Literal translation: “Applying yourself and lack of excitement, both: the five stormless-stilling”

Meaning: “(1) Practicing and (2) avoiding attraction to them: they are two ways to quiet these five whirlpools.”

Definition: You can block, calm, or ignore these five types of swirls or energy-forms through simple practice; and, during a meditation, you can work on losing your interest in them, blocking them, or even destroying them. Patanjali will discuss several ways to block or suppress swirling energy-forms in Sutras 20, 23, 27 and 32-39.

Comment: The problem in this sutra of the five “whirlpools”–and the solution of practicing to avoid attraction to them–is reflected two thousand years later, in the present, by popular advice columnist Carolyn Hax. A woman writes to her,

My husband...and I currently live with my family while we struggle to pay down debt. Space is limited. We’ve been at each other constantly with little annoyances.... I’m also...pretty emotional right now.... Any suggestions? I’m getting too much of him, but I still miss “us.”

Live in the moment. Let all kinds of stuff go. By the bucketload. Annoyances? Ha. Maybe for lesser souls they are, but you are beyond annoyance into a soft-focus netherworld of who gives a flying (toy truck).

Frustration is for people who think things should be a certain way. Reject “should” for the tyranny it is and go all in, all whatever, all now.

Meaning: “Of these two in Sutra 1.12, sustained, steady marshalling of yourself defines ‘practice.’”

Definition: “Practice” here means regular restraint, steadiness, and application in your meditations over a period of time, and also in each session of meditating.

Comment: Practice is the sine qua non–the “without which, not possible” in Patanjali’s meditation vocabulary. Some Hindu systems, especially those in the Buddhist traditions, suggest that enlightenment can come suddenly, like a strike of lightning. However, most spiritual and mystical traditions emphasize that you must prepare yourself. “Getting lucky” is a common phrase. However, most “luck” accrues when you have prepared yourself with learning, planning, and aforethought. Then when conditions are ripe, your “luck” will seem to suddenly occur. But without preparations, it wouldn’t happen.

Sutra 1.14: Sa tu dīrgha kāla nairantarya satkāra-āsevito dr̥ḍha bhūmiḥ

Literal translation: “It [practice], however: with no interruption in right doing, resorting to (it) fastening onto becoming earth.”

Meaning: “But practicing works best when you do it right, without interruption, until you have tied it to (grounded it in) your normal life, wherever you live.”

Definition: Patanjali appears to be stating that if you want to make meditation work, you can’t just dabble each time for a few minutes, casually. You can’t just meditate once or twice a month, or for just two or three minutes now and then, and expect much change. Rather, you should meditate long enough each time to make it sink into your life: for example, ten to thirty minutes or more at least twice a week, and preferably once per day.

Comment: Note: Some translations offer a more demanding and rigorous interpretation: that you must practice all the time, or very frequently on a daily basis, for months or years. However, most meditation experts will tell you that even a practice of, perhaps, two half-hour sessions per day can satisfy what Patanjali is talking about. And even less frequent practice than that can still help you grow in meditation.

As with sports, a profession, or so many other activities in life, the more you meditate, the better you become and the deeper you understand it. Another way of saying this is that you can succeed well with Patanjali’s meditation suggestions without having to become a reclusive ascetic who withdraws from the world and leaves regular life.

An additional sense of this sutra exists in the word bhūmiḥ, which can be translated as “grounded” or, more literally, “in or of the earth.” This latter, earthy interpretation may have held special meaning for Patanjali: as a Hindu, he likely believed that long-held thoughts, habits, and intentions literally sink downward within oneself to unite with the very base or matter of the physical or psychological body. There, they become so grounded or deeply embedded in a person that they turn into a part of you, almost like a leg or a foot. This may sound bad; however, on the positive side, it also implies that long and regular meditation practice also becomes like another limb or organ in your body.

Sutra 1.15: Dr̥ṣṭa-ānuśravika viṣaya vitr̥ṣṇasya vaśīkāra saṁjṇā vairāgyam

Literal translation: “Perceptions, hearings/learnings–these interesting matters: without thirst and controlled, your blessed-swelling consciousness not grabbing onto”

Meaning: “What you’ve seen and heard are attractive objects; but you–without thirst for them, and ruling over them–can, in your pure, clear knowing, remain separate from them.”

Definition: Sutras 15 and 16 are a pair. Sutra 16 continues from 15 by saying that you may stay in the world as long as you don’t let your mind, heart, and body go this way and that with everything your desires indicate or whatever or whoever outside of you grabs onto you.

For example, if you spend an hour before eating dinner imagining what food you will cook and eat and how much pleasure it will give you, another hour eating it with constant critical attention to whether each bite is good enough, and another hour afterward considering how to make it taste even better–or you do the same with other pursuits–then you are so embroiled in the world of the senses that you are taking much time away from what will make you happier. Choose your foods–or other desires–for health and balance of the body and mind. Take pleasure in them as you enjoy them. Then move on to more important pursuits.

Comment: You may have pure, clear interests and pursuits, but these should be established from a pure, clear mind space. It is okay to enjoy physical sensations, but not to endlessly pursue lusts for the tastes of food, the adrenaline highs of power, or other purely worldly sensations just for their own sakes if they do not help you draw closer, directly or indirectly, to your clear awareness or Self. That clear awareness or Self will, in its own way and time, bring plenty of deeper pleasure and meaning to your life.

Literal translation: “That highest: your Purusa (Self), known beyond the strands of natural forces by non-thirst”

Meaning: “The purest is when you know your own Awareness, beyond the threads of nature around and within you, thanks to your not desiring anything.”

A chant: “Your pure Self blossoms when you stop grabbing natural life.”

Definition: A Supreme form of knowing is to know or be aware of your truest, purest Awareness–your Purusa, true Self, or Atman. It is like a “manna” from–or a spark of–Brahman or the Divine (see Sutra 1.3). You achieve this Awareness of your Self when you are able, in meditation, gradually to have no desire, craving, or thirst for what is in nature and its powers, risings up, or inertia. This does not mean you must always have this Awareness, nor does it mean that you must give up the world. You may still live in the world and experience it. However, you also can become “Other” or Aware by learning first in meditation–and then gradually, as your years move forward, in other parts of your life–to acquire this type of consciousness.

In other words, a fruit is not ready to eat in a second. First, the tree must grow; then arrive rain, flowering, and pollination; at last, slowly, the fruit ripens. This is the meaning of the mustard seed in the Bible’s Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which liken it to growth in the “realm of the spirit”: meditation is very effective, but like most great opportunities, takes work and time.

Comment: In Hinduism, having no desire for–i.e., de-attaching yourself from–the forces of nature means detaching yourself from the three primary elements of nature, called gunas. Guna means “strand” or “thread.” The three strands or threads in nature, the gunas, says ancient yoga, move through all matter and life. They are the primary three forces behind the natural world, very similar, perhaps, to what physics now calls the three fundamental elements of all observable matter: up-quarks, down-quarks, and electrons, all of which are made up of strands of threads.

Thomas Keating gave what is a Western version of the three gunas when he delivered the 1997 “Wit Lecture on Living a Spiritual Life” at Harvard Divinity School. Though he never named them by their Hindu designations, they are similar. He calls them the “three essential biological needs” (13) of the Human Condition: “security [tamas], affection and esteem [sattva], and power and control [rajas]” (17). These three conditions are not bad, according to Keating–and in Hindu systems. Rather, they exist simply as the basics of our lives with which we must deal, one way or another. The question is not “Should we get rid of them” but rather, “How do we choose to honor and live with them?”

Hinduism says that each of us has a personality that is a combination of these three in a number of different ways. Any given personality, however, tends to emphasize just one or two of the gunas at any given time, place, or situation. If, for example, you live a highly mental life, you may tend to be sattvic; if you are very willful or seek power quite a bit, rajasic; if you live your life largely or often in physical activity (or bodily sloth), tamasic. Patanjali will talk more about these in later sutras.

The Purusa blossoms in this sutra as an extremely important state of being within everyone. It is the true Self, sometimes also called the Atman in Hinduism, the Crystal-clear Awareness in the Yoga Sutras–as described in Sutra 1.3. Finding it seems hard, until you do: then its apparent presence is so suddenly obvious that it is like a slap in the face, like not noticing the air around you until suddenly you feel a badly needed cool or warm blast of it, like wondering what sweetness means, then first tasting sugar. In Zen Buddhism in particular, gaining this Awareness is called satori, or sudden awakening. Zen expert Alan Watts describes this in talking about a great medieval Zen master who, says Watts, was famous for

lecturing his students in informal and often somewhat “racy” language...as if...to force...immediate awakening. Again and again he berates them for not having enough faith in themselves, for letting their minds “gallop around” in search of something which they have never lost, and which is “right before you at this very moment.” Awakening [is] the courage to “let go” without further delay in the unwavering faith that one’s natural, spontaneous functioning is the Buddha mind.

In a later sutra here, Patanjali will offer similar advice. He says that discovering the crystal-clear mind is more a matter of letting what is natural happen, rather than trying to build something up or think your way through a problem.

Sanskrit Text: Patanjali, c. 400 BCE-400 CE

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See also Meditationary, a Meditation Dictionary.

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