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Yoga's Path to Liberation HathaRaja Yoga’s Path to Liberation As in Buddhism, the true goal of yoga is liberation from ego and suffering. Yoga becomes a complete spiritual path, says CHIP HARTRANFT, translator of the Yoga Sutra, when we join the familiar postures of hatha yoga with the meditative practices of raja yoga. T R A N Q U I L A N D M OT I O N L E S S , the ascetic sits in a simple posture. As each breath flows in, he experiences its sensations, relaxing any effort to con- S O U trol or improve anything. With each exhalation, he observes a new stream, R C E each ripple of feeling a fresh occasion for surrender. Even so, thoughts, feel- : S T O ings, and identifying concepts repeatedly erupt, centered around the same C K P dualistic notions: self/other, past/future, like/dislike, success/failure. Once H O T noticed, though, they recede. O N Y The meditative path, samadhi, begins to emerge as the ascetic continues to C / D R sit. Sustained at first by intention, it sharpens until the need to train it gives E A M way to effortless mindfulness and equanimity. Abruptly, in a timeless instant S T I M of cessation, nothing remains to obscure the unconditioned. An unshakeable E ILLUSTRATION . C realization arises: all things—mind, body, nature—may be known, but are O BY ERIC FIELD M empty of a knower. There is an ennobling security in this understanding that SHAMBHALA SUN JULY 2008 47 but in overcoming ignorance, one had to transform all we can actually know of them are representations ap- oneself and one’s own perceptions. Even as ascetics pearing as consciousness, citta. Each distinct display, also clustered around charismatic and compelling seekers called citta, is a fleeting shadow play involving one of the like the Buddha and the Jain Mahavira, the prevailing six types of phenomena: sights, sounds, smells, tastes, ethos was self-empowering. Regardless of background, tactile feelings, or thoughts. Even though separate and “The Yoga Sutra no experience nor experiencer is ultimate, but is only Trunk, Roots, Branches liberation was within one’s grasp. sequential, these cittas unfold so rapidly that we usually of Patanjali” in a dewdrop perched on a web of contingencies—dhar- Ironically, the spreading tent of Hinduism eventu- misperceive them as an unbroken, simultaneous flow Sanskrit Although tradition claims Patanjali was an important mas—glistening for a moment before evaporating. ally came to enclose the unorthodox praxis of yoga, we call “reality,” “self,” and “other.” This makes it almost grammarian of the second century BCE, more recent Does this sound to you like the wandering ascetic linking Patanjali to Visnu and installing his teaching impossible to distinguish between mind and matter, or scholarly investigations have revealed several illustri- Gotama awakening under the Bodhi tree? In fact, this ous Patanjalis. The author of the Yoga Sutra lived hun- as one of Hinduism’s six orthodox philosophical per- between events and our reactions to them. So, our pat- account depicts the ancient Indian sage Patanjali, and dreds of years later, it would appear. This seminal text spectives, or darsanas. Yoga, however, is primarily a terns of perception and volition are largely determined, describes how he and his followers practiced yoga. path rather than a philosophy, and the Yoga Sutra is automatic, and nearly inescapable. was probably composed between 100 BCE and 300 BCE, This might be a little surprising, not only to Bud- but it is now clear that most of its teachings are even more road map than treatise. It is often forgotten that dhists but to most yoga students today, who may be more ancient, based on oral traditions from at least a Patanjala-yoga shares not only the same basic medita- wondering where their own yoga, with its stretching, How to Do, How to Be millennium earlier. They concern contemplative prac- tive approach but also the spirit of independence of the deep breathing, and perhaps a little perspiration, fits tices prevalent both before and after the time of the Buddha’s path, rejecting spiritual authority based on Under ordinary circumstances, this illusion of a me in. Setting aside the clichés familiar from movies and Buddha. revealed texts like the Vedas or residing in any one class navigating myself through a seamless life is virtually advertising, we must acknowledge that even for many In fact, if we look back to a time before the Buddha, or gender. Even as the Hindu traditions—eventually impenetrable. But when attention is focused on the of its most devoted and accomplished adherents, “do- there is evidence that an inwardly focused meditative including hatha yoga—came to regard the Yoga Sutra processes of body and breath, which orient the yogi ing yoga” primarily means pouring the energies of tradition existed among some indigenous peoples of as the essential expression of yogic truth, the radical in what Patanjali calls yoga, or “yoking,” consciousness body and breath into a series of postures that range the Indian subcontinent a millennium or more ear- nature of its meditative roots has largely been buried begins to settle spontaneously and become transparent from soft to strenuous. lier. This practice tradition was quite different from by the intervening centuries and layers of tradition. and reflective, like the ocean growing calm. Few are aware, though, that this dynamic approach the externally directed spirituality of the Aryan tribes The meditative intentions that move yogis down was developed mostly in the last millennium and is the that infiltrated from the northwest. This more external this natural path to tranquility are twofold. First, yogis still-evolving baby in the yoga family. Its tenth-cen- form of spirituality came to dominate the area and its What Is Yoga? train themselves to keep returning to the point of focus tury creators called it hatha yoga, meaning “forceful” cultures during the first several centuries of the second Patanjali begins the Yoga Sutra by defining yoga and and sit with it. This intention, called abhyasa (“sit fac- or “energy” yoga, to distinguish it from the “royal” or millennium BCE. the universal misperception it resolves: ing”), is the basis for sustained practice and begins with “highest” path, raja yoga—the cultivation of samadhi witnessing the current stream of bodily sensations. As Although initially overwhelmed during the Aryan in- Yoga is to still the patterning of consciousness. laid out by Patanjali nearly a thousand years earlier in yogis keeps noticing and returning from distraction, flux, the inward-focused meditation tradition was more Then pure awareness can abide in its very nature. the Yoga Sutra. The oldest surviving hatha text, dating they quickly come face-to-face with conditioned habits than hardy enough to survive the cross-cultural assimi- Otherwise awareness takes itself to be the patterns from the fifteenth century, insists that raja and hatha of thought and reaction. No matter how numerous or lation that unfolded over the next millennium. By the of consciousness. are related and meant to be practiced side by side. seventh or eighth centuries BCE, this introspective sen- overwhelming these distractions, though, they always This becomes clear not only at the deep end of the sibility was everywhere evident in the widespread phe- Stilling reveals something generally not seen (avidya) dissolve. As they continue to practice, yogis may soon yoga pool, but also in the shallows where most of us first nomenon of wandering ascetics, or sramana. Rejecting by human beings: that what actually knows nature in begin to sense a developing aptitude for remembering dip a toe or two. Yoga does promise—and can quickly Vedic authority, with its relentless sacrifices and rigid all its manifestations is a timeless, subjectless, uncon- the focus, a power that starts to grow stronger than the deliver—a smorgasbord of enhancements to flexibil- hierarchies of race, class, and gender, untold numbers of ditioned awareness. Although the mind can imagine penchant for forgetting. As this aptitude is cultivated ity, strength, health, and beauty, as well as the possibil- men and women dropped out of conventional society and express this awareness as having both a divine and concentration—samadhi—begins to coalesce, ity of meeting new people in a relaxed environment and went forth into homeless spiritual seeking. Their universal (isvara) and individual (purusa) perspective, yogis will require only occasional, subtle prompts to with few pressures and even fewer clothes. However, it “inner sacrifices,” ranging from harsh austerity to bliss- knowing is not an entity or point of view at all. It lies direct and train awareness on the object, and the need is the peaceful glow that a yoga practitioner is sure to ful meditation, also began to inform post-Vedic brah- beyond the reach of the mind and its insistence on lo- even for these will drop away as samadhi ripens. feel even after the first class that usually brings people manical teachings such as the Upanisads. cation, orientation, temporality, and attributes. If meditation is to move from doing to being, the back. This ineffable sense of contentment, clarity, and The thread that united most of these early yogas was What is important for a suffering being to realize is that other intention one must keep in mind is softening. presence can awaken us to the possibility of something their intense focus on self-liberation from suffering. it is this imperturbable witnessing that knows—and not Again and again, the yogi unclenches, relaxes his psy- far greater. What may spring originally from the desire Whether meditative trance, philosophical inquiry, nat- one’s perceptions, feelings, or thoughts. Every one of these chosomatic grip on the moment, and allows events to to enhance oneself can be transmuted over time into uralistic observation, extreme morality, or self-mor- conscious experiences issues from body-mind phenom- be just as they are.
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