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Guest

Let me tell you "THIS" or? "THAT".

Did I tell you "THAT"?
Did I tell you "THIS" ?

Extract! Between "THIS" < Idea

> "THAT".

You'll become confident about self .......

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a.s.b

Guest

yogas citta-vrtti-nirodhah

NOW = Too good to be true

From Past to Future

We need to stop the X future fantasies, and we need to stop the daily predictions from the past. The past can inform the future, but it doesn't necessarily determine it.

NOW I am (whatever I am)
I am because I think that I don't want to be, something.
I am because I think that I don't want to be colored.
I am because I think that I don't want a fixed line!

& sooooo on ... only you can change the way you think and act.
I think a lot, talk a lot, read a lot of books, ....

The only alternative is to just stop thinking ..... is; contemplation - and everyone must find his or her own way.

There's a lot of different ways like this one:

... going on inside your body (it's like finding the innerself)
... recognizing feelings ( satisfaction of mental visions of light )
... period of quietness (which represents a space/cocoon of quietness )
... contemplation (a mental image of a pure consciousness )
... seriously ...... follow your teacher’s directions ....

... there is no tomorrow so if you want to do ...

asb

Joined: 29 Apr 2005 Posts: 1

Yoga is the suppression of the modifications of the mind

This is one translation, but I found trought study of the sutra that this can be translated as:

Yoga is even if the mind fluctuacte.

But then again it change the whole context of the sutra, where the aim is no more only to suppress the wave of the mind but mostly to define prakritri from purusha even when the mind is fluctuating.

Joined: 02 Jun 2005 Posts: 2 Location: Illinois, US

This is my first post and am so excited to know that there is even such a forum. Hats off and many thanks to organizers of this web site, I still cannot beleive it, so her's my first spill. I will try to keep future posts shorter. This is a topic that is very dear to me. I apologize upfront if any of this rubs off wrong, for that is not the intention, just the hope of truth rising to the top with the vigorous churning of our conciousness.

I am Question

by your statement, "Yoga is even if the mind fluctuate" deliciously unique, but a 'viparyaya-ish' Twisted Evil

thought
However the context of this sutra to the sucessive ones clearly indicates the Pathanjali does leave any word unexplained, except perhaps 'citta' itself for obvious reasons. In I.12 he comes around to qualifying the word - nirodah.
Also one has to remember that Pathanjali was an authoritative sanskrit grammarian. One has to presume he is unlikely to have made a grammatical error of a single negative leading to a positive. I.2 has no double negative content and therfore the inverse assumption that yoga is the practice of citta vritti becomes grammatically incorrect.
Further it is not appropriate to replace the word citta with mind. I do agree its very hard to come up with a english language equivalent word for chitta. Let me give a crude example that may highlight the difference between chitta and mind. A person in non-rem sleep can be commonly described to have turned off his mind and gone to deep sleep but not his chitta. Pathanjali defines this chitta state as 'nidra vritti' be it klista or aklista (I.5, I.6, I.10).
This makes it very hard to find chitta an english word equivalent. Conciousness comes closest in my humble opinion but it also falls short in some instances. One comes across the term 'Chitta pragnya' and this translates to 'chitta conciousness' which would imply that chitta is not quite identical with prgnya. Now I beleive pragnya is a more accurate transliteration word for conciousness.
Also one has to remember that Pathanjali is a man who did not waste words. He packaged an entire self sustaining philosophy in mere 196 lines. To consider that he wasted his most important line I.2 in stating a mundane fact that the conciousness changes its flavour and yoga is something done in this context is redundant. It has stated nothing new and has only described something we all innately know.
I think it is incoherent to jump from line I.2 to the concept of purusha-prakriti realization. One who has realized purusha knows everything there is to the workings of the human and can duly collect innumerable nobel prizes and save innumerable humans in the process. The one who has realized all about prakriti has full awareness of the extent and workings of this infinite universe including dark matter, dark energy, alternate universes, foaming time space etc. and oh! answer the question of whose backyard does our visible baryonic universe exist in, and collect every nobel prize for the rest of eternity. Off-course this is ridiculous because one who has realized purusha-prakriti not only has no use for awards or money but technically the equivavalent of knowledge of god. Now I cannot recollect anywhere where pathanjali says we ourselves should become equivalent to Iswara. On the other hand if one does want to jump from I.2 to a more important line further along the text then lets indeed jump to IV.34 (the very last line of yogasutra). Now it becomes evident 'citta' is referenced here too in regards to the ultimate goal of yoga - Kaivalya (emacipation) among other things it involves mastering 'Chiti-shakti' or the power of conciousness control.
'Citta vritti nirodah' is the backbone of Yoga and that is why pathanjali puts it out as his first sutra and and reinforces it all along till his last sutra. An error in interpretation of this line will rip his entire suture or teachings apart. Smile

Guest

In my opinion, Nirodhah is the hardest word to translate, as it ranges somewhere in the range of cease->restrain->surrender realm.

please discuss this, it's a stumbler for me! Godfrey Devereux suggests that the ni- prefix means deep, and rodhah is refraining. (see his comments here: http://www.yogadarshana.com/pages/text.htm) refraining from within...

I have a few issues with che10ya's (nice handle!) excellent commentary...
- consciousness is widely used to refer to the underlying everything, the very fabric of the universe that unites us all, which makes it a bad translation for citta.
- that the 5 citta vrtti are right knowledge, incorrect knowledge, fantasy, sleep, and memory, does indicate that (with the possible exception of sleep) citta deals with things that we regard as mental activity
- on that, the citta vrtti seem to be the five states of mental (in)activity aside from absolute presence that we can be involved in.
- the nobel prize talk was pure conjecture about what may happen in full realization of purusha-prakriti

david(@)org.org

Guest

yogas chittah-vrtti-nirodhah

how it comes out in a few different translations~interpretations

yoga is the suspension of all psychic propensities

yoga is control over the modifications of the mind

yoga is to arrest the disturbances of the mind

yogic method of driving the emotions and struggling with the mind

then there is abiding in the seer's own form

yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of consciousness

yoga is the restriction of the whirls of consciousness

yoga is the stillness of the mind

attaining of full concentration of mind by yogic practices

yoga is stopping of all though flow

yoga is the stoppage of inflow of karmic matter into the soul

to realise a cessation of all modifications of mind

yoga is the complete settling of the activity of the mind

restrain the mental modifications or suppression of the fluctuations of the consciousness

yoga is the cessation of [the misidentification with] the modifications of the mind.”

yoga is the ending of mind fluctuations in the field of consciousness

yoga is the bringing of the mind into silence

yoga is the sublimation/obstruction and reformation of desires

yoga is the cessation of movements in the consciousness

yoga is experienced in that mind which has ceased to identify itself with it’s vacillating waves of perception

----------------
DJ Bill has a very own way to interprete Cool

:

"the mixes (on an iPod) are designed to reverse the effect of too much"

Joined: 05 Jan 2006 Posts: 3 Location: Albany, CA

What an excellent collection!

Given that
- the 5 citta vrtti are the things the mind can be doing other than being in an absolutely present, receptive state,
- the state of yoga involves a realization of the UNION of *mind*, body, and spirit,

I have trouble accepting the translations that suggest a stopping of all mental activity. no, it's the fluctuating of the activity that we're ending, a focusing.

I sort of like sublimate, as the sub refers to the ni- prefix in ni-rodhah, though it's not a word i use often, so i looked it up and found one supporting definition:

sublimate:
3: remove impurities from, increase the concentration of, and separate through the process of distillation; "purify the water"

though most of the translations involve subverting your behaviour in order to be socially acceptable, which is not really part of the practice.

perhaps:

yoga is the cessation of the distractions of awareness...
yoga is the stilling of the distorting thought patterns
yoga is the distilling of the turnings of the mind
yoga is to distill awareness from its fluctuations.

-david
david@org.org

Joined: 05 Jan 2006 Posts: 3 Location: Albany, CA

chandra,

you put up a list of translation varieties on this sutra. i've been looking for a tool to do just that. i'm guessing you didn't do that one by one. where did it come from?

thank you in advance

-david

Joined: 29 Jan 2006 Posts: 5 Location: Sundbyberg, Sweden

Hello Everybody, Smile

I just found this forum while I was searching the net for a certain line from J. H. Woods translation of the Yoga sutra of Patanjali. I will introduce myself more fully (in a day or two, as I'm in a bit of hurry just now) in the preliminary section of this forum. And I have not yet read too much of the goings on here (a matter of time, of course). For now I would just like to ask 'chandra' if you could make the references for your list of translations and interpretations of this essential verse, 1:2, of the 'Sutra' available.

Joined: 24 Mar 2006 Posts: 3 Location: Ann Arbor MI, USA

Hi,

I also carry around 4 of 5 translations with me at all time. But the good fruit is in learning the sanskrit and not trying too hard to nail it down.

Intuition and a relaxed attention seem bring it out nicely over time.

Simplifying into a singularity.

. . . saying that . . . but for the sake of continuing discussion I must admit that I still am not "getting" a good image or understanding of the separation of purusha and prakriti. . . other than in the sense of the complete and absolute absence of the confusion of identity that arises as ego. There seems to be a residue of duality that leaves a bitter taste. The legacy of Sankhya (sp?) I suppose clashing with the influence of Advaita in my expectations.

Joined: 05 Jan 2006 Posts: 3 Location: Albany, CA

Purusha/Prakriti is the very heart of Samkhya. The way I understand it relates to the first law of thermodynamics:

energy is neither created nor destroyed, it only changes form.

To flesh out the analogy: purusha is the unchanging body of energy, prakriti is the forms that it takes.

To tie that back to advaita: the energy and the forms it takes are essentially not separate, like leaves to the tree.

in one translation, 4.29 mentions basically says the subtle difference between purusha and prakriti being the highest knowledge, but it depends on whose translation you look at, and i don't have time to research it now.

(I used to live in A2, too)

all4now

david
http://www.vidanda.com/

Joined: 24 Mar 2006 Posts: 3 Location: Ann Arbor MI, USA

Ok, I'll try to get back on track with the original subject of this forum.

yogas citta-vrtti-nirodhah

For me I don't really get much from this line by its self but with the following two lines

tadaah drastuh svaruupe avastaanum
vritti saaruupyam itaratra

All is intuitively clear; whatever citta is it is in motion, it is many, it is something like mind, it can be brought to cessation. If this is accomplished then the witness that remains is the real and true self. Otherwise there is a confusion of identity. The witness is tangled up and complicated by these vrittis. The name of this endeavor is yoga.

These three lines are for me the acorn that grows into great oak that is the yoga sutras.

Echos of the Zen koan "Show me your original face before your parents were born.”

Joined: 08 Dec 2005 Posts: 2

Hi there all,

I am new to this website, but not new to Patanjali Yog Sutras or Yoga of any kind. I have read Raja Yoga cover to cover and also have read Patanjali Yoga Sutra.

I read a few posts where individuals have tried to "discuss" the sutras and its meaning and its understanding and am very please to see that here a eveybody has a chance to share their understanding and learn from others.

One sure thing I have learned from my reading experience is that reading will never lead you to higher truth. Depending upon your current maturity or rather I would say, evolution of your brain, mental ability, you will try and analyse the sutras and for a while it gives a false feeling that you are rising from your level.

Start its practice and you will discover where you are. The knowledge of which we talk about here is of such a level that comman man does not even have capability to discuss about it, cannot look above its immediate meaning. The worse that can happen is we can loose grip to reality and might start living in a fantasy world. That is the reason why, great Sages such as Sankracharya, Ramkrishna Paramhansa, Swami Vivekanand, etc. have laid down special emphasis on the NEED OF THE TEACHER(GURU).

Yoga as I understand its a practice in which every aspect of an individual is purified whether it may be physical or mental. Its practice that lifts us. All the arguments and discussion will never lead us there!

Probably, the reader might think that my saying all this I claim to have higher understanding, but its not true. I have realised that our ego limits us from growing, reaching higher truths. It is our ego that judges the sutras and relates it directly with our Self. And to overcome this yoga practice is inevitable!

I would like to apologise for I have discouraged or offended anyone on this site. The only reason I post this message is to help all the readers here. Discussion are good and should not be discouraged by merely me giving my opinions, but do note the point that I am trying to make

May all of us grow, spritually and become one with the True Self!!!

Om, Om, Om

Joined: 08 Dec 2005 Posts: 2

Buhic,

I am not sure if I your question entirely. Do you mean to say that "Is it CORRECT that WE have a JUDGE who follows the sutras?" The meaning I get is that you are pointing at very basis of yoga practice: dont believe it unless you feel it(experience it) by yourself!!!

I do agree with the idea. But when I earlier mentioned the NEED OF A GURU, that does not mean, that you will entirely believe your so called "guru" in his judgement of the sutra, certainly not. But an initiation that is needed from a MASTER. When I refer to MASTER, I mean the one who has purified himself by practice of yoga. A one who can be a guide for this marvellous journey. Patanjali is indeed a MASTER, but one shoud take care while following his Sutras, the fear being not be able to control the strenght you develop.

At this point, may I ask you to describe yourself, your introductio to Yoga Sutras and spituality in a whole.

I am a hindu by religion, although I am not one of those prays daily or goes to temples, etc. I always wanted to learn more, learn real meaning of life and ultimately GOD, which from a human point of view seems millions of light years away!! I have read ramayan and mahabharat, Bhagvad Gita, and many other religious stories(can call it history actually, as they claim it) and I have learned that there was a clearn difference between Ram and Ravan. Ravan although was a great devotee of Lord Shiva, was weak morally and mentally. The Ramayan says that he had knowledge of 4 Vedas and 6 Shastras, and that's the reason he was called to be the one with 10 heads(4+6). But still weak morally. My point it one may attain unachievable things with right devotion, but one should learn the ultimate cause, which is self sublimation and merging in to the SELF, as Patanjali call it ATMA.

I see you have a quote from Kena Upanishad. May I recommend you to also read Chhandogya Upnishad and Brhadaranyaka Upnishad. They talk about great men who walked this earth and were living examples of gods. There have also been excellent examples of students in Hindu scriptures who need not have a GURU and still became perfect in which they were devoted. One of such was Ekalavya in Mahabharat, who became better than Arjuna in archery inspite of no help from the teacher Drona. But put your self in the shoes of Ekalavya and you will realise the amount of dedication needed. I certainly believe its possible, to be a perfect yogi without a GURU, but there is a chance of loosing it owing to our own ego!

Hope this helps and ya will wait to know about your spiritual background.
PS: It would be great if you can also mention your age/career background.

Ankit
M 22, Graduate with Hons in Electrical & Electronic Eng, currenly in UK.