A fortnight ago, we told you the story of how Patanjali came to be. We now begin the series on Patanjali’s yogaSûtras

Atha yoganushasanam which means “now I will enunciate the discipline of Yoga”.

Shasana means rules someone imposes on you. Anushasana is the rule you impose upon yourself. Do you see the difference? Now, why is yoga called a discipline? Where is the need for discipline? When does the need for discipline arise?

When you are thirsty and want to drink water, you do not say “Oh! This is a rule, I must drink water”. When you are hungry you just eat. When it comes to the question of enjoying oneself, no discipline is necessary. Where does discipline come into the picture?

Discipline arises when something is not very charming to begin with. Isn’t it? When you are happy, when you are in peace or happiness, then you are already in yourself. There is no discipline there. But when the mind is wagging its tail all the time, then discipline is essential to calm it down. The fruit of it is eventually blissful, joyful. Like a diabetic saying, “I have the discipline not to eat sugar”.

There are three types of happiness. One is Sattvik — happiness which is not pleasurable to begin with, but ends in joy; Rajasic — happiness that seems to begin well but ends in misery; and Tamasic — there appears to be happiness but in reality there is only misery from beginning to end.

No discipline is necessary for tamasic happiness. Wrong discipline results in rajasic happiness. For sattvik happiness, discipline is essential to begin with. It need not be uncomfortable all the time. But if it is uncomfortable, then you should be able to bear with it. You need discipline. That is why Patanjali begins with the present, when things are not clear and when your heart is not in the right place. Now let us look into the discipline of yoga.

It is nobody’s imposition, it is self-imposed. There is a lot we impose on ourselves — every morning we wake up and brush our teeth, we then brush them again before going to bed. This is your discipline. But these have been self-imposed from childhood. Haven’t they?

When you were a child, your mother had to impose the discipline on you. But then, once it became a habit, you understood it was for your own good. And then you found it was no longer your mother’s rule but your own.

In the same way, keeping yourself clean, hygienic, exercising, meditating, being kind, considerate etc. All these rules you have imposed on yourself are all discipline. Isn’t it?

Yoga means uniting with your source. When does that happen? This happens when the mind, which is chattering all the time, suddenly becomes silent.

So what is yoga? It is chitta vrutti nirodaha, our second Sûtra.

Yoga is the act of restraining or freeing the mind from the clutches of the modulations of the mind. There are five types of modulations of the mind — wanting proof for everything; lack of comprehension; imagination; sleep; and memory.

All through the day, your mind is in one these modulations. But, if there are those moments when you are not sleeping, not remembering old things, not imagining, or looking for proof, then that moment yoga has happened.

At that moment what is happening? You are just by yourself in the journey of your own self, which is the source of joy or source of love or source of peace and knowledge.

There are two types of thinking — occidental and oriental. In the oriental way of thinking, it said that there ia an ultimate and in the ultimate everything happens. In the occidental way of thinking you are always looking for an ultimate. In either of the approaches yoga is what happens when you are in the moment so totally at ease and peace.

So ,when does this happen? Whenever you are watching the sunset or when you experience beauty in your life or when you experience lot of energy in the body. This also happens after pranayama (breathing techniques) or during meditation. The mind is then free from all these five modulations. That is why when you do yogasanas you put the body, mind and breath, all in one rhythm. That is when real yoga is happening and you are with yourself.

We will begin with a story, the greatest and most effective way of conveying knowledge. Once upon a time, long ago, all the munis and rishis approached Lord Vishnu to tell him that even though He (incarnated as Lord Dhanvanthari) had given them the means to cure illnesses through Ayurveda, people still fell ill. They also wanted to know what to do when people got sick.

 

Sometimes it is not just physical illness, but mental and emotional illness too that needs to be dealt with. Anger, lust, greed, jealousy etc. How does one get rid of all these impurities? What is the formula?

 

Vishnu was lying on the bed of snakes — the serpent Adishésha with a 1,000 heads. When the Rishis approached Him, he gave them Adishésha, the symbol of awareness, who took birth in the world as Maharishi Patanjali.

 

So Patanjali came to this earth to give this knowledge of yoga which came to be known as the yogaSûtras. Patanjali said he was not going to discuss the yogaSûtras unless 1,000 people got together. So 1,000 people gathered south of VindhyaMountains to listen to him.

 

Patanjali had another condition — he would put a screen between him and his students and told them that nobody was to lift the screen or leave. Everybody had to stay in the hall till he finished. So Patanjali stayed behind the curtain and he transmitted his knowledge to the 1,000 gathered. Each of them absorbed this knowledge. It was an amazing phenomenon and even amongst the students, they could not believe how they were getting this knowledge, how the master was making each of them understand without uttering words from behind the curtain.

 

Everybody was amazed. Each one of them experienced such a blast of energy, such a blast of enthusiasm, that they could not even contain it. But they still had to maintain the discipline.

 

But one little boy had to go out to attend nature’s call. So he left the room. He thought to himself that he would go quietly and return quietly. Another person became curious. “What is the Master doing behind the curtain? I want to see.” He got so curious that he lifted the curtain to see the Master. But just as he did so, all 999 disciples were burnt to ashes. Now, Patanjali became very sad. There he was, ready to impart knowledge to the whole world and all of his disciples were burnt.

 

At this moment, that one little boy returned. Patanjali asked him where he had gone. The boy explained and asked his forgiveness. Patanjali was compassionate and felt that at least one of his disciples was saved.

 

So he gave him the rest of the Sûtras, the rest of the knowledge. But the student had violated the law and Patanjali was not willing to forget that. So he said, “Since you have violated the law, you will become a Brahmarakshasa , a ghost and hang on the tree.” And the only way he could liberate himself from the curse is to teach one student. Saying this Patanjali disappeared.

 

Now Brahmarakshasa, hanging on a tree, would ask everyone who passed by one question and when they could not answer he would eat them. He had no choice and for a few thousand years this was the story. He could not find a single person to whom he could teach the yogaSûtras. So he remained in the tree as a Brahmarakshasa (the lesson here being that for the one who has great knowledge, and who does something wrong, the state of Brahmarakshasa will come. An intelligent person becoming a criminal becomes more dangerous than an innocent person becoming a criminal. If a person, who knows all knowledge and then turns a criminal, it is much more dangerous). So the Brahmarakshasa was hanging there and waiting for relief.

 

Then out of compassion, Patanjali himself becomes a disciple and comes as a student to Brahmarakshasa who told him all the Sûtras, which Patanjali wrote on the palm leaf. The story goes that to redeem one disciple, the Master became the disciple of a disciple.

 

Patanjali wrote the Sûtras sitting on the top of the tree as that was where the Brahmarakshasa sat. Also, Brahmarakshasa worked only in the night. So he dictated the Sûtras at night and Patanjali wrote them on the leaves. He plucked all the leaves and made a small scratch, drew blood and wrote. This went on for seven days. At the end of it, Patanjali was tired and put everything he had written on a piece pf cloth and set it down and went to bathe. But when Patanjali returned, he found that a goat had eaten most of the leaves. Patanjali then took the cloth bag and the rest of the leaves and walked away.

 

In this story, there is a lot of depth. The puranas do not give any explanation. They just give a story and it is for us to unlock the meaning. So what is that you all have to find out? (1) How did the master convey the knowledge to everybody without uttering a word? (2) What was the significance of the veil and when it was lifted why did everybody burn down? (3) Why was the one boy forgiven? (4) What is the significance of the goat? (4) What is the significance of this story? You should think about all this and come up with your own answers.

 

This is the first in a series on yoga Sûtras