The Mirror of Yoga

by Richard Freeman

  Even though all good yoga practices must stem from a strong ethical foundation (the yamas and niyamas), many people begin their study of yoga with an āsana practice. Āsana is comprehensible and is not as intimidating as the other limbs because it involves moving the body, twisting it into all sorts of interesting shapes, and dropping into the feelings and sensations that arise as the body is worked. For many beginners it is sensible to introduce the practice through the postures. After some time practicing āsana we are likely to become interested in meditation or the idea of ethical relationships may pique our interest, until eventually we see the connection between the various limbs of the practice. Students often find that they need to emphasize different limbs at different times as their practice evolves and their study deepens. As we become more advanced in the practice, we begin to realize that none of the limbs are the actual “goal” of yoga: how long we can hold the breath in prāṇāyāma, whether or not we can put our leg behind our head while practicing āsana, or how quickly we can focus the mind, is not what matters. The “goal” (if you could call it such) is to reach a state of discriminative insight, to have a direct experience of the nature of pure consciousness and pure being, as well as to have an experience of the fundamental character and form of the mind itself.

  In addition to the limbs of study within a yoga practice, the Yoga Sūtra also describes five yamas, or foundations of ethical behavior, that are essential for a yoga practice. Other traditional texts mention ten yamas, some even mention fifteen, but we can get the basic idea from these five; behaving toward ourselves and others in a clear and ethical manner is at the root of the practice. The first yama is nonviolence, or ahiṁsā. This simply means to do no harm, to cause no suffering either to others or to one’s self. We find that ahiṁsā is not so much something that requires effort and will, but rather that it flows naturally out of a consistent yoga practice. As we progress in the practice of āsana and prāṇāyāma, our powers of attentiveness and observation increase and we start to notice how our own attitudes of rāga and dveṣa, our feelings of attraction and repulsion, are spontaneously activated even to our own sense fields and to our own breath. By practicing nonviolence toward ourselves we automatically start to respect even our immediate sense perceptions as sacred. In the presence of anything we find sacred it is quite natural to feel kind, loving, compassionate, and connected. So nonviolence is the very first yama of the beginning stage of the eight-limbed yoga practice, and it is profoundly important.

  The yama that Patañjali discusses as following nonviolence is satya, or truthfulness. This simply means to speak what is true and honest, and then to act in accordance with that. Satya does not necessarily mean factual truth, but it means to act in accordance with the truth of the Yoga Sūtra, which is the truth of pure consciousness liberated in the present moment. People who fancy themselves to be exceedingly truthful, and who are perhaps even a little bit self-righteous, will sometimes use factual truth in ways that actually violate the vow of ahiṁsā or nonviolence; they may use facts in ways that breach the deeper principles of truth and nonviolence. For example, it could be factually true that someone has a very ugly nose, but simply pointing that out to them and to others would serve no purpose other than to humiliate and embarrass the person. Satya, therefore, is not established as the first of the yamas; instead it follows and builds upon ahiṁsā, which is the principle of nonharming and kindness.

  The third yama, asteya, means to “not steal.” Of course this applies on the most obvious level and means to not be a thief, to not rob banks or the grocery store, to not steal bicycles and cars. But asteya also implies many more subtle levels of not-stealing, such as not plagiarizing ideas without giving credit for them. It means not accumulating for yourself things that do not really belong to you, not being a phony, not holding on to things that ultimately are not yours. It even applies to things that come into the sphere of our influence, for example, physical property—a house we might own—which must ultimately be seen as impermanent like all else. In the end, asteya means to not claim anything as being exclusively ours and separate from all else. It could even be considered a form of stealing if we cannot see that our very body and our sense perceptions are not ours, that they are not to be separate from their background, the interlinking web of existence of the life we are part of. When practicing asteya we see things as part of an interconnected whole, and with that insight, we can release everything to be just as it is so that all may flow in its natural and true way.

  The next yama, brahmacarya, is often translated as “celibacy.” It is helpful to understand the literal meaning of brahmacarya as well, which is to “act in Brahman” or to “act in God” or “pure consciousness.” Ultimately brahmacarya implies a highly ethical sexual practice. This could mean you are leading a monastic life, or if you are involved in a sexual relationship, brahmacarya would mean that the relationship is one that follows ahiṁsā, satya, and asteya; the first of the yamas in which we do no harm to others through our relationship and we do not lose our vision that deep in his or her heart the other is the ātman. Brahmacarya can actually mean, in an esoteric sense, one who enters into what is called the brahmanāḍī, which is the channel within the central axis of the body. Brahma nāḍī is said to be a thin thread that is visualized within the suṣumnā nāḍī (the central channel) and once the prāṇa enters into the brahma nāḍī, one tastes or has a direct experience of reality. So to be a true brahmacarya does not mean someone who egotistically denies themselves the pleasures of life, but it means one who has entered into the very heart of reality.

  The last of the yamas presented in the Yoga Sūtra is aparigraha, which means to “not grasp at things.” Aparigraha is the tendency of the mind, under the sway of the ego, to simply snatch at things and claim them to be its own. The mind moves about as if saying, “This, I identify with, that, I do not.” The mind quite naturally does this in all spheres of activity—the political, economic, interpersonal, psychological realms, even in our private thoughts we can start to collect and accumulate things. All of this grasping becomes a huge encumbrance and an obstacle that interferes in our relationships with other beings. It is a major obstacle to a deep yoga practice since relationship is at the core of the practice, and the quintessence of relationship is trust, fairness, and love. If the yamas are practiced, then love is allowed to flow freely and to function right at the center of our lives. The practice of the yamas as described in the Yoga Sūtra is considered to be the mahāvrata, or the great vow, and it means that for anyone engaged in the discipline of yoga, the yamas are practiced under all circumstances and at all times. With this deeper understanding of what yoga truly is, we find that we practice yoga all day, every day.

  The yamas are followed in the Yoga Sūtra by a description of the niyamas, which are specific yogic disciplines. The first niyama, śauca, or cleanliness, has several layers of meaning. The immediate meaning is that of personal hygiene, which is, of course, vital to a good yoga practice because it relates to the prevention of disease and unnecessary sickness. But to be clean also means to have your senses refreshed and vibrant as a means of facilitating the observation of things clearly and as they truly are. It is kind of like keeping the windshield of your car clean, which really does help when driving. So keeping not only the body clean but maintaining the environment that we live in a very simple and clean manner is conducive to being able to sit down and practice yoga. Śauca makes it easy to practice the next of the niyamas, which is saṅtoṣa, contentment. Contentment is the ability to be happy right now for no particular reason at all. You can actually cultivate this feeling by simply deciding, “Right now I am going to be content.” This may sound overly simplistic, but what it actually means is that right now you are going to temporarily suspend your worries, your cares and desires, and you are going to drop your theories and conclusions about what is happening and simply experience the radiance of pure being as it is. The ability to be content with life’s circumsta
nces, the skill of seeing the sacred nature of the world as it is arising and of being patient as the world discloses itself, is a profoundly deep capacity that we cultivate, and it is also one of the keys to the entire practice of yoga. This does not mean that you have to agree with everything that arises, nor does it mean that you should see everything as perfect and wonderful, or that you disengage from your responsibilities in life. Instead it means that you are present with the raw truth—good, bad, ugly, smelly, or sublime—of whatever is arising. It means that you cultivate a clear and compassionate space within which life unfolds, and that your actions reflect this clarity and compassion. From a state of contentment we can then practice tapas or practices that generate the heat of yoga. With the clarity that results from tapas we can then go deep inside and practice svādhyāya, which is self-reflection or meditation on the self. Through this flow of the practice we are able to surrender to Īśvara, to have trust and to give all to God. Through this, samādhi is achieved, and through samādhi we go back deep into the very root of the mind, and eventually we become fully grounded in the present moment, grounded in discriminative awareness.

  The next of the limbs and probably the most famous limb in the eight-wheel-drive vehicle of yoga is āsana or postures. Although most Westerners see the postures as the main part of what is considered to be a yoga practice, there are only two verses in the Yoga Sūtra that deal with posture. Stepping back from our own preconceptions, we should reevaluate what yoga āsana might actually be. According to the Tejo Bindu Upaniṣad, a good yoga āsana is that from which meditation can arise easily and spontaneously. Contrary to the way some of us sometimes approach āsana practice, it is not a way of torturing the body. The word āsana comes from the verbal root as, meaning “to sit”; so in some contexts āsana simply means a good seat, a nice chair, or a comfortable cushion. Through the practice of āsana the body itself is transformed into a seat, and it simply rests in that pleasant place. Yoga becomes the platform from which pure awareness is allowed to arise. A good posture is considered to be one that is sthira and sukha, sthira meaning “grounded” or “stable,” and sukha meaning “happy” or “easy.” Within an āsana practice, once we are grounded and happy in a posture, we then come to the point where all effort within the posture ceases and the mind naturally goes into contemplation of ananta, or a reflection on infinity. Of course within the realm of the yoga matrix, wherever the mind happens to rest, whatever the immediate presentation of the mind is, that is experienced as infinity, as endless and interconnected. It is through the practice of yoga āsana that most of us can actually experience this infinite quality of even the most ordinary everyday experience. When the yoga poses are established well, then the practitioner is ready for the beginning of the next limb of the practice, prāṇāyāma.

  When first studying prāṇāyāma (the breathing practices associated with yoga), we should remember the axiom within the yoga tradition that the mind, the citta, always moves in relation to the inner breath or the prāṇa. As such, prāṇāyāma is the practice of stretching or removing the restrictions on the prāṇa, and in a sense, it is a way to create freedom or a release of the inner breath. Prāṇāyāma is often mistranslated as the “practice of controlling the prāṇa.” However, the word ayāma literally means “to remove the controls or the restrictions,” so prāṇāyāma is more accurately translated as “taking away the restrictions that inhibit the deep and natural flow of the breath.” Prāṇāyāma practices initially train us to focus on and to cultivate a conscious flow of the prāṇa through what superficially appear to be techniques of controlling the breath, but the practice is never one of inhibiting the breath. Instead, in prāṇāyāma practice we travel deep into the core of the body and likewise into the core of the mind, and through the breath we start to decondition the mind by unraveling some of the associations that have been made within the mind (and therefore within the emotions and physical body as well) over the years. We observe and allow thoughts and sensations that we may experience deep in our guts to untangle. The practice of prāṇāyāma is said to remove the obscuration of the light, and this makes the next form of the practice, meditation, very easy.

  It is said that the first four limbs—yamas, niyamas, āsana, and prāṇāyāma—are the external limbs. These are the things you can really sink your teeth into and actually do. You can work with these first four limbs, you can wrestle with them, and if you get these outer forms of the practice very clear and strong, then the inner contemplative limbs become far easier to approach. The contemplative limbs are: pratyāhāra, which is sense withdrawal; dhāraṇā, or concentration of the mind; dhyāna, which is meditation; and samādhi. As you practice you will notice that these inner limbs are very difficult, virtually impossible, to even approach if the outer limbs are not established clearly. For example, if you sit down to meditate and your ethical life is in upheaval, if your emotional life is confused and your body is misaligned, or if your breath is erratic, then it is going to be nearly impossible to rest in a state of meditation and to observe the agitations of mind clearly. Working with the first four external limbs of the practice reduces the likelihood of these sorts of outer turmoil in your life because you will have become more balanced, and consequently the inner limbs of the practice will be far more accessible. It is important to note too that the meditative aspects of a yoga practice can also become distractions if they are practiced from a place of ego. Within the Yoga Sūtra, Patañjali describes the means to making meditation practice true and grounded as being contingent not only on being stable in the first four limbs of the practice, but also as being dependent on the practitioner’s ability to distinguish between what is being experienced as the object of consciousness and consciousness.

  As we examine the different aṅgas or limbs of yoga, we tend to move through them in a sequential progression in order to understand them clearly. In practice, however, just as we experienced the kleśas, we must constantly loop back through all the limbs if we are to remain clear and grounded. In prāṇāyāma, for example, we have to go back to the yamas, to the niyamas, and to āsana. So the practice is always starting over, always feeding back in on itself. In the sequence of the aṅgas presented in the Yoga Sūtra, pratyāhāra follows prāṇāyāma. Pratyāhāra literally means “to not eat, to not consume.” When we experience something through any of our senses, there is a natural tendency to grasp whatever it is. In that grasping, the mind tends to superimpose a name or a concept onto the raw sensations associated with the experience—it is as if we are eating and digesting it. This is a natural process of the mind, which needs some kind of referential knowledge in order to make sense of any experience. If it is not consuming the sense objects, then the mind is usually pushing the sense objects away with the same type and intensity of fragmenting energy. Pratyāhāra, therefore, is the release of the urge to gobble up what comes into our senses, to leave the sense fields and allow them to be just as they are. In a healthy yoga practice, with this release the senses are then free to follow the mind, which allows the mind to spontaneously move into meditation. Just as bees will follow the queen bee, so the indriyas, the senses, will follow the mind to a deeper yoga practice when they are set free from the consumption of conceptually generated objects. In pratyāhāra the sense objects themselves are released; they are not rejected nor are they grasped, but instead they are appreciated as pure vibration rather than objects. It is said that the perfection of pratyāhāra is to see or to directly experience the ātman or pure being through any or all of the senses.

  Following pratyāhāra is the sixth limb, dhāraṇā, which is defined as tying the mind to one field of experience. Keeping the mind within the activities of one aspect of awareness might seem to insinuate that this type of concentration has an exclusive nature to it, that there is some sort of effort or decision that “wills” us to focus the mind as if with blinders. But concentration actually happens spontaneously—through the practice of releasing the mind into the full fie
ld of awareness rather than attempting to block off any of the aspects of the field of perception that are naturally arising. Dhāraṇā can happen through a practice, but it also happens under normal circumstances; everybody does it whether or not they practice yoga. When you encounter a subject that is of great interest to you and you start to focus on it, you are “tying your mind to the field of one experience.” You block out all other areas of potential awareness in order to concentrate and satisfy your mind. For example, you hear something interesting, or you come across something in nature, or you see something on TV that catches your attention. If it is particularly noteworthy, you naturally sharpen your focus toward whatever you are experiencing. You allow the mind to concentrate fully by settling the distractions of mind and also through how you use your breath and whatever subtle and gross movements you make with your body. Of course eventually you may experience some conflict as there are other aspects of your mind that are not being allowed into the center ring. You will notice that there are always pressures from within and without that are vying for your mind’s attention; however, in order to concentrate, your mind temporarily seals itself off from this other input.

  As the yoga deepens we find that dhāraṇā (concentration) progresses into the next of the eight limbs, which is dhyāna, or meditation. Within this state of being there is a flow of the mind into only one field of awareness, and this causes a spontaneous sense of relaxation and release. In dhyāna there is no longer the heat of conflict between fragmented aspects of mind, and at the same time there is an appreciation for the fact that whatever is within the field of awareness possesses a truly sacred quality. Sacred, in this context, simply means an unknown, a mysterious, or a captivating quality that invites the mind to flow easily. In this state of mind, the background—or those things that lie outside the chosen field of awareness—is intuited to be interconnected with what is within the foreground—those things that lie within the field of awareness. Background and foreground may be appreciated as distinctly different when we are in a state of dhyāna, but they are not seen as actually separate. Psychologically, there is a sense that the mind does not really have to move in order to be concentrated. Then, as the meditation deepens, there comes a point at which the mind dissolves into the present experience, and there is no longer any sense of a subject and an object, there is no observer looking at an observed. Instead, the chosen field or the chosen object of contemplation appears to be empty of any mentally constructed separate existence. At this point the chosen field of contemplation is seen to be empty of a svarūpa, empty of its own self form, and this is considered to be samādhi.