Unless otherwise noted, I work from Edwin Bryant’s translation of the Yoga Sutras. I take these translations and interpret them as part of my yoga practice of study. This is one of the joys of the intellectual study of yoga - the ancient books and the volumes of writing on the subject are meant, in my opinion, to be digested, wrapped up by the experiences of the person studying them, internalized, compared against individual experience, and learned and re-learned as life is lived. That said, of course my interpretation is only that - my interpretation. As Rumi says, "Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth."
First, here is what the sutra says:
2.1 The path consists of self-discipline, study, and dedication. 2.2 This path is for bringing about samadhi (oneness) and for weakening the klesas (impediments to the practice). 2.3 The impediments are ignorance, ego, desire, aversion, and clinging to life. 2.4 Ignorance is the breeding ground of the other impediments, whether they are in a dormant, weak, intermittent, or fully activated state. 2.5 Ignorance is the notion that takes the self, which is joyful, pure, and eternal, to be the nonself, which is painful, unclean, and temporary. 2.6 Ego is to consider the nature of the seer and the nature of the instrumental power of seeing to be the same thing. 2.7 Attachment stems from happiness. 2.8 Aversion stems from pain. 2.9 Clinging to life affects even the wise; it is an inherent tendency. 2.11 The states of mind produced by these klesas are eliminated by meditation. 2.15 For one who has discrimination, everything is suffering on account of the suffering produced by the consequences of action, by pain, and by the samskaras (patterns of thought and action), as well as on account of the suffering ensuing from the turmoil of the vrttis (the fluctuations of the mind) due to the gunas (matter). 2.16 Suffering that has yet to manifest is to be avoided.
Once again, we start with a reminder that yoga is not just asana, or postures. Postures are merely one of the eight limbs that make up the practice. This yoga takes self-discipline, study, and dedication. Yoga is more about training the mind than it is about training the body. We study yoga to find oneness. This could be oneness of spirit and body, of mind and body, of the divine and body, or all of these, depending on your personal theological leanings. Personally, I vacillate between an agnostic outlook on some days and, on other days, a deeply spiritual faith in what I acknowledge is a nonsensical, unscientific, illogical affair. We also study yoga to weaken the impediments to practice. These impediments to practice run deeper than that. To me, they are impediments to ease, impediments to living. They are ignorance, ego, desire, aversion, and clinging to life. This is one of my favorite parts of the sutra, and, thus, it bears more study.
Ignorance, ego, desire, aversion, clinging to life? Some of my favorite things, some of my deepest patterns, things that I thought were personal struggles, being written about in a book that is thousands of years old? How comforting! The sutra goes on to say that ignorance is the fuel behind all of the other impediments. Ignorance, it claims, stems from our misunderstandings of our basic nature, confusing that which is pure and whole (the eternal soul, if you believe that way) with our physical self. Going further, the sutra explains that ego is basically this same confusion. With continued practice, one begins to see the connection, the wholeness, the unity of the self. Again, this could be of mind and body or of soul and body. Once that wholeness is felt, the fluctuations of the body, the discomfort in mind or body, can be seen as fluid, as things that come and go, as part of this experience, rather than something to be struggled against or fully identified with.
The impediment of attachment, or desire, stems from happiness. When something makes us feel good, we do not want to let it go. We cling to it. We grieve for it when it is lost and our minds are often kept busy searching for something that makes us feel that way again or scheming ways to get that happy-making thing back or reliving experiences with that happy-making thing. This affects mind and body. In the mind, this constant reliving of happy-making moments in the past can keep us out of what is happening in our lives right now. In the body, the clinging can manifest in very physical ways - in my own body, I have noticed patterns of tension and holding that I feel are the body's response to all of this grabbing and holding on. I have noticed changes in my breathing when my mind is running the tape loop of happy times long gone. In these times, my breath often becomes shallow and scant. Whenever I sit, most times when I sit and watch my thinking, the majority of the thoughts that come up are of desire, of want. After years of practice, I am still amazed by this. As I sit, a thought will pop up, and I will observe it, categorize it, and let it go.
When thoughts aren't of want, they are often of aversion, and the sutra explains that aversion stems from pain. When the mind is not busy seeking out happy-making things, it is often busy avoiding pain-making things. Again, as the meditation practice develops, it becomes easy to catch the mind wandering off to a thought, observing and categorizing the thought, then letting the thought go. Sometimes the thought gets stuck, and it is okay to ask the thought to go and then watch it as it resists. This, too, happens in the practice, and it is merely another thing to watch in the never-ending stream of things to observe during practice.
Clinging to life affects even the wise; it is an inherent tendency. This is a basic, hard-wired thing. As with all living things, we have a built in need to stay alive as long as we can. As sentient beings who understand that our lives will, at some point, end, we have the added aversion, many of us, to finding out what will come after we die. So we cling. Personally, I experience great anxiety over dying and leaving things undone, leaving loved ones alone and grieving. Again, it is comforting to know that this is a natural state, and something that generations of people have experienced and worked with. This impediment, for me, looms large. The other impediments have become almost easy in comparison. I can laugh off thoughts of desire, aversion, and ignorance as they come up in practice. But clinging to life, which, for me, is closely tied in with ego, this is where most of the work of my practice takes place. And the sutra assures us that the states of mind produced by these impediments will be eliminated by practice.
"For one who has discrimination, everything is suffering on account of the suffering produced by the consequences of action, by pain, and by the samskaras (patterns of thought and action), as well as on account of the suffering ensuing from the turmoil of the vrttis (the fluctuations of the mind) due to the gunas (matter)." This takes some dissecting. A samskara is a pattern that we practice over and over in our lives. It can be a pattern of movement that manifests as tightness in a group of muscles. It can be a pattern of dealing with people. It can be a pattern in our thinking that gets repeated time and again. The practice helps us to root out these patterns, to find the patterns that are less healthy and to replace those patterns with newer, healthier ones. I think of the vrttis as the constant chatter in the mind. Here we see that it is all suffering. When I sat with Jon Kabat Zinn at Lesley University recently, he took questions from several people in the group. He sat in a meditative posture on a stage. There was a microphone set up in a sea of folding metal chairs. And a long line of people standing behind that microphone. Each one came up and asked Kabat Zinn a question about their own personal story. Each question sounded something like this: "Yes, well, I've been meditating for twenty years. But lately, it has been hard to practice because [fill in the blank] happened. Ever since that happened, I'm consumed by feelings of [fill in the blank] every time I sit, and so I was wondering what I can do to get back to my practice." After each person, Kabat Zinn would sit quietly, eyes closed, for a long time, and then he would say something to the affect of, "This, too, is suffering. When we suffer, we practice. When we are not suffering, we practice." Another of my teachers refers to the "pranic well", prana being life force, or breath, or spirit, again, depending upon your personal beliefs. She suggests that daily practice fills this pranic well so that there is energy there whenever we need it, whenever life throws us some new trouble, some new suffering, that we need to face.
For me, this part of the sutra ends with this phrase: heyam duhkham anagatam. If we practice, future suffering can be avoided. We practice, every day, so that future suffering can be avoided. It's like taking your blood pressure medicine or your Xanax. If you can do that every day to avoid future suffering, then you also can do a daily mind body practice, whether that be meditation or yoga or some combination. The science coming out on the mind body practices is showing that a daily practice of short duration - no more than fifteen minutes but even as little as five or ten minutes - is enough to make the positive changes that are being tied to this work - decreased stress levels, weight loss, decreased pain, uplifted mood, increased focus, and more. No excuses, no "I'll start tomorrow", just sit. Or do savasana, or legs-up-the-wall, or a sun salutation, or whatever your practice will be today. Go do it now, in fact.
