Patanjali's Yoga Sutras

Endnotes Appendix Bibliog. Downloadable PDF

Title Definition: This chapter of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras is titled Sādhana Pāda. The original version of Chapter 2 historically has two parts: Patanjali’s own invention of Kriya yoga; and the more ancient Hindu methods known as Astanga Yoga, most of which also is in Buddhism’s much older Eightfold Path. Here, in Chapter 2-A, only Patanjali’s Kriya yoga is presented. Later, Chapter 2-B will offer the more ancient, more traditional Astanga yoga that is similar to Buddha’s teachings.

What is Kriya Yoga, here in “Chapter 2-A”? In Patanjali’s words, “Warming exercise and burning away what is unwanted, learning about yourself both inner and outer, and devotion to Conscious Being: these are the action (kriya) yoga” (Sutra 2.1). Kriya also can be translated as “work” (“kri-”) of the “soul, breath, or spirit” (“-ya”). Thus it is “soul work” or “spirit action.”

This chapter on Kriya yoga is a guide for intermediate meditators, after the more basic introductory Chapter 1. The first chapter describes dozens of techniques for starting and continuing meditation. However, this present chapter on Kriya presents more about recurring problems as you develop a regular meditation practice.

In particular, Patanjali outlines the traps or enmeshments that your “small self” or personality experiences in the world around it, and what to do about them. Like almost all of Patanjali’s sutras, those in Chapter 2-A are quite practical.

Note that Patanjali’s Kriya yoga is not the specific school of “Kriya Yoga” developed in the early 1900s by Sri Swami Yogananda Paramahansa. The latter’s system primarily involves mantras and breathing. Instead, as one of his translators, meditation master Swami Satchidananda,* says, Patanjali’s Kriya yoga is “practical hints to be followed in our daily lives to prepare us for the more subtle practices that follow.” Another translator, the master meditator and Patanjali expert B.K.S. Iyengar,* describes Kriya (and Astanga) yoga as “the path of action”: of “the external quest” that prepares us for the internal.

Comment: Satchidananda* implies in his own comments on Sutra 2.2 that Kriya is a yoga of yogas. He says, “Mainly, all we do in the name of Hatha Yoga [breathing, postures, and physical movements], Japa Yoga [mantras/prayers], living in Yoga institutes and asrams [Hindu monasteries] is all part of our Kriya Yoga–our preparation for meditation and samadhi.” In other words, Kriya yoga is the discipline of disciplines, the guidebook of guidebooks, in a person’s preparation for moving into deeper states of experiencing Being. Kriya can serve as a basic outline, explanation, and instruction manual in getting ready for most meditation systems.

Also noteworthy is that traditionally in India, Kriya yoga was open to a wider sector of people than other spiritual paths. In India’s “past few thousand years, practices that contributed to Self-Realization were often banned or restricted,” says Keith Lowenstein, M.D.* However, “those who knocked on the Kriya yoga door were most often welcomed,” unlike in “other traditions, which were curated and protected by a privileged and segregated community that prevented the so-called lower castes and outcasts in India from accessing the teachings. Women, too, were often forbidden to enter these traditions....”

The greater acceptance of women and those interested in nature, says Lowenstein, creates an appealing feature of Kriya yoga, and in this respect makes it related in some of its practices to tantra, a system involving energy centers–including the famous seven “chakras” aligned with the spine. “Mother Nature, the Divine Mother, is often the initial attraction for those who enter the Kriya line,” he says. This is an important concept to keep in mind in understanding several of Patanjali’s later sutras in “Chapter 2-A” regarding the joining of Self or Being with nature while not becoming trapped or enmeshed in it.

Patanjali’s Kriya yoga, of course, makes use of Hindu Sanskrit terminology for its meditation methods. However, also important to note is how Kriya offers the same underlying advice at the heart of most deep meditation practices. You can gain similar results whether from Kriya, modern Centering Prayer, Christian monasticism, Zen, Buddha’s Eightfold Path, the mystic love poems of Kabir, Tibetan Kundalini Yoga, Chinese Maitri Loving Kindness, or yet other ways. Each at its core offers the same practice to explain a person’s human psychology and to find freedom within it.

*For specific references and additional details, see the “Endnotes” for each chapter. For bibliography references, see “Sources.”

Sutra 2.1 (in Anglicized Sanskrit): Tapaḥ svādhyāya-Īśvara-praṇidhān-ani kriya yogaḥ

Literal translation: “Burning the impurities; studying the self-layers; being with Supreme God, breathing as one with–these, kriya yoga”

A chant in English: “Attend to your body, emotions, soul, and Being or True Self. This is Action Yoga.”

Definition: Multiple interpretations of this sutra exist. First, all translators do agree that it is defining kriya yoga. Patanjali named this new type of yoga from elements of a practice he developed using Hindu scriptures such as the Upanishads and, perhaps, Buddhist texts.

All interpreters agree that this sutra says Kriya or “action” yoga has three parts. And they tend to concur that one part involves what Patanjali calls Isvara or what could be called God. Isvara in Patanjali is similar to or the same as his Atman-Brahman duality, or God within vs. God without. As explained in Chapter 1, Patanjali and Hinduism in general see the Atman as your internal spark of God, the True Self; and Brahman is the universal aspect of God, or in more modern terms, the transcendent sense of an ongoing, active Being everywhere and in everything.

Even with that statement about Isvara, though, there is some disagreement among translators. And beyond that, interpretations of this sutra can vary dramatically.

The traditional interpretation from medieval commentaries often is that the three parts involve (1) ascetic, monk- or nun-like renunciation of the world, (2) strict scriptural study, and (3) absolute surrender to God. Such translations are similar to medieval Christian beliefs about how to find God. However, more recent linguistic interpretations–by Feuerstein, Iyengar, Stiles, and others, as well as studies of Indo-European root words–support more gentle alternatives. They are: (1) warm heat, (2) self-study, and (3) Awareness of Self/Being.

One way of translating the first, “warm heat, ” is the burning away of random or useless thoughts, memories, emotions, and sensations. However, “warm heat” also may mean the warming physical activity of regular, consistent exercise to burn away bodily impurities. In fact, using a modern, more moderate interpretation, both types of “warm heat” may apply.

The second, “self-study,” has differing major interpretations, as well. Traditionally, it means strict examination of holy scripture. However, it also can mean that you should study in general: first, you can study your own layers, parts, recesses, and excesses of mind, emotion, and body in order to learn what they are and what to do with them. Second, you can self-study any helpful external sources: take lessons, read or listen to explanations, and watch helpful videos.

The third, “Awareness of Self/Being,” may traditionally have meant a type of abject surrender to God. However, it also clearly has two other interpretations. Though the idea in it is to look for and make use of your connection to the highest or deepest spiritual state of being you can find, you may choose–according to Patanjali’s first chapter–either to seek this spiritual ultimate state by looking for your own spark of God or True Self, or you can look for God or a state of Being wherever you might find it beyond or around yourself.

Comment: Sutra 2.1 defines Patanjali’s own system of practice, Kriya yoga. The modern interpretations make his words open and forgiving: methods of loving kindness, rather than rigid rules of harsh asceticism.

Why does this stark difference exist between the medieval an modern interpretations? It can be explained, perhaps, by the harshness of medieval times throughout the world. In East and West, plagues, famines, and wars killed hundreds of millions over many centuries. One of the safest places to practice spirituality was in ascetic monastic communities. The inhabitants had neither wealth nor power, so they were more likely to be left alone by thieves or marauding hordes, and, because they grew their own food, they were more likely to survive. Their interpretations of their scriptures favored giving up the trappings of the world, including pleasures and desires, in order to survive in society.

However, Patanjali was a scholar of the ancient Hindu scriptures. The developers of these earliest scriptures were called rishis, a word that means “saints” or “wise ones.” Patanjali had to be well aware of them, at the least. They often lived normal lives in their early years, including marriage, a family, and a job. Then, as they grew older, they retired to spiritual communities to practice their meditations more regularly, even as they remained religious and cultural icons and leaders of the larger society around them. Rishis, though often upper-caste males, sometimes included women and people of lower castes. In this they partly ignored India’s caste system.

Similar spiritual communities, safe and relatively comfortable even though spare of luxuries, have existed throughout ancient history in both East and West. Linda Johnsen, a scholar of ancient religions, describes several such communities in the West, notably c. 700 BCE or earlier, the followers of poet and musician Orpheus, who tamed the wild rites of the Greek wine god Dionysus; and the spiritual community created a century later by the famous Greek mathematician and holy man Pythagoras.

And thousands of years before them, says ancient-civilizations historian Riane Eisler, many towns in the larger geographic area of the Middle East lived in relative peace as agricultural communities that were led spiritually and politically by women. These communities had their own rites and practices of meditation that celebrated the fullness of their agricultural, artistic, and spiritual abundance in their mild climates. Their religious practices were deep and lively, but not necessarily ascetic.

Patanjali not only had to be well aware of the history of the rishis but also, because of the lively exchange of goods and information along the trade routes between India and the Middle East, he probably had at least some knowledge of these other ancient groups. In addition, he had the profound influence of Buddha, who taught a Middle Path of neither ascetism nor luxury.

For all of these reasons, modern interpretations of a mild, loving-kindness Kriya yoga are reasonable. This gentle but rigorous attitude on his part is even more likely if you pay greater attention to ancient root-word meanings in these sutras.

*For most authors or works mentioned in these sutras, please see the “Endnotes” for further information.

Sutra 2.2: Samādhi bhāvana-arthaḥ kleśa tanū-karaṇa-arthah (arthaś) ca

Literal translation: “Samadhi–bringing it: striving for klesa (obstacle)-thinning, weakening also”

Meaning: “[The three methods in Sutra 2.1] lead to samadhi–your clear mind–being reached: your klesa (troubles, distresses, and afflictions) diminish in difficulty and grow weaker in their power, as well.”

A chant in English: “Kriya yoga weakens your troubles and clears your mind.”

Definition: You can better reach the several types of samadhi, or the clear mind, by using Active yoga (Kriya yoga) as in Sutra 2.1. This is because the three elements mentioned in 2.1 (“Warming exercise and burning away what is unwanted, learning about yourself both inner and outer, and devotion to Conscious Being”) of Kriya (active) yoga will result in two events. First, you will “thin” or diminish your klesa (troubles), as if turning them into a vapor that stretches out so finely that it can more easily be destroyed or ignored. And second, it will make these troubles weaker: less potent or powerful, less demanding, and thus again easier to break up or not let them bother you.

Comment: What are these klesa? They are described in Sutra 1.24 as “troubles, distresses, and afflictions.” They are, as the 1.24 “Comment” section says, “the varied anxieties, worries, bad habits, meannesses, self-doubt, and other negative energies that sometimes inhabit you.” They are your troubling whirlpools: negative and unnecessary repetitive thoughts, memories, emotions, and sensations that swirl around you.

Vyasa, Patanjali’s first editor in about 400 CE, says in his comments about this sutra that these troubles are “similar to burnt seeds” (as in Sutra 1.18) that in deep meditation you might see around you or coming toward you from elsewhere. Vyasa adds that Kriya yoga can help you make these troubles “unproductive...by the fire of deep meditation....” This, he implies, is part of “burning the impurities” mentioned in Sutra 2.1.

Patanjali was a keen observer of the human personality. He may have been able to describe humans’ many negative personality problems from his own experiences, both in life and in learning during meditation to get rid of them. However, Patanjali also likely was part of a community or town in his younger days, where he may have had a regular job, perhaps even a family. All of this was normal for many spiritual leaders then.

He likely was a teacher, as well; and we know from his then-rare ability to write and to reference scripture that he was a scholar who probably belonged to a scholarly group who exchanged books and talked. In addition, as someone aware of the life of the Hindu rishis, he may have been part of a similar spiritual community in his retirement or later years.

In all of these communities, he would have had ample opportunity to observe the best and worst in people of many kinds. Because of this wide and deep knowledge of personalities, he was, as is amply evident in his sutras, a psychologist of his times. He observed emotional and personal dilemmas. And he prescribed, using the sutras.

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

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See also Meditationary.org, a Meditation Dictionary; and BodyMeditation.org, Introducing Yoga Meditation.

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