Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

1.1 Now begins the teaching of yoga.

1.2 Yoga is the stilling (nirodha) of the fluctuations (vritti) of the mind (citta).

1.3 Then the seer abides in its own true form.

1.4 At other times it takes the form of the fluctuations.

1.5 The fluctuations are fivefold, afflicted or unafflicted.

1.6 They are valid knowledge, error, imagining, sleep, and memory.

1.7 Valid knowledge comes through direct perception, inference, and reliable testimony.

1.8 Error is false knowledge, grounded in a form that is not the thing's own.

1.9 Imagining follows knowledge of words but has no object behind it.

1.10 Sleep is a fluctuation resting on the perception of absence.

1.11 Memory is the retention of an object once experienced.

1.12 These are stilled through practice (abhyasa) and dispassion (vairagya).

1.13 Practice is the effort to remain in that steadiness.

1.14 It becomes firmly grounded when cultivated for a long time, without interruption and with devotion.

1.15 Dispassion is the mastery of one who thirsts for neither seen objects nor those promised in sacred teaching.

1.16 Its higher form is freedom from thirst even for the qualities (guna), through knowledge of the Self (purusha).

1.17 Absorption (samadhi) with cognition (samprajnata) is accompanied by reasoning, reflection, bliss, and I-am-ness.

1.18 The other, without cognition (asamprajnata), follows practice in the thought of cessation, leaving only latent impressions (samskara).

1.19 For the bodiless and those dissolved into nature (prakriti), it arises from the condition of their being.

1.20 For others it is preceded by faith, vigor, memory, absorption, and insight.

1.21 It is near for those whose ardor is intense.

1.22 Even among these there is a distinction between mild, moderate, and exceptional intensity.

1.23 Or it comes through devotion to the Lord (Ishvara).

1.24 The Lord is a special Self, untouched by afflictions (klesha), karma, its fruition, or its latent stores.

1.25 In him the seed of omniscience is unsurpassed.

1.26 He is the teacher even of the earliest teachers, for time does not limit him.

1.27 His expression is the sacred syllable (Om), the pranava.

1.28 Repeat it, and contemplate its meaning.

1.29 From this come the realization of inward consciousness and the disappearance of obstacles.

1.30 Illness, apathy, doubt, carelessness, laziness, sensual craving, mistaken perception, failure to attain a firm ground, and instability are distractions of the mind; they are the obstacles.

1.31 Pain, despondency, trembling of the limbs, and disturbed inhalation and exhalation accompany distraction.

1.32 To ward these off, practice centered on one principle.

1.33 The mind becomes clear by cultivating friendship toward the happy, compassion toward the suffering, joy toward the virtuous, and equanimity toward the unvirtuous.

1.34 Or through exhalation and retention of the breath.

1.35 Or a perception arising from the senses can anchor the mind in steadiness.

1.36 Or a radiant perception free of sorrow.

1.37 Or the mind may take as its object one who is free of attachment.

1.38 Or it may rest on knowledge gained in dreaming or dreamless sleep.

1.39 Or through meditation on whatever one chooses.

1.40 Its mastery extends from the smallest particle to the greatest magnitude.

1.41 When fluctuations have dwindled, the mind, like a flawless jewel, takes on the color of whatever it rests upon—knower, knowing, or known. This is complete identification.

1.42 Among these, identification with reasoning is mingled with distinctions of word, object, and knowledge.

1.43 When memory is purified and only the object shines forth, as though the mind had no form of its own, identification is without reasoning.

1.44 In this same way, identification with and without reflection, whose objects are subtle, has been explained.

1.45 Subtle objects extend as far as the unmanifest.

1.46 These forms of absorption still have a seed.

1.47 When identification without reflection has grown clear, inward serenity arises.

1.48 There insight bears truth.

1.49 Its object differs from the insight gained by hearing or inference, for it grasps particulars.

1.50 The latent impression born of it checks other latent impressions.

1.51 When even that is stilled, all is stilled: absorption without seed.

2.1 Discipline, study of the self, and devotion to the Lord constitute yoga in action.

2.2 Its purpose is to cultivate absorption and to thin the afflictions.

2.3 Ignorance (avidya), I-am-ness (asmita), attachment, aversion, and clinging to life are the afflictions.

2.4 Ignorance is the field for the others, whether dormant, weakened, interrupted, or fully active.

2.5 Ignorance is taking the impermanent for permanent, the impure for pure, suffering for happiness, and what is not the Self for the Self.

2.6 I-am-ness is the seeming identity of the power of seeing with the power by which it sees.

2.7 Attachment rests upon pleasure.

2.8 Aversion rests upon pain.

2.9 Clinging to life flows by its own force and is deeply rooted even in the wise.

2.10 In their subtle form, these are to be undone by returning them to their source.

2.11 Their active fluctuations are to be removed through meditation.

2.12 The store of karma has its root in affliction and is experienced in lives seen or yet unseen.

2.13 While the root remains, its fruition is birth, length of life, and experience.

2.14 These bring delight or torment, according as their cause is virtue or vice.

2.15 To one who discerns, all is suffering, because of suffering born of change, distress, and latent impressions, and because the fluctuations of the qualities conflict.

2.16 The suffering yet to come is what must be avoided.

2.17 The union of the seer and the seen is the cause of what must be avoided.

2.18 The seen has the nature of illumination, activity, and stability; it consists of the elements and the senses, and serves both experience and liberation.

2.19 The stages of the qualities are the particular, the nonparticular, the merely marked, and the unmarked.

2.20 The seer is pure seeing alone, yet, though pure, it witnesses the contents of the mind.

2.21 The very nature of the seen exists for the seer's sake.

2.22 Though it ceases for one whose purpose is fulfilled, it does not cease altogether, since it remains common to others.

2.23 Union is the means by which the powers of owner and owned become known in their true nature.

2.24 Ignorance is its cause.

2.25 When ignorance ends, union ends: this is release, the liberation (kaivalya) of the seer.

2.26 Unwavering discernment is the means of release.

2.27 For such a person, insight reaches its final ground in seven stages.

2.28 By practicing the limbs of yoga, impurity is destroyed and knowledge shines forth, culminating in discernment.

2.29 The eight limbs are restraints (yama), observances (niyama), posture (asana), breath control (pranayama), withdrawal of the senses (pratyahara), concentration (dharana), meditation (dhyana), and absorption.

2.30 Nonviolence, truthfulness, not stealing, chastity, and nonpossessiveness are the restraints.

2.31 Unbounded by birth, place, time, or circumstance, these form the great vow, universal in scope.

2.32 Purity, contentment, discipline, study of the self, and devotion to the Lord are the observances.

2.33 When troubling thoughts arise, cultivate their opposites.

2.34 Thoughts of violence and the like, whether enacted, instigated, or approved, whether born of greed, anger, or delusion, and whether mild, moderate, or intense, bear endless suffering and ignorance as their fruit: thus cultivate the opposite.

2.35 When one is firmly established in nonviolence, hostility falls away in one's presence.

2.36 When one is firmly established in truthfulness, actions come to depend on one's word for their fruit.

2.37 When one is firmly established in not stealing, every treasure comes near.

2.38 When one is firmly established in chastity, vigor is gained.

2.39 When nonpossessiveness becomes steady, knowledge of how births come about arises.

2.40 From purity comes distaste for one's own body and freedom from contact with others.

2.41 And there come clarity of being, serenity, one-pointedness, mastery of the senses, and fitness for seeing the Self.

2.42 From contentment comes unsurpassed happiness.

2.43 From discipline, through the destruction of impurity, come the perfections of body and senses.

2.44 From study of the self comes communion with one's chosen deity.

2.45 From devotion to the Lord comes perfection of absorption.

2.46 Posture is steady and easeful.

2.47 It is attained by relaxing effort and becoming absorbed in the infinite.

2.48 Then the pairs of opposites no longer disturb one.

2.49 When this is established, breath control is the interruption of the movements of inhalation and exhalation.

2.50 It may be outward, inward, or suspended; measured by place, time, and number, it grows long and subtle.

2.51 A fourth transcends the sphere of outward and inward breath.

2.52 Then the veil over the light is thinned.

2.53 And the mind becomes fit for acts of concentration.

2.54 Withdrawal of the senses occurs when, detached from their objects, they seem to take on the very form of the mind.

2.55 From this comes supreme mastery of the senses.

3.1 Concentration is the binding of the mind to one place.

3.2 There, the unbroken flow of one perception is meditation.

3.3 That same meditation, when only its object shines forth and it seems empty of its own form, is absorption.

3.4 The three together, directed at one object, are integration (samyama).

3.5 From mastery of it dawns the light of insight.

3.6 It is to be applied in stages.

3.7 These three are inward limbs, compared with those preceding them.

3.8 Yet even they are outward limbs compared with seedless absorption.

3.9 The mind's transformation toward stilling occurs at the moment when latent impressions of outward activity subside and those of stilling arise, and the mind follows that moment of stilling.

3.10 Its tranquil flow comes from the latent impression left by this.

3.11 The fading of the mind's orientation toward all objects and the arising of one-pointedness is its transformation toward absorption.

3.12 Then, when the perceptions that have subsided and those that arise are alike, the mind undergoes the transformation of one-pointedness.

3.13 This also explains the changes of property, temporal mark, and condition in the elements and senses.

3.14 The underlying substance carries properties that have subsided, arisen, or not yet become manifest.

3.15 Difference in sequence is the cause of difference in transformation.

3.16 By integration on the three transformations comes knowledge of past and future.

3.17 Word, meaning, and perception become confused through mutual superimposition; by integration on their distinction comes knowledge of the cries of all beings.

3.18 By directly perceiving latent impressions comes knowledge of former births.

3.19 By integration on a perception comes knowledge of another mind.

3.20 But not of what supports that perception, since that is not its object.

3.21 By integration on the body's visible form, its power to be perceived is arrested; as the eye's light no longer meets it, the body becomes invisible.

3.22 Karma is of two kinds: that which begins to bear fruit and that which does not. By integration on these comes knowledge of one's end, or it may come from omens.

3.23 By integration on friendship and the other virtues come their strengths.

3.24 By integration on strengths come powers such as the strength of an elephant.

3.25 By directing the light of a higher perception comes knowledge of things subtle, concealed, or distant.

3.26 By integration on the sun comes knowledge of the worlds.

3.27 On the moon, knowledge of the arrangement of stars.

3.28 On the pole star, knowledge of their movements.

3.29 On the navel center, knowledge of the body's arrangement.

3.30 On the hollow of the throat, the cessation of hunger and thirst.

3.31 On the tortoise channel, steadiness.

3.32 On the light at the crown of the head, vision of perfected beings.

3.33 Or all this comes through intuitive illumination.

3.34 On the heart, understanding of the mind.

3.35 Experience arises when the perceptions of clarity and the Self, utterly distinct though they are, are not distinguished. Since clarity exists for another's sake, integration on what exists for its own sake brings knowledge of the Self.

3.36 From this arise intuitive insight, supernatural hearing, touch, sight, taste, and smell.

3.37 These are obstacles in absorption, though powers in outward activity.

3.38 When the causes of bondage loosen and the mind knows its channels of movement, it may enter another body.

3.39 By mastery of the ascending breath comes freedom from contact with water, mud, thorns, and the like, and the power of rising upward.

3.40 By mastery of the equalizing breath comes radiance.

3.41 By integration on the relation between hearing and space comes divine hearing.

3.42 By integration on the relation between body and space, and identification with light cotton, comes passage through the air.

3.43 A fluctuation outside the body, unimagined, is the great bodiless state; from it the veil over the light is destroyed.

3.44 By integration on the gross nature, true form, subtle nature, connectedness, and purpose of the elements comes mastery of them.

3.45 From this arise minuteness and the other powers, perfection of the body, and freedom from injury by the elements.

3.46 Beauty of form, grace, strength, and adamantine firmness constitute perfection of the body.

3.47 By integration on the senses' apprehension, true form, I-am-ness, connectedness, and purpose comes mastery of the senses.

3.48 From this come swiftness of mind, perception without the bodily senses, and mastery of nature's first principle.

3.49 One who knows only the difference between clarity and the Self gains dominion over every state of being and knowledge of all things.

3.50 Through dispassion even toward these, when the seeds of defect are destroyed, comes liberation.

3.51 When invited by those who dwell in exalted realms, do not form attachments or become proud: that would bring undesirable consequences again.

3.52 By integration on a moment and its sequence comes knowledge born of discernment.

3.53 From this comes the recognition of two things otherwise indistinguishable by class, characteristic, or location.

3.54 Knowledge born of discernment carries one across; it embraces all objects and every aspect of them, without sequence.

3.55 When clarity and the Self are alike in purity, there is liberation.

4.1 Powers (siddhi) arise from birth, herbs, incantations, discipline, or absorption.

4.2 Transformation into another kind of being comes through the overflowing of nature.

4.3 An incidental cause does not set nature in motion; it only breaks down barriers, like a farmer opening a channel.

4.4 Created minds arise from I-am-ness alone.

4.5 Though their activities differ, one mind directs the many.

4.6 Among these, the mind born of meditation has no latent store of karma.

4.7 The yogi's karma is neither white nor black; for others it is threefold.

4.8 From that karma only those tendencies suited to its fruition become manifest.

4.9 Though separated by birth, place, and time, the tendencies remain continuous, because memory and latent impression have the same form.

4.10 They have no beginning, for the desire to go on living is eternal.

4.11 Held together by cause, fruit, support, and object, they vanish when these vanish.

4.12 Past and future exist in their own nature, because the properties take different paths through time.

4.13 Whether manifest or subtle, those properties consist of the qualities.

4.14 An object's reality rests on the unity of its transformation.

4.15 Though the object is the same, minds differ; the paths of mind and object are therefore distinct.

4.16 Nor does an object depend on a single mind: what would become of it when that mind did not perceive it?

4.17 An object is known or unknown according to whether it colors the mind.

4.18 The mind's fluctuations are always known, because the Self, their master, does not change.

4.19 The mind does not illuminate itself, for it is something seen.

4.20 Nor can both mind and object be apprehended at the same instant.

4.21 If one mind were seen by another, there would be an endless series of minds perceiving minds, and memories would become confused.

4.22 When consciousness, which does not pass from one place to another, assumes the mind's form, the mind becomes aware of its own intelligence.

4.23 Colored by both seer and seen, the mind serves every purpose.

4.24 Though patterned with countless tendencies, it exists for another's sake, because its parts act together.

4.25 For one who sees the distinction, the habit of conceiving the mind as the Self comes to an end.

4.26 Then the mind inclines toward discernment and moves toward liberation.

4.27 In the gaps in that discernment, other thoughts arise from latent impressions.

4.28 Their removal is said to be like that of the afflictions.

4.29 For one who does not grasp even at highest knowledge, who discerns at every turn, there is absorption called the cloud of virtue.

4.30 From this comes the end of affliction and karma.

4.31 Then, with every veil and stain removed, knowledge is infinite and what remains to be known is small.

4.32 Then, having fulfilled their purpose, the qualities bring their sequence of transformations to an end.

4.33 Sequence corresponds to moments and becomes discernible at the end of transformation.

4.34 Liberation is the return of the qualities to their source when they no longer serve the Self's purpose, or the establishment of the power of consciousness in its own true nature.