YOGA

What is yoga?

Yoga is the art and science of living. In the present day, the awareness about yoga is enormous and a lot of commentaries and other works on yoga are available. However, the works of Sage Patanjali dating back to 250 BC is a very fundamental and comprehensive treatise on yoga. Sage Patanjali’s dissertation on yoga is a collection of 196 terse, which are clear, concise, accurate and unambiguous.

He has codified the essence of yoga as yogah chitta vritti nirodah .

The fact that Patanjali has encapsulated the quintessence of yoga in just three words reveals the depth of his understanding – the deeper the understanding, the more concise the language.chitta means mind; vritti means fluctuations in the mind; nirodah means immune.

When the mind becomes immune to the fluctuations, then an unalloyed bliss sets in and that is the state of yoga. The word immune is very special and is different from control. Whereas control implies adjustments to the system in order to maintain balance in the face of disturbances, immune essentially refers to the state of equilibrium, which is impervious to the outside and / or inner disturbances.

Yoga does not mean the suppression of thoughts that pass through the mind; the condition where the mind is free of thoughts is yoga. Although there are varied and innumerable kinds of fluctuations of mind, Sage Patanjali has scientifically classified those under five heads. Further they may be painful or pleasurable. They are pramana, viparyaya, vikalpa, nidra and smrithi.


  • Pramana is knowing things as they are;
  • viparyaya is understanding in contradiction to reality;
  • vikalpa is imagination devoid of substance,
  • nidra is sleep and smrithi is memory.

The state of mind free from all these fluctuations characterizes yoga. The individual whose mind has reached this state can be said to have reached his true state. This is what enlightenment is. To reach this state, Patanjali advocates the path of practice and renunciation. The attributes of practice are long term, regularity and enthusiasm; and that of renunciation is not to deviate from practice. Practice and renunciation are like the two wheels of a cart – both equally important for reaching the goal.The path of practice proposed by Patanajli is a highly structured and scientific methodology called astanga yoga i.e., eight fold path.

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