Chapter 2: Treading the Path (Sutras 1-3)
Having defined the nature of the settled mind in chapter 1, the sutras of Patanjali now turn from description to instruction – or from map to walking guide.
- Purification, refinement, surrender. These are the practical steps on the path of yoga.
- They nourish the state of samādhi and weaken the causes of suffering.
- The causes of suffering are five:
- Ignorance of our real nature
- Egoism
- Attachment
- Aversion
- And the fear of death, which makes us cling to life. (Patanjali, 1982)
The Iyengar-style yoga classes I attend generally start with an invocation to Patanjali, recognizing him for the sage who "gave yoga for serenity and sanctity of mind, grammar for clarity and purity of speech, and medicine for perfection of health." (B.K.S. Iyengar - Yoga - Sage Patanjali). This is not a prayer in the traditional – or religious – sense of the term. Yoga, ancient as it is, is not a religion. It is, as Alistair Shearer writes in his introduction to his translation of the sutras, a set of techniques that lead the practitioner to an experience of health through balance and a set of truths on which religion may or may not rest. (Patanjali, 1982).
The "practical steps" hinted at in the first sutra of chapter 2 are not invocations for ritualistic activities. On the contrary, they are meant to be "performed" on the "grossest" of all levels, on the physical and the material. In contrast, seems to me, those five causes of suffering, which we take so personally and looming so large in a physical sense, are to be seen as illusions.
"The techniques of yoga," says Shearer, "are methods of purifying the nervous system so that it can reflect a greater degree of consciousness and our lives can become an increasingly positive force in the world." (Patanjali, 1982). So why not just circumvent all that practicing and go straight for the effect of a settled nervous system by taking one of the myriad pills Big Pharma has been pumping out regularly? Ativan may be more effective in averting our fear of death than years of headstands… Zoloft, I hear, has cured many of the suffering they endured because of issues of attachment.
Don't get me wrong, I am not advocating against medication here. A damaged nervous system can hardly be rendered whole by practices of purification, be they headstands, breathing exercises, or meditation, alone. But these practices, along with the proper medical intervention at the right time, can bolster an experience of wholeness – which is what health is, after all. In our rush to cure suffering through the shortcuts offered by fixing the brain, we forget that the mind is something more than the sum of neural networks.
Here is what Iyengar says in his introduction to his book, Light on Life:
Yoga recognizes that the way our bodies and minds work has changed very little over millennia. The way we function inside our skin is not susceptible to differ either in time or from place to place. In the functioning of our minds, in our way of relating to each other, there are inherent stresses, like geological fault lines, that, left unaddressed, will always cause things to go wrong, whether individually or collectively. The whole thrust of the yogic philosophical and scientific inquiry has therefore been to examine the nature of being, with a view to learning to respond to the stresses of life without so many tremors and troubles. (Iyengar, 2005)
Note that Iyengar makes a link between individual troubles and collective problems. That is because yoga, to simplify here, is about balancing yourself so that the world will balance too. Unlike Western psychology, which is mostly concerned with fixing yourself so that you will fit in, without feeling stressed, into a world to which you may or may not feel a connection. Or, unlike my understanding of tikkun olam, the aspect of Judaism that is about fixing the world. (Tikkun olam - Wikipedia)
Works Cited
B.K.S. Iyengar - Yoga - Sage Patanjali. (n.d.). Retrieved May 17, 2008, from B.K.S. Iyengar: http://www.bksiyengar.com/modules/IYoga/sage.htm
Iyengar, B. (2005). Light on Life. Rodale.
Patanjali. (1982). The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. (A. Shearer, Trans.) New York: Bell Tower.
Tikkun olam - Wikipedia. (n.d.). Retrieved May 17, 2008, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikkun_olam
