THE YOGA SŪTRAS OF PATAÑJALI - PATAÑJALI, trans. EDWIN F. BRYANT

First, a full disclosure is in order. I did not read this book cover to cover, the way I read the rest of the books on this list. To be clear, I did read the entire Yoga Sutras, but there are only 195 of them and they are regulated to an appendix that is about 20 pages long. I also read all of the intro essays and the end essays and some of the commentary. However, this book is ~600pgs long and the vast majority of it, I’d say around 500 pages at least, is very in-depth, sutra by sutra commentary. It is actually even more impressive than that. The Yoga Sutras were written down around 400AD so, at this point, there is about 2,000 years worth of commentary. So not only does Bryant lay his explanations of the various sutras, he includes a historical overview of the different ways various religious schools and leaders have interpreted the sutras over time. To back up, a sutra (as in Kama Sutra) is a short aphorism, usually only one line long. So for each single line, we get about 5-10 pages of commentary and analysis. It’s an amazing feat of compilation and synthesis that Bryant carried out. He actually cautions against what I did, which was just read the sutras back to back like a book, without stopping to read the commentary for each one. Apparently, they’re mostly a jumping off point for sages. So a sage would recite a sutra then give a sort of sermon on the meaning embedded within. So the way I read them is not how people, historically, would have encountered this text. As for the text itself, it is very dense and psychologically rich. I got into this because of an interest in the Western version of Yoga (or Yoga-as-exercise as it is sometimes called) as a phenomena of colonialism/globalization. So I see this as part of my research into that. This book defines yoga as “the stilling of the changing states of mind.” (Yogaś citta-vritti-nirodhaḥ) a verse that has half a dozen different ways to translate including: “Yoga is the inhibition (nirodhaḥ) of the modifications (vṛtti) of the mind (citta)" from. I. K. Taimni while Swami Vivekananda translates the sutra as "Yoga is restraining the mind-stuff (Citta) from taking various forms.” The psychology and metaphysics involved are quite profound and hard, for me at least, to wrap one’s head around. The theory of mind surrounding this set of sutras posits is hard to grapple with. I have a hard time considering my citta as separate from its thoughts. I mediated fairly regularly and this is still an issue I struggle with. Most of the rest of the sutras deepen this insight and talk about the nature of what I would call “the mind” but which ancient Indian-philosophy has about 20 technical words for. Honestly, this is a better system. Having read some philosophy of mind stuff in the Western tradition, that work constantly gets bogged down in semantics and language issues (ie what do they mean by “mind” or “self” or “consciousness” or “soul” or “brain”), because they don’t have enough precise terms. The Indian tradition does not have this problem. Frankly, they have the opposite problem where there are so many precise, Sanskrit terms that it’s hard for a non-specialist like me to keep them all straight. Obviously, this is the better problem to have. Additionally, this is the first place Yoga is referred to as having 8 limbs and it is through this division that the stuff about modern, Westernized yoga becomes interesting. What people nowadays mean when they say Yoga is typically Asanas, which translate loosely to “posture” and is the third limb. In Pantajali’s scheme, asana is pretty minor. He only give it 2 sutras and the most relevant one simply states, “Posture should be steady and comfortable” since the goal of asana in this context is to prepare yourself to sit in meditation for prolonged periods of time. The idea of doing asanas to “improve” your body or, especially, to make yourself feel/look sexier, ie the goal of most modern practitioners, is exactly the opposite of what ancient sages were interested in. Yoga, to them, is about leaving behind the body and the mind (as we Westerners would conceive of it) and accessing an Absolute Truth about existence and being. It remains extremely interesting to me that this has been switched almost totally on it’s head in the last 50 years (or 200, if you want to start to clock at the 1800’s yogic revival in India rather than when it began to become popular in the West, aka the 60’s onward). Either way, this was pretty deep and engaging and tough. I would say, relative to other ancient subcontinental religious texts I’m familiar with, like the Kama Sutras or the Bhagavad Gita or the parts of the Vedas or Upanishads that I’ve read, this one was particularly dense and overwhelming. Either way, it’s given me a lot to think about w/r/t how the mind and consciousness works. 195 downward dogs.