Sutra 1.35. Methods of chitta stabilization. Part 4. Thoughtless brains beget evil ideas

In the next lines Patanjali proceeds with methods of chitta stabilization and bringing together that, as you might remember, have been already said to include the development of Anahata experience and control of breath. The line 1.35 offers one method more, yet its interpretation requires that we overcome a few challenges.

The first challenge is the fact that there are two variants of this line reading:

Sutra 1.24.Ishvarapranidhana (continued). Ishvarapranidhana and purusha

In my two previous posts I have without further ado explicated to the reader my understanding of the “ishvarapranidhana” category introduced by Patanjali. Yet an attentive reader might remember that the author of Yoga Sutras tends to give the definition of the new concepts in the lines that follow their introduction. Now, does the understanding of ishavara proposed by me meet the definition that was given by Patanjali?

Sutra 1.20. Prerequisites to Cognition

So, developing his idea, in the line 1.20:

श्रद्धावीर्यस्मृतिसमाधिप्रज्ञापूर्वक इतरेषाम् ॥२०॥

1.20. śraddhā-vīrya-smṛti-samādhi-prajñāpūrvaka itareṣām 

Patanjali tells that for others (itareṣām), i.e. different from those that we dealt with in the line 1.19 and whom I have referred to as the people of [spiritual] flow, the knowledge (prajna) is preceded (pūrvaka) by four factors: śraddhā, vīrya, smṛti and samādhi. Let us try to comment upon the essence of these factors. But first let us note that without some respective “fudging” this line shall not match the model of Vyasa since it postulates that Samadhi precedes the knowledge, this, in our opinion, being quite logic.

Vyasa’s Standpoint. The Buddhist Influence upon Yoga

Having set forth my interpretation of the few latest slokas of Yoga Sutras I cannot help but consider the following issue: why and where from there occurred the opinion (that I so much subject to criticizing) about the existence of asamprajnya samadhi as the “superior” samadhi that eliminates contemplations and so on.

No matter how strange it may seem, but the roots of this position, them been deep, go back to one of the earliest “classical” commentaries to this text, the “Vyasa-Bhashya” of Vyasa that (according to Ostrovskaya and Rudoi) is dated to ca. 4th -5th cent. AD. It is this very commentary that was used as a basis by some later medieval commentators such as Vacaspati Mishra and Vijnana Bhikshu. Besides, this text has another undeniable advantage – its availability, for it has been more than once translated into English (and even into Russian – thanks to Ostrovskaya and Rudoi).

The Relevance of New Translation and Commentaries on Yoga Sutra

It’s been ca. two thousand years since Yoga Sutras was written. Within this period the work has been translated into a good number of various languages, while the number of commentaries on it is countless. It was India alone – ancient and medieval – that provided for at least a dozen of very detailed (to say the least of them) and thorough commentaries on Yoga Sutras: Yoga-Bhashya of Vyasa (ca. 450 AD), Tattva-Vaisharadi of Vacaspati Mishra (ca. 850 AD), Raja-Martanda of Bhojaraja (ca. 1019-1054 AD), Yoga-Bhashya-Vivarana of Shankara Bhagavatpada (ca. 1350 AD), Yoga-Siddhanta-Candrika of Narayana Tirtha (ca. 1350 AD), Yoga-Varttika of Vijnana Bhikshu (ca. 1550 AD). And there must be a lot of other commentaries that are not known to me.

Yoga Sutras was analyzed by philosophers and systematicians of Indian philosophy, like Mueller and Radhakrishnan.

In scope of European tradition Yoga Sutras (in addition to professional Indologists) was studied by such big heads as Mircea Eliade.

Beyond the scope of scientific community they were the mystics of various European Traditions, including Annie Bezant, Alice Bailey and Aleister Crowley [1], who were trying to understand it.

I know about ca. a hundred of this text translations into English. So one would think – is it possible to add something conceptually new and do we really need a new translation and commentary? So I shall take the liberty of stating that not only it is relevant, but it is also necessary. And it is right now that it’s become feasible.