Patanjali's Yoga Sutras

Endnotes Appendix Bibliog. Downloadable PDF

= Yama: [These five define] ‘Yama’—a self-control code for your social life.”

A chant in English: “Live to not hurt, lie, steal, or grasp, and move with God.”

Definition: “No harm” is the key phrase in the ethical codes of Yama. Don’t hurt yourself or others. This means not harming your own and others’ bodies, not hurting factual truth, others’ property, or your own and others’ physical and sexual welfare, and not unbalancing your own needs by becoming grasping.

These are not hard and fast absolutes requiring you to be harshly limiting, over-ascetic, and expectant of everyone around you following nit-picking rules. Rather, the “no-harms” are simple but major guidelines. They require individual monitoring of yourself, learning, balance, growth in your life and circumstances, and deep consideration of others. For example, stealing generally is bad, but if you steal bread as the only way to keep a child from dying, that may be the lesser harm.

Comment: One of the most troubling of the yamas to many people is brahmacarya, often translated as “celibacy.” But this is not its root meaning. The original word tends to convey the idea of “Supreme movement or conduct in walking.” That translation suggests non-harmfulness to all physical movements in tune with God or the Spirit.

This means that as you gradually discover your higher and deeper energies over years of time, you learn to bring a mindfulness to each physical act, each moment of bodily movement. This is much closer to the original meaning of “God, moving to—physical movement for/with the Supreme.” Those who meditate using spiritual dance, for example, are very aware of this: their meditative movements are tuned to giving and receiving in a physical, harmonic dance with spirit.

Concerning sexuality, this means that as in all other physical activity, gradually learning to give it to spirit is the best policy. Doing so with balance, meaning, and mindfulness leads even the strongest physical ecstasies to Self/Presence.

Literal translation: “Begetting situation, location, era—all joining together—not cutting down the universal brilliance of this Great Willingness”

Meaning: “Your birth in society, place in space, and time—none of these stop the light of the universal Great Conduct of the yamas.”

A chant in English: “No matter who, when, or where you are or have been, the light of the yamas continues.”

Definition: These principles were encoded in scriptures by mystics not just because morality is needed for society to work, but also because it is necessary for progressing in meditation to higher and deeper spiritual and mystical levels. Feuerstein says in his commentary on this sutra, “Patanjali’s ethical code is substantially identical with the moral principles advocated by the major religions of the world.”

The yamas apply to both you and your interactions with others around you. The spiritual progress of you as an individual and your society are inextricably interwoven as moral acts and inner growth.

Comment: This guideline becomes even more important when you realie that through meditation, almost all people become more sensitive to others’ feelings and needs. As a result, if you want to continue long-term progress in meditation, you cannot decide to cut out or block others’ feelings. What you do to others will cause them to have thoughts and feelings, which you, too, will experience to some degree. Their reactions become part of your own psychic atmosphere.

Hindu yoga psychology describes the influences of others’ feelings around you. Each person radiates a set of feelings that can vary from hour to hour and day to day. As you become more sensitive to others, you may more easily absorb their feelings temporarily. It is as if their air and waters are, for example, red and salty: then your own may become more red and salty, too.

If you do not let their feelings attach to you, then those feelings will pass, even if they create a brief, temporary whirlpool in or around you. And if their feelings are too much for you to handle in a calm, meditative way, it is acceptable to withdraw from them for a time, perhaps longer: this is one of the main reasons people going through new spiritual experiences must withdraw for a time from much of society.

However, as your own inner “waters” of thoughts and feelings become increasingly clear, consistent, and strong, your presence around others sometimes can help them calm their own air and waters. Then your conduct of following the yamas becomes not just an example for them but an instrument of peace.

On the one hand, as a good meditator, you aren’t required by any special law of the universe to spend extraordinary amounts of time living out others’ worries and problems. To the contrary, this is self-punishment that may prevent you from meditating well.

On the other hand, however, you will experience others’ reactions to you: you’ll reap what you sow. At the least, for peace, calm, and love in your own psychological ecosphere, as well as the world, you can resolve to think well of people and hope for their balance and happiness.

b. Samtosa: Not seeking more materially—satisfaction with this golden radiance

c. Tapah (Tapas): Fiery/heated will—burning fervor [hot on the trail of] inner growth

d. Svadhyaya: Study going near to Self—studying of books and use of mantras (chants or repetitive prayers) to find your true self

A chant in English: “Be pure in the flow of life, content with its brightness, strong of inner will, searching for Self, and open to Presence.”

Definition: The Niyamas are guidelines for your inner life. In the writing of a sutra, often the first element is the most important. So it is here: “pure golden radiance.” The others in the list are variations of that theme.

Many translations, unfortunately, use nothing more than the word “clean” for the first Niyama, as if washing yourself is most important. Such cleanliness is just one aspect of this sutra. Using root words from Vedic times, a more basic meaning of this first element is “pure radiance.” It implies the golden purity of Hinduism’s most basic substance in the universe, the light-gold strings of vibration that contain God-created matter: the Hindu dharma or golden substance that controls the workings of the universe. The other four Niyamas include not seeking more physical essence or matter than just this radiance, maintaining a fiery will and mental search for this inner truth, and keeping yourself open to the resulting discovery of the True Self/Presence it reveals.

Comment: The five Niyamas do not require rigid obedience. Rather, they suggest a way of life for you gradually to develop inner growth. For example, the famous early-medieval Christian mystic St. Augustine of Hippo admitted that when he was a young man starting to be converted to a spiritual way of life, he prayed, “Lord, give me chastity, but do not give it yet.”* Later, he grew into what he considered an inwardly appropriate lifestyle for himself. He also counseled others to follow what he called a “middle path”—a path of marriage that was neither a rigid ascetic withdrawal from normal living nor a lifestyle of lush pleasure-seeking. In suggesting this “middle path,” he was much like the Buddha, who taught the Eightfold Middle Path of Buddhism.

Another interesting facet of Patanjali’s Niyamas is suggested by Iyengar. He views the five as reflections of the five traditional Hindu kosha or layers of a human as described in Sutra 1.2. He also relates them to the five basic elements taught by Greek and other philosophies in the West. He says in his commentary on this sutra, “These five observations accord with the five [kosha] sheaths of [humans] and the elements of nature: the anatomical (earth), physiological (water), psychological (fire), intellectual (air) and spiritual (ether) layers.” Iyengar’s commentary further suggests the Hindu ancients taught the Niyamas, just as they did the kosha and the five elements of matter.

Worth noting, too, is that much of this sutra repeats what Patanjali’s says earlier in Sutra 2.1. This repetition is a further indication that Patanjali or another author may have written the Astanga yoga section at a different time and added much of it to the Yoga 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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