Classics). This commentary, written just a few years ago in 2003, reads clearly and as Stephen Cope comments, “combines intellectual precision with emotional accessibility.” This book, along with Stephen Cope’s two giant contributions, “Quest for the True Self,” and “The Wisdom of Yoga,” provide a firm foundation of yoga philosophy that is invaluable for any serious student of yoga.
I have experienced why Stephen Cope recommends Chip’s “Sutra” so highly. It reads easily and beckons one on to the stunning, sometimes obtuse territory of this classic road map of human consciousness. I will share blogposts as I move through this commentary on the 196 short aphorisms that demystify how the mind works, and they will be compiled in the literature/study section.
In the very first pages of the introduction Chip lays out these enticing thoughts.
“The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali is one of the most enlightening spiritual documents of all time. It analyzes how we know what we know and why we suffer. It also provides a meditative program through which each of us can fulfill the primary purposes of consciousness: to see things as they are and to achieve freedom from suffering.
The practice of yoga is meant to… reign in the tendency of consciousness to gravitate toward external things, to identify with them and try to locate happiness in them. Steady practice teaches consciousness how to turn inward toward itself and realize the true nature of its underlying awareness.”
Please join me on this journey of exploring the Sutras by reading along. I welcome your comments and questions–this will be a journey we take together as yogis and yoginis in pursuit of an understanding of the true self. If you are interested in purchasing the same version I am studying, you can visit Amazon.com (or click here) to order it new or used.
As an awareness, for next time I will be reading Prakrti and Purusa, pg xi – xiii in the introduction. I am taking this in small chunks. It bears chewing well!
Prakriti and Purusa
In this next section of the introduction of Chip Hartranft’s The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, the yogic perspective on the nature of reality is laid out. It’s punny to say this is heady stuff, because it actually refers to what we think of as being beyond heady, beyond intellectual thought. The Yogic perspective suggests that everything we think we know is backwards. Reality is the opposite of what we think it is. Reminds me of the saying, “It’s not what I don’t know that is going to get me in trouble, it’s what I think I know, that isn’t so.” And I can hear Dorothy’s voice saying, “This doesn’t sound like asana and pranayam anymore, Toto!”
In the yogic perspective, Chip explains, “most physical and mental actions arise from a fundamental misunderstanding of reality and therefore entail suffering.”
“Everything that exists in creation, [Patanjali states], is different from pure awareness.”
“Everything that we might think of as me – physical, emotional, conceptual, spiritual, internal, external – is part of nature, or prakrti… all of me, even the innermost part, is material stuff, impermanent, and subject to cause and effect. Some of the stuff that me comprises is subtle…Some of it is gross…But all of oneself is prakrti.”
“Pure awareness, on the other hand, is not stuff of any sort and is therefore free of cause and effect. It was never created and never ends, existing beyond time.
“Because it [pure awareness] is immaterial, it has no location, movement , or other natural properties; nor does it have anything in common with consciousness or thought, other than the role of observing them. It is literally intangible, impersonal, and inconceivable.”
WOW, I thought. Pure Awareness is inconceivable. Beyond my understanding. The area of mystery. The domain of that which I know not.
Which led me to thinking about the Niyama Ishvara-Pranidhana. This “observance” is defined as “surrendering to God”. It is interesting that in discussions about how to define God, one response that comes up is “mystery.” Along with other names of God, Christ, Yaweh, Jehova, Allah, Ishkala, there are other terms as well, Great Spirit, Mystery, Goddess, Providence and simply “life happening.” I wonder then, is there a relationship between this inconceivable Pure Awareness and this concept that has baffled and confounded our species for all time.
And as we’ll soon see, The Yoga Sutra invites one of the other central questions baffling humanity, “Who am I”.
Back to Chip:
“Pure awareness is what actually sees consciousness unfolding, primarily on a screen we call consciousness. The screen of consciousness is the foundation of human experience, a part of the phenomenal world it represents, and under ordinary circumstances it actually feels like the subjective “eye” that is observing everything. In Patanjali’s view, though, no aspect of creation, including consciousness, can see itself, because it is material stuff. In the same way that a television cannot view it’s own programs, consciousness requires a witnessing awareness.”
Here’s where I usually start to have an image of watching a movie in a movie theatre. Who’s watching? Who’s the screen? Who’s the projector? And who makes up the movie?!
“Pure awareness has no sense of itself at all. Immaterial, unmoving, non-conceptual, it is completely submerged beneath the waves of consciousness. Like the rest of nature’s stuff, consciousness is embroiled in an ongoing process of creation, spiraling from form to form, pattern to pattern. This incessant re-patterning of consciousness distorts its actual relationship to pure awareness. Although pure awareness is unchanging, its lack of substance or motion renders it invisible to consciousness. After all, the contents of consciousness – perception, thought, memory – are all made of stuff and arise from material transformations. Because of these attributes, consciousness is an instrument poorly suited to detect the pure awareness that is watching it. In other words, consciousness is a thing that is only good at showing things.
“Like the rest of creation, the aspect that Patanajali calls consciousness, or citta, is evolving. Its evolutionary goal is to refine itself to the point where it can become so still, unmoving, and equally absorbed in all phenomena that it becomes very much like pure awareness itself. In that instant, it can reflect pure awareness back to itself, making it realize that it is distinct and separate from nature. In other words, the underlying purpose of creation is to reveal pure seeing to itself.”
Okay! Well, if you ever wondered what the purpose of life is, there is the yogic perspective. To reveal pure awareness to itself.
There’s just a little more introduction, Motion and Stillness, Effort and Effortlessness, and then we get to the first Sutra.
Thanks Rudy. I really enjoyed your presentation of Chip Hartranft’s discussion of Prakriti and Purusa. It is fun the way you hold on to the concepts and share your amazement at the revelations.
I find the distinction of consciousness and pure awareness to be slippery at the same time that it is utterly simple. It is a little like having consciousness turning the focus dial as it tries to capture pure awareness on camera. Always just out of focal range… yet in a way saturating everything and entirely present. The primary concept, that consciousness can evolve to stillness and reflect pure awareness, is so huge that it is no wonder it takes so much practice to even approach it.
Looking forward to what comes next.
Sarah Meredith
(YTT fall 2009)