Samadhi in the Text of Patanjali

Introduction

If we take a closer look at the Yoga Sutras text we’ll see at least three different contexts that the given term is used in there. Moreover, it is not one but three heterogeneous definitions of samadhi that we can find in the Sutras. The said situation might have happened due to the text initial inconsistency that according to my theory resulted from successive “seaming” together of at least five heterogeneous texts, as well as “insertion” of lines that have been either borrowed from Buddhism or argue with its philosophy. The traditions incorporated within the Sutras varied in their definition of samadhi, and this conceptual inhomogeneity can be traced down throughout the entire text.    

Samadhi in Samkhya

Samkhya Karika, the 4^th cent. AD text, contains neither the term “samadhi” nor any of its derivatives. If we proceed to analyze later texts of the Samkhya tradition, we might notice inconsistency in their representation of samadhi. Samkhya Sutra, a late text of the 15-16^th cent. AD which is attributed to Kapila in terms of mythological textography, uses this term in two different meanings. In Chapter 4 it expresses the idea of ultimate concentration on a rather mundane activity:

iṣukāravannaikacittasya samādhihāniḥ | KapSs_4.14 |

(ekāgratāvaśyakatā)

 He whose mind (chitta) is “unidirectional” loses no concentration (samadhi) – like the one who manufactured arrows (14)

Samadhi Metamorphoses. Inception. Early Upanishads and Epic Texts.

The term “samadhi” is considered to be inextricably linked to yoga system. Sometimes it is even represented as the ultimate goal of yoga. But if we try to understand the exact meaning attributed to this term in the modern pseudo-yogic domain we’ll find dozens of different definitions that are mostly ridiculous. The first pages of Google tell samadhi to be “trance”, “ecstasy”, “merging with Absolute” or a certain posthumous state. Vivekananda rather prosaically defined samadhi as “concentration”, while Mircea Eliade introduced a special term - “instasy”. Some tend to confuse it with nirvana of Buddhism. But where does the truth lie?

I used to briefly touch upon this topic on the blog. But given that the next lines to be interpreted are directly associated with this theme I chose to undertake a large-scale retrospective study of it. It took me three years to complete the issue, and I am now satisfied with the result.

The results of the study were briefly presented at the round table that was recently held at the Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. However, even an hour allowed to me as a token of respect has happened to be too short a time to fully cover the topic. So I thought I could be posting here the materials written in the process of the report elaboration.

Since I have over a hundred pages, I’ve arranged them in 5 articles:

-       Samadhi as first mentioned in the early Upanishads and epic texts;

-       Samadhi in the text of Patanjali and works of his commentators;

-       Samadhi in Medieval teachings;

-       Samadhi in early hatha-yoga;

-       Samadhi in late texts on yoga.

Hopefully when done this way it won’t be too wearisome. However, I also think about releasing a video-lecture.

On Different Fragments Incorporated in Yoga Sutras

It’s been a long time since the previous article dedicated to the issue of Yoga Sutras’ inconsistency was published. An interested reader might have become tired of waiting, and an incautious one could have forgotten the point. So I recommend that before getting down to the text below you read the previous post. For those who won’t I shall remind the basic conclusion. Yoga Sutras does not prove to be an integral and consequent text written by one person at one time; it consists of several completed fragments that come from different Traditions with large time gaps between them. 

These fragments can be singled out distinctly pursuant to the following methodological grounds. 

1. Consistency of each fragment style. 

2. Consistency of used notions thesaurus. 

3. Uniformity of described mind-techniques and experience. 

4. Presence of finished quotes taken verbatim from other sources. 

On the basis of the foregoing criteria I have singled out five different fragments of Yoga Sutras. Notwithstanding the chapter four: there’s little doubt it is an extraneous element within the basic text. As well as inclusions from Buddhism that are 1 or 2 lines long. The latter can be told easily by their being totally out of the basic text tune, and being in fact quotes from Pali sutras. 

Does Yoga Sutra Prove to be an Integral and Consequent Text?

Everyone who studies Sanskrit deep enough knows the rule of reading a Sanskrit sentence: “first think through the phrase syntactic structure, then proceed to translation of every single word.” And never start interpreting from the first word unless you have comprehended the meaning of the entire sentence. 

Paradoxically this rule might be also applied for dealing with the whole text, be it translation or commenting on it. You first conceptualize the entire text structure and logic, and then see into separate lines. And never start from the very beginning… In fact, this is a standard rule for reading any complex text in foreign languages. Yet it is somehow omitted when it comes to handling Sanskrit sutras. 

The Hindu commentary tradition assumes that a text is thoroughly analyzed in the line by line manner from the beginning to the end. The problem of understanding text logic and inner structure, not to speak of its deconstruction, simply goes beyond the scope of established Hindu methodology. While the idea of singling out the text historic “layers” seems to be a blasphemy: a sutra is traditionally treated as a sacred text that has its inner completeness, perfection and harmony (even in case it obviously doesn’t), and all we need is to find and comprehend them with the help of various intellectual ingenuities. 

It thus develops into religiously-scholastic manner of old texts interpretation that “hypnotizes” also European scholars, so that they also start reading a text from the beginning and by default treat it as an integral piece. This principle of text work has considerably predetermined the structure of my blog on Yoga Sutras. I started commenting on the text ab initio, from the first sutra on. However, the farther into the text, the more I realized how confining this approach is. I have already mentioned in the opening articles that Sutras have many discrepancies and inconsistencies, and I could not ignore them any longer. It became necessary to study the structure and inner logic of the text. And quite unexpectedly the issues under consideration have morphed into the question of Sutras authorship and dating… 

So I shall give a brief outline of this study results. I guess it can take a couple of articles, but it will make a good contribution into the text analysis further progress. 

Greek Roots of Hatha Yoga?

In my surfing the web I’ve come across a curious article that advances the idea of hatha yoga Greek roots. I won’t now bother to look for the link, but the main message was that Alexander the Great’s military campaigns propelled to intensive interaction between Greek and Indian cultures (especially within the territory of modern Pakistan, which is obviously true). The people of India were amazed by the strength of Greek warriors to the extent they borrowed their system of body workout (the Greek gymnastics) and made it a basis of hatha yoga. As to the earlier “exercises” of India, these were nothing but mere asceticism and corporal mortification. 

Though daring, the hypothesis is easy to refute. I have some time before landing, so I’ll give my view of the theme. 

Does Yoga Evolve, or Can You Trust Primary Sources in All Aspects?

This short item has been initiated by my reading a pretty nice article about chakra system. The author points out (not without reason) that most of today’s notions about chakras are absent in traditional Hindu texts. He is however mistaken as to the list of these “missing points”, probably due to the fact that many texts related to chakras seem to be not known to him. 

Now, the author notes, different Hindu texts describe various variants of chakra system, not only the seven-chakra one. And an eventual conclusion he thus makes is: Europeans don’t actually understand what they do. This opinion can be rather often found in the works of experts in Indian culture, both scholars and those who deal with aspects of religion. They ponder on various questions of initiation and specific parampara (the lineage of gurus), advance the idea telling that practice beyond a legitimate tradition is impossible, and promote other kind of (as I have it) pseudo-religious nonsense that includes vituperative (as they think it to be) blaming (each other) for following the ideas of New Age and engagement in theosophy. 

I shall further brief my view of the problem. 

On Yoga Sutras’ Five Translations

A long time ago when I was just starting my study of yoga – guess it was 1986 or 1987 – one of my groupmates came with a clandestine reprint of a brochure made with the help of factory printing office. Though, it was not even a brochure: just several unbound sheets bearing the title Patanjali’s Aphorisms. And it is this text – that I later learned to be the reprint of Yoga Sutras English version in the translation of Vivekananda as rendered [into Russian – trans. note] by Popov in 1906 – that my journey into the insights of this great text started with. 

In a few years (these were probably early 90ies) I suggested that my friends who had organized a kind of esoteric publishing house bring together all YS translations available at that time and arrange them sutra by sutra to help one’s working with this text. Studying Sanskrit was just a plan for the future and I thought that understanding the true contents of the text would be possible on the basis of the translations comparative analysis. The translations that were vastly different even on the surface. This is how the brochure Yoga Sutras: Four Variants of Translation appeared. Soon it was complemented by the fifth one, while the brochure formed the basis of the file Yoga Sutras: Five Variants of Translation that’s been actively circulating throughout the web [the Russian-speaking segment – transl. note]. Though, maybe I was not the only one whom this idea actually occurred… 

Anyhow, I believe this file has helped may searchers and practitioners, but I think it’s time every translation version is given a detailed and competent estimation.

Hatha Yoga and Patanjali

This unscheduled article has been induced by my short post on Facebook. A couple of days ago my sight was caught by an ad of “Hatha Yoga after Patanjali” event in Kharkov, and I could not but turn the yoga community attention to incorrectness of this word combination. They started speaking about Hatha-yoga in the period of the Naths, that is, 600 to 800 years after Yoga Sutras had been written. As to Sutras proper, they don’t give any specific descriptions of asanas or pranayamas. In a short discussion commenting the post Boris Zagumennov, a man I hold in high regard and one of Sutras first interpreter from Sanskrit into Russian, advanced an idea that though Patanjali does not of course use the term “hatha-yoga” he however speaks about “stages that refer to body”. This is a very popular point of view; moreover, I also personally stick to the idea that proper body work is essential prior to taking to yoga’ more complex and sophisticated practices. But! My personal (or, say, the popular and traditional) opinion is one thing, while the opinion of Patanjali and commentators is a totally different issue. Indeed, Patanjali did mention asana and pranayama as constituents of yoga, but were these terms of his identical to their present-day meaning? 

Yoga and Magic. The Most Ancient Reference to Yoga in Atharvaveda

They traditionally believe that the word “yoga” was not used in Vedas, at least in the context of designating a system of esoteric psycho-practices as we know it today. However, this is not quite the case. 

Vedas indeed do not contain the word “yoga” as an absolute equivalent of the meaning we assign to it now, notwithstanding the presence of numerous derivatives of the root-word “yuj”. Some scholars explain this by suggesting that yoga was first practiced by the Dravidian people from where it was borrowed by the Vedic Tradition. I believe this to be a simplifying assumption. Each culture has its own system of esoteric psycho-practices. Moreover, methods and concepts of these systems that seem to be totally different at first glance are in any case adjacent in virtue of their having a single object – the human mind. Fusion of cultures is naturally followed by fusion of systems bringing a result that may be very quaint in form. Thus it whould be quite correct to speak about the “proto-yoga” of Vedas. You may find more details in my public lecture. 

The Legend of Lost Sutra

In the course of gearing up for my big lecture on Yoga Sutra I had come across a dramatic story that even Wikipedia mentions in its entry. I’ve called it “The Legend of Lost Sutra”. If briefly, the legend tells that Yoga Sutra, a sacred text known in India from ancient times, practically sank into oblivion in the 12th century and was recovered only in the 19th, owing to Vivekananda and the Theosophical Society.

The text fell into obscurity for nearly 700 years from the 12th to 19th century, and made a comeback in late 19th century due to the efforts of Swami Vivekananda, the Theosophical Society and others. It gained prominence again as a comeback classic in the 20th century. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga_Sutras_of_Patanjali

However, this is not how the real story goes.

Yoga and Gnosis

The succeeding lines of Yoga Sutras (namely, all remaining lines of the section) are dedicated to cognition. So I shall lay down a few considerations to make the reader mentally prepared.

Most of Western people erroneously take yoga as a system of physical exercises. A kind of gymnastics. However, hatha-yoga is just a small element of this multifacetous tradition. Physical practices definitely played an important – yet auxiliary - role. They trained the body to keep it healthy and live long; the body that was used as a key to one’s inner world. But authentic yoga practice implies inner transformation that was based on merger with one’s genuine, innermost essence – svarupa – by means of taking under control factors that were separating one from it. This basic nature of yoga is emphasized in the etymology of the word yuj that denotes both “joining together” (samadhi) and “taking control of” (samyama) – see here for details. 

The concept that a man is actually estranged from oneself may at first sight appear to be spacy, yet when learning more about modern neurophysiology findings we shall see this to be a healthy judgement. For instance, they have proved that human brain takes decision several minutes before one has consciously made it. And this refers to some simple issues … We spend years in the agony of “choosing”, but deep inside the decision has been made long time ago…

Difference Between Ancient And Modern Commentaries

Thorough analysis of primary sources assumes concurrent study of authentic commentarial works. Thus in the process of writing my commentary to every new sutra I usually thumb through primary classical commentaries that I here enlist. Some of them have turned into “favorites”, that is, must-reads: Vyasa, Mishra, Sankara, Bhoja, Sadashivendra. Aged 1000 years and even older, these texts (but for the last mentioned) are truly authentic, i.e. introduced in the framework of intact Indian culture so far not deformed by conquerors. I also had a pleasure of reading commentaries on classical texts of other darshanas (in addition to yoga). 

However, in the process of reading these commentaries I’ve noticed myself to have a kind of dissatisfaction which essential nature has become clear to me only recently. The matter is that notwithstanding the fact these texts are all commentaries, there is a drastic difference between the core point of commenting processes in classical India and in modern science.

Why Read Ancient Texts?

They have once again asked me: why in general read ancient texts, the more so commentaries on them? Why a person like me, a modern yogi who is rather future-focused than past-minded, the one who objects to traditionalism in all its manifestations and gives skeptical smile to talks on “paramparas” and consecrations, decided to spend heaps of time studying Sanskrit and leafing through ten- or fifteen-hundred-year-old commentaries? Is there anything in them that one cannot evidentiate by experiments based on modern scientific concepts?

Yes, there is.

A seeker of our days, when driven by scientific attitude and intellectual approach, can find many interesting things there.

First. Descriptions of genuine mystical experience that is both functional and based on psychological techniques are rather rare. What I mean here is real experience that differs from all possible forms of visionariness, philosophical waxing and contacts-setting.

Brahmacharya and Continence in Yoga. The Story of Confusion

Deconstruction (from lat. de – ‘top to bottom, backward’, and constructio – “erection”, “putting together”)- a concept in modern philosophy and art that represents understanding by means of breaking the stereotype or introduction into new context. It is underlain by the assumption that meaning is constructed in the process of reading while traditional ideas either lack due depth (are trivial) or are attributed with author’s repressive instance. Thus there’s a need for provocative act that initiates an idea and liberates the text undertones that author does not control. Developed by Jacques Derrida, it has its roots in Martin Heideggers’ concept of ‘Destruktion’ – repudiation of construing tradition for the purpose of hidden meaning revelation.

I shall once again and for a while withdraw from text linearity for the sake of brahmacharya – one of the most argued and controversial issues in Yoga. Brahmacharya is known to have been listed by Patanjali as one of Yoga yamas. Most of popular books on Yoga promote the concept of brahmacharya to be sexual abstinence, celibate and singlehood. But the absurdity and controversial character of this idea can be judged at least by the fact of Tantric sexual practices existence. 

Mind Wholeness, Absent-Mindedness and Torpid Mind. Mistakes in Meditation

Summing up the block of seven lines that Patanjali dedicated to exercising the state of mind wholeness (chitta-prasadanam), I shall try to explain why this subject has been essentially significant. One can by intuition guess that mind non-wholeness (chitta-vikshepa) correlates with vritti. And indeed, this opinion was shared by all commentators of Yoga Sutras 

We all now know yoga to be chitta vritti nirodha. And he was already the first commentator – Vyasa - who specified several stages of chitta sophistication on the way to nirodha.

क्षिप्तं मूढं विक्षिप्तमेकाग्र निरुद्धमिति चित्तस्य भूमयः।

kṣiptaṃ mūḍhaṃ vikṣiptam-ekāgra niruddham-iti cittasya bhūmayaḥ

Sutra 1.40. Chitta Extension and Densification

We have analyzed sutra 1.40 in the context of cognitive aspect proposed by Vyasa. But there can be a different view on techniques the sutra proposes. This kind of energetic practices can be found in all major esoteric Traditions though they may come under different names. In our School we refer to them as “the techniques of chakras fields extension and densification”. But let us consider the subject step by step.

Sutra 1.40. Another Post About Miracles

Many people are looking for kitschy miracles

but turn their blind eye to the major one

The sutra 1.40 been quoted out of context gave rise to numerous twisted fantasies that I intend to dispel.

This sutra completes the passage on scattered mind (chitta vikshepa) restoration and stabilization methods, and reads as follows

परमाणु परममहत्त्वान्तोऽस्य वशीकारः ॥ ४०॥

1.40 paramāṇu paramamahattvānto'sya vaśīkāraḥ 

In order to explain what I mean I shall instead of giving the line detailed interpretation first start with quoting the translation variants available:

Sutra 1.40. Eight Supreme Siddhis of Yoga Tradition

The next line of Yoga Sutra (1.40) dwells on siddhis – at least this is what most of modern commentators think – so I shall give my brief note on this disturbing issue, all the more so as some readers have already become restless in anticipation of this theme. Let me also remind that there’s been an article on my blog dealing with yoga’ view on siddhis that was based on the report made by Dominik Wujastyk.

Now, they traditionally distinguish between supreme siddhis (or mahasiddhis) and minor siddhis – the whole of the rest.

The list of 8 supreme siddhis that can be attained by a practitioner is drawn in both early as well as late yoga texts. This is a well-known information: even Amarakosha – the major Sanskrit thesaurus – has it given on its first page, while most of texts on yoga also consider this to be conventional issue giving no list details yet introducing it as “animaadi” – anima (the first siddhi) and so on (adi). 

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