This post is part of a series I am writing as I read the The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. All posts in this series can be found through the "Sutra Readings" category.
Chapter 2: Treading the Path (Sutras 10-14)
Emptying the mind does not guarantee the end of suffering. An empty mind is still a container of sorts, and as the next set of the yoga sutras indicate, suffering ceases only when the mind has, in a way, gone beyond itself, or "merges back into the unmanifest":
10. The subtle causes of suffering are destroyed when the mind merges back into the manifest.
11. The gross effects of suffering are discarded through meditation.
From this, it seems that meditation is but a step toward the release of suffering, and not the ultimate path towards it. By saying that "the gross effects" of suffering are addressed by meditation, the sutra draws attention to the role mind has as a filter between desire and action:
12. The impressions of past action, stored deep in the mind, are the seeds of desire. They ripen into action in seen and unseen ways – if not in this life, then in a future one.
13. As long as action leaves its seed in the mind, this seed will grow, generating more births, more lives, more actions.
14. In these too, the fruit of wrong action is sorrow, the fruit of right action is joy.
Meditation trains the mind. It does not quiet it, the way drugs might quiet the symptoms of a disease, for example. Then again, it is nothing new that I am saying here, as recently there has been much written about the ways in which changing one's mind changes one's brain. Rather than start listing some of my individual references (from Charles Barber [author of Comfortably Numb] to Jon Kabat-Zinn, to name just two), I suggest you take a tour of the many links to fascinating articles referenced at Mind Hacks (Mind Hacks).
Invariably though, and in spite of the plethora of sources and resources for training the mind in the work that will help it chart a course beyond suffering, what cannot be had through any of this wealth of materials is the patience and stamina that's required to train the mind. And, even more than the mind, the heart:
Be ahead of all partings, as though it already were
behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.
For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it will your heart survive.
Be forever dead in Eurydice – more gladly arise
into the seamless life proclaimed in your song.
Here, in the realm of decline, among momentary days,
be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang.
Be – and yet know the great void where all things begin,
the infinite source of your own most intense vibration,
so that, this once, you may give it your perfect assent.
To all that is used-up, and all the muffled and dumb
creatures in the world's full reserve, the unsayable sums,
joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count.
Sonnet II:13 -- from Sonnets to Orpheus (Rilke, 1989)
Works Cited
Mind Hacks. (n.d.). Retrieved May 26, 2008, from Mind Hacks: http://www.mindhacks.com/
Patanjali. (1982). The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. (A. Shearer, Trans.) New York: Bell Tower.
Rilke, R. M. (1989). The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. (S. Mitchell, Trans.) New York: Vintage International.
~ to be continued
