Patanjali's Yoga Sutras

Endnotes Appendix Bibliog. Downloadable PDF

Literal translation: “For these each, reverse-birthing [“dis-integrating”] it, in its subtle, psychic beginning”

Meaning: “For each of the five personality problems [in Sutras 2.3-2.9], focus on its psychic source to banish it.”

A chant in English: “Where your stresses start as vibrations, focus on them to melt them.”

Definition: The beginning of this new section, Sutras 2.10-2.16, offers little in the way of immediate relief for the five personality problems explained in Sutras 2.3-2.9. Rather, this section is a road guide, an overview, of the internal negative events that may be happening to you. Patanjali expects you to read other sections–such as those in Chapter 1–to determine what your own best practice of success might be. Here in this section, his purpose is to help you understand what your addictive personality patterns might be.

In this sutra, 2.10, Patanjali explains one way to get rid of these five personality afflictions. He tells you it may be necessary to find the mental or emotional expression of them within yourself, and then go to its source, psychic or subtle, to get rid of it there. He calls this process “reverse birthing,” by which he means psychologically “dis-integrating” or “de-constructing” them at their source: taking them apart, down to their basic vibrational elements, and dissolving them where they lie.

Vyasa once again says that what you must get rid of, psychically, is “similar to burnt seeds...in the mind, [which are] dissolved.” This is what some translators call an “involution” or a returning to the original source of the affliction, then getting rid of it at that point by dissolving, banning, or burning it.

What does this mean, exactly? Patanjali talked in Sutra 1.18 of “burnt seeds” appearing to your Awareness in meditation. They look like small, blackened seeds, husks, or dust balls. Each one is a kernel as described in Sutra 2.4 that can shoot up like a weed in the “soil” of your “field” of self.

Once a negative seed enters uncontrolled into your field of awareness, it blossoms into a trouble. It is a klesa or negative energy form. If you continue to live with it, support it, and feed it with additional thoughts, memories, emotions, and sensations, then it will grow into a complex negative personality trait.

Such “seeds” are the start of all of the klesa or negative personality traits discussed in Sutras 2.3-2.9. Indeed, every wayward, useless thought, memory, feeling, or emotion in which we find ourselves enmeshed starts as a seed of this sort.

Comment: Here is an example of a “burnt seed.” Let’s say that you have a small husk, a little piece, of a bad memory floating on the periphery of your consciousness. Perhaps it is a memory of someone who hurt you in some way, and that memory is a mixture of an image (or sound) and a negative physical feeling. Together, they make you relive the emotion of hurt, fear, or resulting anger.

Maybe, as you go about your daily life, you even can vaguely sense that kernel of negativity hanging there, but sometimes you just ignore it. Then one day it comes into you fully once again, as it has in the past, blossoming in your mind and senses. Maybe you thought it was gone, but now, before you know what is happening, you are enmeshed in it like a dog that can’t stop gnawing a bone. Even though you know it is distracting, unpleasant, and upsetting, you start adding additional negative thoughts and feelings to it, making it grow even more. Then the next time it bothers you, it becomes even stronger, more complex, or longer in your processing of it. If it becomes even worse, you might decide to act upon it to get even with someone or make sure no one ever hurts you in that way again. In short, it has disabled your life to some small or large degree.

What Patanjali is saying in this sutra is that if you can learn through meditation to go back to the creation point of the negative energy–when it still is in seed form outside of your self, at the periphery of your consciousness–and get rid of it there, then this is one way you can conquer it. Doing so means going back to the original source. Some translations call it an “involution” (the opposite of its evolution), a process of awareness that stops it before it fully enters your conscious self and takes control. You also can call it a disintegration or deconstruction because you are “dis-integrating” or “de-constructing” it: taking away its previous integration or construction nto your daily life.

How do you destroy it before it enters you? There are several ways. One is to “burn” it with pure meditation through seeing Self/Being: you find your truest pure Awareness, inner or outer, and offer the seed to it (or vice versa). That works for some meditators. A second is to ignore it by showing no interest whatsoever in it; then it goes away. A third is to forcibly (with your mind power) throw it away from you or out of you: as you see it hovering near you, you imagine it hurtling far away, or even picture a human or animal consuming it and flying off.

A fourth way is to deflect it for a while–a common but temporary method–through what Patanjali has called “hot exercise.” A fifth way, similar to the first, is to offer it up to a person or being of great spirituality. And a sixth, a more advanced method in meditation, is to dissolve it, an approach Patanjali explains in the last several sutras of his book.

Literal translation: “Meditation to let them go, those, swirling whirlpools”

Meaning: “Turn to meditation to release yourself from them if they’ve invaded your mind and body.”

A chant in English: “When your distress comes into you, use meditation to break it.”

Definition: Sutra 2.10 explained what to do if these klesa–these energy-form personality traits–hover just at the edge of your awareness in subtle form. Now, here in Sutra 2.11, Patanjali explains what to do if they have become physical vrtti (“vr̥ttayaḥ”)–swirling whirlpools–that have entered your awareness–your mind and body. They grip you with whirling thoughts, memories, emotions, and sensations, includng physical discomforts. Patanjali states here that you need regular meditation to help deal with these negative energies.

Vyasa, Patanjali’s first editor, uses a good analogy for first getting rid of these swirling whirlpools in meditation, and next destroying their seed-forms hovering outside of you. He says, “And as gross dirt is first shaken off of clothes,...afterwards, the subtle (dirt) is removed....”

Comment: When your klesa or problems reach the point of taking over your thinking, memory, emotions, and/or body, they no longer are the burnt seeds or husks hovering just beyond your true Self. Instead, they have come into you like growing weeds, becoming the vrtti or swirling whirlpools Patanjali described in detail in Sutras 1.4-1.11. When this has happened, he says, you may rid yourself of them by practicing meditation. And he continues to discuss this in Sutras 2.12-2.16 and, indeed, the rest of Chapter 2-A.

Breathing and posture meditations can help unkink your body and emotions and steady your inner energy. The practices of right thinking, acting, eating, drinking, breathing, and exercise all can help, too: they are discussed as Astanga yoga in Chapter 2-B. Developing daily mindfulness in everything you do, especially in your breathing and bodily movement,s can be very useful, too. Meditating within yourself–or outwardly on nature, beauty, or a spiritual person–can help you find a greater measure of quiet, of calm awareness, and of comfort. As you attain these in meditation, you can begin to work more fruitfully on dealing with your klesa in their whirling mental, emotional, and body forms.

Modern psychology explains an additional important technique for getting rid of these pieces of pain that have developed repetitively in your life. Instead of letting them take over you, you watch them: choose one; then stand back within yourself and see and hear it unreel without becoming involved in it; break it into its component parts, separately identifying the thoughts, memories, emotions, and sensations. As you learn to observe it neutrally and dismantle its parts, gradually you can deteriorate its strength and frequency until it is a minor annoyance or starts going away. See Sutras 1.11 and 1.20 for more about this.

Normal psychological therapy also can be helpful. You might practice self-therapy by writing about your problems, or you can talk about them out loud to yourself, to a tape recorder, or to a person who wants to listen to you. Or you may seek a therapist.

Making use of a trained, licensed therapist is, essentially, similar to the process of talking out your problems, except this time you are using the assistance of a trained guide. A good therapist can assist you to find–and keep returning to the core of–your problem, pain, or discomfort. You discuss your thoughts and feelings until you find what starts them in you. And gradually, you learn to stop them before they can really dig into you and start their whirling.

Sutra 2.12: Kleśa mūlaḥ karma-aśayaḥ (aśayo) dr̥ṣṭa-adr̥ṣṭa janma vedanīyaḥ

Literal translation: “The problems’ roots shooting up–they from your actions-womb–already seen and in future birthings yet to experience”

Meaning: “The negative personality problems [klesa in Sutra 2.3-9] grow from the subtle seeds and roots in your karmic actions-and-reactions womb. Some you have seen; others lie in future birthings.”

A chant in English: “Your negative actions grow and repeat until you weed them.”

Definition: This sutra is about karma: how your actions and reactions create further actions and reactions that keep coming back to you. For example, if you develop a negative thinking habit, it will persist with you if you don’t work to dissolve it. Or, for example, what if you purposely hurt someone’s feelings? That negative energy is in and around you, such that you unconsciously broadcast it to others, and someone eventually will hurt you. You reap what you sow, both negative and positive. Your actions and reactions are reflected back at you by the mirror of other people who “catch” what you’ve done and throw it back.

What does the term “birthings” mean? It is possible for you to interpret it as your actions and reactions in this life, before you die: the sooner you heal yourself of them, the happier you will be in this life. Another interpretation occurs if you believe, as some people do, in an individual afterlife. Then the message is that you must heal yourself of your negative karma in order to go to a good place after you die.

However, scholars and interpreters of Patanjali agree that he believed in reincarnation. A majority (though not all) of Hindus and Buddhists in his time held this belief, and the ancient Hindu scriptures often spoke of it.

Here, Patanjali is recommending to you that you should not be overly enraptured by life if you want to break free of the unending cycles of rebirth. It is not wrong to experience life, he says, for experiencing it takes you closer to understanding your need for finding Self/Being. However, he suggests, gradually you can learn to search for Self/Being and slowly discover how to live life through this higher, deeper focus.

Regarding reincarnation, Patanjali does warn or explain, here, that from lifetime to lifetime, you are carrying around your “karmic actions-and-reactions womb,” and your troubles “grow from the roots” that are planted in it. These roots were there in past lives, he says, and will continue to grow, always repetitively but in somewhat new circumstances and slightly different paths, in your future lives.

Comment: In Hinduism and other Eastern religions, reincarnation means that you are born into one lifetime after another. In each lifetime, you have a tendency, because of your attachments to life, to build karmic debts. However, each time you come back, you also have opportunities to release yourself from old karmic debts. It is as if you have built chains of delicate gossamer spider webs so thin you don’t notice them. But they are strong; they entrap you nevertheless, and impel you to act, feel, and think in patterned ways. You might choose one lifetime to work on one set of problems and another lifetime to manage a different set. Gradually, you lift the webs away as you clear your troubles, ideally growing increasingly freer in each life.

Who in history believes in reincarnation? Ancient and modern Eastern religions bear majorities of followers who took it quite seriously. These religions encompass major groups in Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, and Sikh religions. These believers generally agree on several principles regarding reincarnation: each soul is eternal, it is an individual, and that person lives dozens of bodily lives over thousands of years.

Reincarnation also implies that friends, family, small groups, and even large movements of similar cultural and social classes often travel together through the ages into new times, some in one lifetime, others in different ones. If you were in Rome or Calcutta two thousand years ago, some of you–not necessarily all–may have returned as a larger group now. In addition, relationships can change: while people might be, for example, married in several lifetimes, in another one might become the parent and in yet a different lifetime the child or a close friend.

Eastern theologians and philosophers have argued for thousands of years about other aspects of reincarnation. For example, some have said that people may reincarnate very soon after dying, while others say many hundreds of years usually pass between two lives; however, most agree that a typical passage of time before assuming a new body is somewhere between as little as twenty and as much as three hundred years, rarely less or more. Another argument concerns whether it is possible to have been an animal in earlier lives (or even become one in the future!). Still another debate focuses on whether people retain the same gender, caste, or station in life, or even race through all their lifetimes, or can switch.

Reincarnation in Western philosophy and religion sometimes is called “transmigration.” The ancient Greeks called it metempsychosis. Often, now, the West simply calls it “rebirth.” It has been a belief, past and present, in some branches of Paganism, among modern New Age followers, and also among some Native First People, Jewish groups, and in ancient Celtic, Gnostic, and other religions.

Evidence suggests that important Greek philosophers such as Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato may have believed in it. One of the most prominent modern American schools of reincarnation is those who follow the life of Edgar Cayce, a twentieth-century seer of unusual prognostic ability, especially in the book about him Many Mansions by psychiatrist Gina Cerminara.

You may choose to interpret this sutra as being about rebirth, or about what happens in your individual life right now. Either way, it simply states the age-old truth that what you do will come back to you, good for good and bad for bad. Clear away your negative energies, and you will have an increasingly happier, more productive, and more aware life now. Patanjali already has suggested a couple dozen ways in Chapter One to clear your negative energies. He offers even more in Chapter 2-B on Astanga yoga.

Sutra 2.13: Sati mūle tad-vipākaḥ (vipāko)-jāti-āyuḥ (āyur)-bhogāḥ

Literal translation: “This state of sound-being [that is, your karmic “actions-and-reactions womb” in 2.12]: its root, from it, cooking and ripening into new life stations, lifetime goings-on, and enjoyments”

A chant in English: “Your karma brings you your positions in life, its length, and pleasures that keep you returning.”

Definition: Here, Patanjali features reincarnation. He says you have a repository–your own “storage bag,” if you will–of karma from lifetime to lifetime.

Traditional Hindu reincarnation theory says that “karma” means “actions and reactions.” In reincarnation theory, you carry these tendencies of action and reaction like travelers carry a bag of necessities strapped to their back. Your luggage items join you in each lifetime. Sometimes you make them smaller or even throw them out, sometimes you add more to your suitcase of goods, and usually for each “trip” (a lifetime), you only take some of your items out of your case. Your karmic travel clothes and accessories also determine the status or societal class(es) that you tend to join, the length of each life, and the travel destinations you choose.

Vyasa proposes another way of imagining karma. The admixture of all these karmic strands, he says, “is like a fish net decorated with knots stretching in every direction” that “have (accumulated from) several previous births.” In any one lifetime, some parts of this fish net are closer to you, tugging at you incessantly, while others may be so distant as to seem unnoticeable.

Your travel luggage also means that in each life, you enjoy certain pleasures and rewards: not all karma necessarily is bad. After your current trip, your old baggage and your current life’s pleasures and pains will then lead you to be reborn someday in many decades or even centuries with similar trip plans, strengths, and needs.

However, according to the tradition of Hindu reincarnation theory, you can use meditation and good deeds to escape one or more rounds of rebirths. Some theories say you won’t need to return to human rebirth once you’ve dissolved your karma. Other belief systems in India argue that you may choose to return, even if you have to, so that you can help others.

Comment: Some estimates suggest that perhaps a fourth to a third of Westerners believe in some form of reincarnation. (See “Endnote 2.12.”) If you are among those who don’t believe in it or if you mostly discount it, you still may apply the concept to just your current lifetime. In a single life, what Patanjali calls your “karmic womb”–and Vyasa your “fish net”–is similar to modern theories of psychology. Two notable concepts are Sigmund Freud’s “unconscious” and Karl Jung’s “collective unconscious.” (Teilhard de Chardin’s “noosphere” is a third one: see Sutra 1.23.)

From Freud’s unconscious realm and Jung’s collective unconscious, their theories say, we drag up unconscious materials. They may come, as in Freud’s theory, from unremembered childhood experiences; or in Jung’s, from the common deep psychic roots of humanity. They pop into our outward, conscious experience, often unbidden and troublesome, creating thoughts, memories, emotions, and sensations that lead you to act and react. You then must decide whether to let them affect or control you, or find a way to lessen or dissolve them. Methods for doing so may include, among other choices, meditation and good deeds as Patanjali and modern therapists suggest. The goal is to clear your tendencies and problems sufficiently to gain greater inner freedom and happiness.

Whether you believe in Western psychology, reincarnation, or a mix of both, the journey is quite similar. You start with a personality that has mixed positives and negatives. They are deeply intertwined, a web or “fishnet.” You use meditation or a pursuit of God outside of you to grow and “become better,” as psychologists might say. This is the path of finding True Self/Being.

Or you can use psychological therapy, with others or on yourself. That, too, can help you separate the webbed strands of your personality. In that way, too, you can see each lattice or knot for what it is individually, and release yourself from its hold. Which is faster, meditation or therapy? Which do you prefer? Certainly, if you trust or like psychology more than spirituality, still it is possible to use the former and combine it with meditation for more dynamic results.

Many mystics and psychologists add that doing good deeds can be a significant method that gradually burns or grinds away old negativities through a mix of love, understanding, and habit. The goal for all methods is freedom: awareness, steadiness, and strength; stillness, rest, and peace; and love and joy.

Literal translation: “They [in Sutra 2.13], joyful or much too hot as fruits ripened from [them], good or bad stirrings”

Meaning: “They [from Sutra 2.13: “life statuses, the length of your activities, and the enjoyments that keep you returning to them”] offer joyful fruits or burn you, according to whether your deeds, good or bad, have stirred you up.”

A chant in English: “Your past bears fruits of delight or pain from the good or bad you have done.”

Definition: The basic message in this sutra is simple. Karma means, simply, that the good that you do will lead to “joyful fruits” and the bad to “overheating” or “burning.” This is true whether you believe that you pay for the results of your actions in just this lifetime or over many lives.

More deeply, Patanjali once again uses vivid physical descriptions. He is not saying just that good deeds lead to pleasant living and bad to discomfort. Rather, he stresses that the results of your actions lead to “joyful fruits,” surely events of great physical or emotional pleasure, or to “overheating” or “burning,” which sound, physically and emotionally, very painful.

Comment: Patanjali also describes how your previous acts “incite” these results. An “incitement” means, here, “a stirring up” of the positive and negative swirlings or whirlpools surrounding you, just as if you are stirring a soup or a whipping your arms about to conduct your daily symphony. Patanjali means that you are arousing, whipping up, and your positive and negative personality traits, along with their accompanying thoughts, memories, emotions, and sensations. Such is your personal fishnet or web that is your personality and life.

Science is able to measure a number of physical reactions that correlate with internal sensations, feelings, emotions, and strong thoughts. Measurements now exist for heart rate, brainwaves, pupil dilation, skin conductivity, internal and external temperatures of different parts of the body at any given time, body language, facial expression, et al. If scientists were to record all such measurements in an individual along with that person’s self-reporting of internal feelings–and do so with thousands of subjects–then maps of people’s “stirrings” could be created. However, at present, such predictions of patterns are the province of psychology–and of meditation.

Sutra 2.15: Pariṇāma tāpa saṁskāra duḥkhaiḥ (duḥkhair) guṇa vr̥tti virodhāt (virodhāc) ca duḥkham eva sarvaṁ vivekinaḥ

Literal translation: “Life’s hard bends, negative heatedness, and echoing vibrations with bad-axle-hole troubles from them; from nature forces, whirlpools, stoppages, and resulting oppositions; axle-hole grating indeed, all to the discerner”

Meaning: “Life’s troubling changes, hot messes, and constantly vibrating impressions causing difficulties–they and the forces of nature, mental swirlings, ruptures in flow, and the oppositions in life they create–are troubling, indeed, all of them, to a person of discernment.”

A chant in English: “Life is so uneven and harsh, whether in joys or pains, if you want to stand more in peaceful clarity.”

Definition: Older translations–pre-21st century–usually give this sutra a very ascetic, religious translation: i.e., they suggest that ultimate happiness requires giving up a normal human life to become a hermit withdrawn from the world. However, Patanjali’s words, if you follow them to their ancient root meanings–simple and physical–appear more likely to state that if you feel entangled in the thorn bush of existence, that’s not the real you: you can get out by seeking your True Self/Being. And when you begin extricating yourself, suggests Patanjali–in other positive and hopeful sutras–then you can live a life of awareness, peace, and joy here on earth.

Comment: One interesting note about this sutra is that Vyasa uses it as an opportunity to explain dukkha—bad axle-hole problems–in much the same way as did Buddha. Vyasa does not mention Buddha specifically; however, he argues strongly that the “science” of this sutra has just “four parts” that sound very similar to Buddha’s Four Noble Truths:

Vyasa does not tell us whether he takes his four “scientific” points directly from Buddhism (Buddha taught them eight centuries before Vyasa) or from even earlier Hindu sources that predate both Buddha and Patanjali. In any case, this sutra of Patanjali’s is a good starting point for Vyasa’s version of the Four Noble Truths.

Another useful point in this sutra is the Sanskrit word tapa. It means “heatedness,” “over-heatedness,” or, in contemporary casual slang, what sometimes is called a “hot mess.” It also can be translated as “distress,” “afflictions,” or “torment.” Taken together, they sound like the Western concept of hell. But what, precisely, is “hell”? The West has well detailed it for thousands of years, from the definitions of Gehenna in the Christian New Testament (and the Hebrew Ge Hinnom before it) and other ancient literature, to Dante’s classic defining of the place in his 1300s CE book Inferno. It gradually has become, in Western culture, a richly defined supernatural location where bad people go after they die.

However, many mystics Western and Eastern describe hell differently. Hell is not a specific location or a punishment reserved for the afterlife. Rather, it is always a possible current condition for a soul –for a Self that has not found itself and is living in intellectual, emotional, or physical pain that it can neither escape nor diminish. Satchidananda says in his comment on this sutra, “The same world can be a heaven or a hell.” In this regard, as in Dante’s many circles of hell, each increasingly worse, humans can live in torture just as easily, unfortunately, as in peace. The choice, say Patanjali and other mystics, is up to you.

Literal translation: “Leaving behind bad-axle-hole troubles not yet going on”

Meaning: “You can abandon wearying problems before the unknown happens.”

Definition: The concept here is simple. On the one hand, you can employ all sorts of mental, emotional, or physical devices to cover up or distract yourself from old, recurring psychological tapes: e.g., every time you start thinking of an unpleasant memory, you eat snacks and watch television; or, perhaps, each time a negative emotion develops inside you, you take it out on someone else. On the other hand, you can use the methods Patanjali lays before you to not have such negative difficulties continually returning or, at the least, to fairly easily dissolve them when they occur.

Comment: This sutra completes Patanjali’s section 2.10-2.16 in which he explains how problems–bad “whirlpools”–enter you, stay with you, or come back to haunt you. This section of sutras is a map of darkness, a road guide to the obstacles in front of and around you. These difficulties are what some religions have called the little and big demons that persist in a person’s life. Note, though, that Patanjali does not give them consciousness or a soul: they are not devilish entities but rather just psychic habits and patterns you would be better off shedding.

In these sutras, he offers you an overview of such problems from their genesis outside of your personality to their attachment and reoccurrence. Though his explanation is intertwined with a theory of multiple births over time, you also can read his instructions as a set of guides for handling difficulties in just this lifetime.

A.A.–Alcoholics Anonymous–provides an example. It was founded in the U.S. in 1935 and is famous for its Twelve Step Program to help people stop drinking (and later, other addictions). Patanjali views klesa or “troubles” like A.A. contemplates addictions: you have three choices. You can continue to accept and live with them. Or second, you can attempt short-term methods to forget, avoid, or cover up your difficulties; however, these courses of action often lead to relapses. Or, third and best, you can “get on the Program,” as people in A.A. are known to say, and use the methods given to you by Patanjali for your klesa or by A.A. for your addictive behaviors.

The importance of Sutras 2.10-16 is in not letting yourself be overcome. Mystic and theologian Howard Thurman says in “Life Goes On,”

...Over and over we must know that the real target of evil is not destruction of the
body,

is to corrupt the spirit of man and to give his soul the contagion of inner
disintegration.

Therefore the evil in the world around us must not be allowed to move from
without to within.

In summary, Patanjali does not offer a lot of relief in Sutras 2.10-16. However, these sutras are a good roadmap for identifying negative traits within you so that you can begin the banishment process.

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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