In India more than 2200 years ago, there lived a great sage, a rishi named Patanjali, who
compiled and systematized the various meditation practices used at his time, practices that
were already considered ancient.
Patanjali's text, the Yoga Sutras, became a foundational scripture for the practice
of meditation, and is highly regarded even today.
His text contains 196 sutras, which are brief and often cryptic Sanskrit aphorisms that
are explained in great detail by traditional commentaries.
It's often pointed out that the word yoga is related to the English word, yoke, with
the meaning of union.
But what's often overlooked is that a yoke has two very different functions: one function
is to join or unite animals to a plow or cart.
But the yoke also functions to help control the animals.
With ropes attached to a yoke, the animals' movement can be controlled and directed as
needed.
This observation is important because Patanjali's sutras are concerned, not so much with union,
but with control - control of your body, your breath, your senses, and especially, control
of your mind - all for the sake of meditation.
This will become very clear as we proceed.
Patanjali's system of meditation consists of eight parts, ashta anga, so his system
is called ashtanga yoga.
The word anga strictly means part, but it's often translated as limb.
As a result, the eight angas are sometimes depicted as limbs on a tree.
Representing the angas as tree limbs is suitable only if a key principle is recognized - the
eight angas are sequential practices; they're steps, like the rungs on a ladder.
A properly drawn tree can depict this, showing the first angas at the bottom of the tree
and the latter ones at the top.
The first anga, yama, consists of prohibitions against adharmic or unethical deeds.
The second anga, niyama, is comprised of injunctions to develop various dharmic virtues.
These first two angas direct you to control your behavior.
The next three angas, asana, pranayama, and pratyahara, mandate certain kinds of control
over your body, breath, and senses, respectively.
The last three angas, dharana, concentration, dhyana, meditation, and samadhi, absorption,
mandate specific practices to control your mind.
So, these eight angas help you cultivate the skills required for meditation by teaching
you how to control your body, breath, senses, and mind in that order.
Let's examine each of the angas very briefly.
There are five yamas that prohibit five kinds of adharmic behavior.
Ahimsa prohibits causing harm to any living being, satya prohibits lying, asteya prohibits
stealing, brahmacharya prohibits inappropriate sex, and aparighraha prohibits possessiveness.
In addition to the five yamas, there are five niyamas that mandate the cultivation of dharmic
virtues.
Shauca mandates purity of body and mind, santosha mandates contentment and forbearance, tapas
mandates spiritual disciplines like fasting, svadhyaya mandates spiritual study, and ishwara-pranidhana
mandates prayer and worship.
At first sight, these 5 yamas and 5 niyamas might seem to resemble the 10 commandments
of the Bible, but they couldn't be more different.
The Bible's commandments are followed to avoid sin and eternal damnation.
But yoga's yamas and niyamas are followed to develop a lifestyle that effectively supports
your practice of meditation.
How do these prohibitions and injunctions help you meditate?
Well, adharmic behavior tends to creates conflict and stress in life it resists and opposes
commonly accepted moral standards.
So, following the 5 yamas helps you live a conflict-free life that's conducive to meditation.
Following the 5 niyamas helps you acquire attitudes and qualities that are crucial in
preparing your mind for meditation.
The third anga, asana or posture, is the primary focus of most yoga practice today.
In yoga studios around the world, various kinds of asanas, some of them quite complex,
are taught and practiced with great enthusiasm.
But, they're often practiced with little or no attention to the other seven angas.
This narrow focus on asana is a modern phenomenon.
In his Yoga Sutras, Patanjali simply says that asana, your posture for meditation, should
be comfortable and stable.
Then, what's the point of the elaborate assortment of asanas practiced today?
It's important to learn how to sit in meditation for several hours without becoming uncomfortable
or needing to constantly readjust your position, and this requires a body that's healthy, strong,
and flexible.
Asana practice is meant to prepare your body for lengthy meditation sessions.
But, to practice asanas without meditating later, as is done in many yoga studios today,
is like preparing an elaborate meal of tasty South Indian food without eating it later.
The fourth anga, pranayama, is the use of breathing exercises to further prepare your
body and mind for meditation.
The ancient yogis discovered a physiological principle that's well known to modern medical
science - your breath and your central nervous system are closely connected.
When you're stressed out or feeling anxious, your breathing naturally becomes rapid and
shallow.
On the other hand, when you're calm and relaxed, your breathing slows down and grows deeper.
Your nervous system affects your breathing, and in the same way, your breathing affects
your nervous system.
Rapid, shallow breathing stimulates your nervous system, whereas slow, deep breathing calms
it down.
Many pranayama techniques exploit this physiological connection to calm your nervous system by
deliberately slowing and deepening your breath.
The fifth anga, pratyahara, is sense withdrawal.
It's impossible to find a perfect, solitary place to meditate, so it's important to develop
the ability to withdraw your senses, especially your sense of hearing, so you won't be distracted.
Unfortunately, there's no on/off switch for our senses.
Yet, when you're deeply absorbed in some activity, like when you're working on a demanding project,
you might not hear someone nearby calling your name.
By concentrating your attention on something, your attention is simultaneously withdrawn
from your senses.
Your power of attention is like a flashlight with a lens that can be adjusted to cast a
very wide beam, or a very narrow one.
Generally, your attention is widely focused, allowing you to perceive what's happening
all around you.
This ability is immensely valuable most of the time, like when you're driving a car.
But when you sit to meditate, a wide scope attention will make you more susceptible to
distractions.
Fortunately, like the adjustable flashlight, your attention can also be narrowly focused.
At night, whatever falls outside a narrow flashlight beam is covered by darkness and
can't be seen.
In the same way, whatever falls outside your narrowly focused attention can no longer distract
you.
So, the secret to pratyahara, sense withdrawal, is to concentrate your attention.
And that very concentration happens to be yoga's sixth anga, dharana.
Dharana is concentrating your attention on an object of meditation.
You can concentrate on many things - on the sound, om, on a mantra, on your breathing,
on a sacred image or a candle flame, or, as prescribed in the Bhagavad Gita, you can concentrate
your attention on the divine presence within you.
The fact that yogic meditation is so widely practiced is largely due to the great variety
of objects that can be meditated upon.
You are free to choose an object of meditation that appeals to you, an object that's well-suited
to your individual needs and inclinations.
When your practice of dharana matures, you can reach a state in which your mind becomes
absolutely one-pointed, completely free from distractions and focused only on your object
of meditation, without any other thoughts intervening.
This state is the seventh anga of yoga, dhyana.
Dhyana is defined as an steady, uninterrupted flow of identical thoughts.
It's often compared to a stream of oil being poured slowly and steadily, so that the stream
remains perfectly motionless, even though the oil inside the stream is in constant motion.
This steady flow of oil represents the perfectly uniform flow of your thoughts focused on the
object of meditation.
Even though your mind is active, this unbroken flow of identical thoughts gives rise to an
experience of deep stillness and perfect tranquility.
The regular practice of dhyana will eventually lead you to the eighth and final anga, samadhi
or absorption.
During dhyana, you remain as a meditator, quite separate from the object you're meditating
upon.
But as your meditation deepens, the sense of distance between you and the object of
meditation gradually diminishes, until finally, there's no distance whatsoever.
You experientially merge into the object of meditation, becoming utterly non-separate
from it.
This is the state of absorption, samadhi.
Note that samadhi is not a state of thoughtlessness because the object of meditation remains in
your mind as an unchanging, unwavering thought.
However, samadhi is a state in which your experience of any kind of duality comes to
an end.
In samadhi, there's no distinction between knower and known, between you and the world.
All is one.
This extremely brief overview of the eight angas is not at all sufficient to properly
guide your ongoing practice of meditation.
On the other hand, it can help you make sense of the sometimes baffling plethora of meditation
practices and techniques being taught today.
It's important to understand that, in addition to practices based on the eight angas, there
are other meditation practices and traditions that are completely different from the system
of yoga we've discussed here.
Some meditation traditions incorporate devotional stories and imagery to help you develop intense
feelings of love and adoration for the divine.
In meditation, your attention is directed towards a particular deity or towards the
divinity residing within yourself.
Other meditation traditions teach you how to become completely detached from your mind
and observe it's activities objectively and dispassionately.
In these practices, there's no effort to control your thoughts at all.
The popular Buddhist practice of vipassana falls into this category.
Still other meditation traditions teach techniques for channeling prana or subtle energies through
various psychic centers located in your body.
Certain tantric techniques and kundalini yoga fall into this category.
Each of these meditation traditions has its merits, but the tradition based on Patanjali's
Yoga Sutras is the one found in the Bhagavad Gita and most other Vedantic scriptures.
Before concluding, it's important recognize the fact that the goal of Patanjali's system
is not samadhi.
Samadhi is a mental state, and mental states always come and go.
A skillful yogi might be able to remain in samadhi for hours, but eventually, that state
of absorption will come to an end.
The ultimate goal of spiritual life cannot be a transient mental state.
Samadhi and the other seven angas are meant to lead to that ultimate goal.
Patanjali used the word, anga or part, because parts always belong to a whole.
Like limbs belong to a tree, the eight angas belong to a goal, a goal that lies beyond
the eight angas and is reached by means of them.
Patanjali calls that goal, kaivalya, which literally means onlyness.
Kaivalya is remaining as yourself, as your true nature, as unborn, unchanging, all-pervasive
consciousness, utterly independent of anything and everything that can cause suffering.
Your diligent practice of yoga's eight angas can lead you towards this greatest of goals.