Hello Folks, 

Thank you all very much for joining the Yoga Sutras class these past weeks. It’s been a great pleasure to lead the classes and I look forward to them continuing. Please find below a short recap and glossary of terms that we’ve covered so far. 

 

As I mentioned on Friday, if the material seems a little complicated, or the terminology challenging, don’t worry and keep at it. That’s exactly how I felt when I first started studying this stuff. Little by little it falls in to place and starts to make sense. Just like you gain muscle memory in your body from asanas, you’ll gain a cognitive memory of yoga that one day all the sudden will make sense, just from reading, discussing, and thinking about it. 

 

There are a lot of technical terms in yoga, and what I am hoping to do is introduce you to these terms so that we all become literate in the language of yoga. Then, when you read these terms in other literature you will be familiar with them. As yoga practitioners of any kind of yoga, it is good for us to aim to become literate in these terms. 

 

Many of these words are used in different ways in different places, and the list below is how the commentary we are reading (Swami Hariharananda Aranya) uses them (and some small spins on the words from me to make them more understandable.) 

 

Please remember that when defining words or presenting ideas I am not speaking in absolutes—that this is the "only" or “right” way of reading yoga—I’m just teaching from one perspective. 

 

As we’ll see in next week’s sutra, it is our own direct experience of yoga that will lead us to the deepest understanding of ourself. Everything else is just a map.

 

Terms we have covered so far:

 

Yoga a process of restricting the mind to a single, chosen point, and a state of self knowledge (the self remains as the self) 

Citta the field where activities occur, called the mind

Vritti an activity of the mind

Citta-vritti a knowing state of mind; any state where we sense, feel, think, judge, plan, or feel pleasure or pain

Nirodhah stilling, stopping, restricting, eliminating 

Samadhi a deep state of concentration where the mind takes on the form of the object meditated upon

Drasthah Purusha, the seer, who observes but does not act. The reason we can observe is because of purusha 

Prakriti nature, composed of the three gunas

Guna qualities or components of nature, sattva, rajas and tamas

Sattva harmony, reflection, from sat, to exist 

Rajas activity, dust, “to cloud” from ranj

Tamas inertia, to cover

Klishta vritti an activity of mind that is not supportive of samadhi 

Aklishta vritti an activity of mind that is supportive of samadhi 

Cognition a knowing state of mind

Conation a willing state of mind (acting)

Retention memory

Samskara memory, subconscious mind impressions

Prakhya incoming information 

Pratyaya the conscious activities of mind, cognition and conation. Together these are also called cognitive fluctuations 

Manas the sixth sense, the part of the mind that is the thing that powers of gives energy to the sense organs to work

 

And then the five types of vrittis that we covered this week:

 

Pramana correct cognition

Viparyaya incorrect cognition 

Vikalpa cognition of that which does not exist

Nidra cognition of absence of content

Smriti memory of previous cognitions

 

A re-cap of the basic ideas we have covered so far:

In an effort to understand the meaning of our lives and existence, the sages had certain, common realizations:

 

1. People suffer.
2. People suffer because we don’t know who or what we truly are.
3. When we know who we are, suffering disappears.
4. We suffer not only because we don’t know who we truly are, but because we are identifying with things that we are not.
5. The things that we are not are called ‘objects’, and they are made up of different components of nature. 
6. Nature is always changing, and because we identify with nature, our mind changes at the same time.
7. This constant change is constant suffering. 
8. When we shift our identity to that which does not change, namely our ability to observe and be aware, the suffering begins to dissipate. 
9. To do this, we have to understand the different mechanisms of cognition that we can work with consciously. 
10. These mechanisms are: the conscious mind and its functions of cognition and conation; the subconscious mind consisting of memory; and the sense organs that bring in information.
11. Then, there is the information itself, the incoming stuff. 
12. Yoga describes each of these things so that we know what they are, and so that we can pro-actively do something about them. We become agents of change over the functions and behavior of our mind, and are not ruled by its constant turbulence. 
13. This is self-agency, strength, and integration. We strive to understand the mind and integrate all of its mechanisms and information flows into our conscious control so that we are not constantly thrown off and deluded by it. 
14. There are five, basic activities in the mind. They can be helpful or not helpful towards helping us become calm and concentrated. When we still these activities, and direct them towards supporting our efforts to become internally calm and aware, all of the other troubling thought forms diminish as well.