The Koans of Zen and Meditative Question

“The Koan is the door,

the answer is the key.

But the basic point is not about opening the door,

It is about what you will see there...»

(Probably, if I have put it here, someone might have said this somewhere…)

In one of the previous articles of this blog in have outlined a fundamental aspect of understanding the meditation (dhiana).

Some words about Kumbh Mela

I have recalled that I have a small thing to be done for the blog. Early last year I visited Kumbh Mela and I promised I would express my opinion concerning the symbolism of this holiday, but I was tied up with my affairs and I have not written a corresponding port. But I will do it now.

So, according to the legend the festival of Kumbh Mela is associated with a story that tells that Garuda had spilled some drops (mela) from the bowl (kumbha) with amrita stolen from Gods. The major portion of the amrita was spilled in the place where the Ganges meets the Yamuna (Prayaga), thus one’s bathing in this place during a holiday is favourable. 

On “Types of Yoga”: Karma Yoga and Bhakti Yoga

The terms hatha-yoga, karma-yoga, jnana-yoga, bhakti-yoga, laya-yoga and others are familiar to everyone and they play an important role in positioning yoga as a system. Although they are not used in Yoga Sutras (except for the term kriya-yoga), these terms are rather old and one can find them already in Mahabharata [1]. This division of yoga into types was often mentioned in yogic Upanishads and other medieval texts. For European people this division (in some simplified version: only hatha, raja, karma, bhakti and jnana yoga) became available due to Vivekananda.

Sutra 1.10. Coming Back to Nidra. Can Dreams be Referred to as a Form of Vritti?

I hope the reader remembers that in one of previous posts we have considered the category of nidra and explained why nidra had been highlighted by Patanjali as a vritti. However recently I’ve been asked about whether a dream, a night fantasy, can be referred to as a form of vritti. Since I believe the question to be proper I shall answer it briefly here with parallel consideration of some additional aspects associated with this topic.

Let us start with actualization of what dreams are from the point of psychology. I think most of the readers paid attention to the fact that dreaming is related to current situations that are emotionally significant. Upon resorting to the works of Jung and Freud – and one’s own experience as well – we can specify this point in the following way: the dream in symbolic form “shows” a person some information about an actual emotionally significant situation that the person is not conscious of (or the one that he/she represses), and about the core point of this situation.

Sutras 1.21 - 1.22. The Rate of Development. Spiritual Flow, Personal Power, Inner Human Core

The following several sutras of Patanjali are dedicated to one’s developmental rate:

तीव्रसंवेगानामासन्नः ॥ २१॥

1.21. tīvra-saṃvegānām-āsannaḥ 

tīvra – utmost, extreme, ultimate;

saṃvegānām - intention;

āsannaḥ – near, proximate;

that is, taking into account the previous line that says that prajna is preceded by shraddha, virya, smritiand samadhi, this one can be understood and translated in the following way:

1.21. Near under ultimate intention.

That is, the distance (probably, the temporal)between enlightenment (prajna) and its preceding stages shall not be big if a person is ultimate in his totality. It is clear by intuition: comprehension mayoccur only if you are totally engaged in pondering over the problem. This very principle can be applied to any other kind of development – quality transformations may only result from efforts that are thorough enough. Spiritual practice is not something that can be done “in the course of” and “together with” etc. It’s like V.Suvorov had it in his work “Aquarium” – “You cannothave you muscles built by lifting an iron twice a day».

A Psychophysiological and Philosophic Commentary: the Role of Emotions in the Process of Cognition

I would like to go back for a while to the line 1.16 in which Patanjali exposes the factors that accompany the process of comprehension (samprajnya) listing among them ananda – the delight. This issue is clear from the empiric point of view and it is rather difficult to say something against it, yet here comes the question – what is the ground of this relation between the cognitive, even existential process and the emotional experience associated with it. First of all let us turn to psychology and remember the role of emotions in human life. The rule of memorizing says that the more emotionally significant and coloured the information is the better it is memorized.

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.