Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

01One of the six darshanas

Six darshanas accept the authority of the Veda, and they are taught in pairs: Nyaya with Vaisheshika, Sankhya with Yoga, Purva Mimamsa with Vedanta. Yoga takes its map of the world from Sankhya: Purusha the seer, Prakriti the seen, the three gunas, the twenty-five tattvas. To that map Patanjali adds Ishvara and a method. Because of this the Yoga darshana is sometimes called seshvara Sankhya, Sankhya with Ishvara. Where Sankhya says knowledge frees, Yoga shows the discipline that makes such knowledge possible, so the two are studied side by side in the pathashala.

02The second sutra

The book opens "atha yoganushasanam", now the teaching of yoga, and the second sutra gives the whole subject in four words: yogash chitta vritti nirodhah. Every thought, memory, error and sleep is a vritti, a ripple on the lake of the mind. When the ripples stop, the seer rests in his own nature. The rest of the first pada explains how: abhyasa and vairagya, steady practice and dispassion, and devotion to Ishvara, whose word is Om.

03Five vrittis, five kleshas

Patanjali counts the movements of the mind as five: right knowledge, error, imagination, sleep and memory. Some cause pain and some do not, but all must be stilled. Right knowledge itself has three sources, perception, inference and the word of the reliable. Beneath the vrittis lie the kleshas, the afflictions, named in the second pada: avidya, asmita, raga, dvesha and abhinivesha, that is ignorance, the sense of I, attraction, aversion and the clinging to life that even the learned feel. Avidya is the field in which the other four grow, whether they lie dormant, thin, interrupted or in full flow.

04Ishvara and Om

In the first pada, after practice and dispassion, comes a second road: Ishvara pranidhana, surrender to Ishvara. Sutra 1.24 defines him as a special Purusha untouched by affliction, action, its fruit or its residue. In him the seed of all knowledge is unsurpassed, and because he is not limited by time he is the guru of even the most ancient teachers. His word is Om, the pranava. Repeat it, the sutras say, and dwell on its meaning, and the mind turns inward and its obstacles fall away. Ishvara pranidhana comes again among the niyamas, and again as the third part of kriya yoga.

05Eight limbs

Sutra 2.29 lists them: yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, samadhi. The five yamas are ahimsa, satya, asteya, brahmacharya and aparigraha, and Patanjali calls them a great vow when kept without exception of place, time or circumstance. Asana gets only three sutras: the seat should be steady and easy. The physical postures taught in yoga studios today grew from the Hatha Yoga texts of the Nath yogis; Patanjali's concern is the mind.

06Samyama and its powers

The third pada begins with the last three limbs. Dharana binds the mind to one place, dhyana is the unbroken flow of attention there, and samadhi is when only the object shines, as if empty of the self. The three together on one object are samyama. Turned on the navel, it gives knowledge of the body; on the throat, freedom from hunger and thirst; on the sun, knowledge of the worlds. Patanjali lists these powers plainly and then warns that they are obstacles to samadhi, accomplishments only for the mind that faces outward. Even the yogi who could rule all things must let them go to reach kaivalya.

07Kaivalya, the seer alone

The fourth pada is the shortest and the most searching. It asks how one mind can be many, how karma stores itself as vasana, and why the mind, being seen, cannot be the seer. The last sutra, 4.34, gives the goal: when the gunas have served the purpose of Purusha and return into their source, that is kaivalya, the power of consciousness established in its own nature. The word means aloneness. The seer is no longer mixed with what it sees. The yogi who reaches dharmamegha samadhi, the cloud of dharma, is free of kleshas and of karma.

08Patanjali, the serpent sage

The sampradaya honours Patanjali as an avatar of Adishesha, the serpent on whom Bhagwan Vishnu rests. The Shaiva account says he and Vyaghrapada, the tiger-footed rishi, saw Bhagwan Nataraja's dance at Chidambaram, and both are carved beside Nataraja there. A shloka chanted before yoga classes across India salutes him as the one who removed impurity of mind by yoga, of speech by grammar and of body by medicine. Tradition thus holds the author of the Yoga Sutras and the Mahabhashya on Panini to be one sage. He is shown with folded hands, a human body above and a coiled serpent below.

09Read with Vyasa

Sutras are too terse to read alone. The Yoga Bhashya attributed to Vyasa is read with every sutra, and Vachaspati Mishra's Tattva Vaisharadi, Bhoja's Rajamartanda and Vijnanabhikshu's Yoga Varttika comment on it in turn. In the gurukula the student chants the sutras first, then hears the bhashya. Since 2015 the International Day of Yoga on 21 June has carried the name of Patanjali's darshana around the world.

What it contains

1. 1
   Samadhi Pada समाधिपादः

   51 sutras on samadhi, written for the seeker whose mind is already settled. It defines yoga, names the five vrittis and gives abhyasa and vairagya as the twin means. Ishvara and the pranava are introduced, and the kinds of samadhi, with seed and without, are told apart.

2. 2
   Sadhana Pada साधनपादः

   55 sutras on practice, for the seeker whose mind still wanders. Kriya yoga, made of tapas, svadhyaya and Ishvara pranidhana, thins the five kleshas. The pada explains why there is suffering and how it ends, then gives the first five limbs: yama, niyama, asana, pranayama and pratyahara.

3. 3
   Vibhuti Pada विभूतिपादः

   55 sutras on the inner limbs and their fruits. Dharana, dhyana and samadhi together make samyama, and the pada lists what samyama on each object brings. It ends by warning that the powers must be given up, and that discrimination between sattva and Purusha leads to kaivalya.

4. 4
   Kaivalya Pada कैवल्यपादः

   34 sutras on liberation. Siddhis may come by birth, herbs, mantra, tapas or samadhi, but only the mind born of meditation leaves no residue of karma. The pada examines vasanas, time and the nature of the mind, and closes with kaivalya, the seer established in itself.

Famous verses

योगश्चित्तवृत्तिनिरोधः

Yoga is the stilling of the movements of the mind.Yoga Sutra 1.2

तदा द्रष्टुः स्वरूपेऽवस्थानम्

Then the seer abides in his own nature.Yoga Sutra 1.3

अभ्यासवैराग्याभ्यां तन्निरोधः

They are stilled by steady practice and by dispassion.Yoga Sutra 1.12

यमनियमासनप्राणायामप्रत्याहारधारणाध्यानसमाधयोऽष्टावङ्गानि

Yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana and samadhi are the eight limbs.Yoga Sutra 2.29

स्थिरसुखमासनम्

The seat should be steady and easy.Yoga Sutra 2.46