Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
[a] He may also be the author of the Yogabhashya, a commentary on the Yoga Sutras, traditionally attributed to the legendary Vedic sage Vyasa,[6] but possibly forming a joint work of Patanjali called the Pātañjalayogaśāstra.
The eight elements are yama (abstinences), niyama (observances), asana (yoga posture), pranayama (breath control), pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses), dharana (concentration of the mind), dhyana (meditation) and samadhi (absorption or stillness).
When the mind is stilled (vritti nirodha) kaivalya ("isolation") can be attained, the discenrment of purusha (pure consciousness, self, the witness-consciousness) as distinct from prakriti (nature, the cognitive apparatus and the instincts).
[23][24] This dating for the Pātañjalayogaśāstra was proposed as early as 1914 by Woods[25] and has been accepted widely by academic scholars of the history of Indian philosophical thought.
"[30] Michele Desmarais summarized a wide variety of dates assigned to Yogasutra, ranging from 500 BCE to 3rd century CE, noting that there is a paucity of evidence for any certainty.
These research findings change the historical understanding of the yoga tradition, since they allow us to take the Bhāṣya as Patañjali's very own explanation of the meaning of his somewhat cryptic sūtras.
[36] From the old Samkhya philosophy the Yoga Sutras adopt the "reflective discernment" (adhyavasaya) of prakrti and purusa,[37] its metaphysical rationalism, and its three epistemic methods to gaining reliable knowledge.
[36] From Buddhism the sutras adopt the nirodhasamadhi philosophy, the pursuit of altered states of awareness and an ontology of 'naive realism' (Sarvastivada) or representationalism (Yogacara).
[2] According to Larson, "many of these strands come probably from contexts such as the Moksadharma and Bhagavadgita portions of the epic, some passages from the early Puranas, the socalled middle verse Upanisads (Katha, Svetasvata and Maitri, and from oral traditions of regional teachers and any number of local asramas.
"[42] While Larson is appreciative of Feuerstein's attempt to treat the Yoga sutras as an unifirm text, he also notes that "it is doubtfull that most researchers would concede that the YS overal centers on kriyayoga.
[65][66] In verse III.12, the Yogasutras state that this discerning principle then empowers one to perfect sant (tranquility) and udita (reason) in one's mind and spirit, through intentness.
[67] The epistemology in Patanjali's system of Yoga, like the Sāmkhya school of Indian philosophy, relies on three of six Pramanas, as the means of gaining reliable knowledge.
[70][71][72] Patanjali's system, like the Samkhya school, considers Pratyakṣa or Dṛṣṭam (direct sense perception), Anumāna (inference), and Śabda or Āptavacana (verbal testimony of the sages or shāstras) to be the only valid means of knowledge or Pramana.
[70] Unlike few other schools of Hinduism such as Advaita Vedanta, Yoga did not adopt the following three Pramanas: Upamāṇa (comparison and analogy), Arthāpatti (postulation, deriving from circumstances) or Anupalabdi (non-perception, negative/cognitive proof).
Bryant argues that because of its favoring of direct experience the Yoga Sutras will "remain a perennial source of interest to the empirical dispositions of the modern world".
[web 1] The universe is conceptualized as of two realities in Samkhya-Yoga schools: Puruṣa (consciousness) and prakriti (mind, cognition, emotions, and matter).
"[87][g]} This sutra adds the characteristics of Isvara as that special Self/Spirit which is unaffected (अपरामृष्ट, aparamrsta) by one's obstacles/hardships (क्लेश, klesha), one's circumstances created by past or one's current actions (कर्म, karma), one's life fruits (विपाक, vipâka), and one's psychological dispositions/intentions (आशय, ashaya).
According to Zimmer, Samkhya and Yoga are two of several schools of philosophy that originated over the centuries that had common roots in the pre-Aryan cultures and traditions of India.
[91][h][i] Yet, the orthodox Hindu philosophies of Samkhya, Yoga, Vedānta, as well as the non-orthodox Nastika systems of Jainism and Buddhism can all be seen as representing one stream of spiritual activity in ancient India, in contrast to the Bhakti traditions and Vedic ritualism which were also prevalent at the same time.
[95] Patañjali's Yoga Sutras accept the Samkhya's division of the world and phenomena into twenty-five tattvas or principles, of which one is Purusha meaning Self or consciousness, the others being Prakriti (primal nature), Buddhi (intellect or will), Ahamkara (ego), Manas (mind), five buddhindriyas (sensory capabilities), five karmendriyas (action-capabilities) and ten elements.
[96][97] The second part of the Sutras, the Sadhana, also summarizes the Samkhya perspectives about all seen activity lying within the realm of the three Gunas of Sattva (illumination), Rajas (passion) and Tamas (lethargy).
[100] In the sutras, it is suggested that devotion to Isvara, represented by the mystical syllable Om may be the most efficient method of achieving the goal of Yoga.
The aim of Yoga is to free the individual from the clutches of the matter, and considers intellectual knowledge alone to be inadequate for the purpose – which is different from the position taken by Samkhya.
[113] However, states Werner, "The Buddha was the founder of his system, even though, admittedly, he made use of some of the experiences he had previously gained under various Yoga teachers of his time.
(...) The ingenuity of his [Patanjali's] achievement lies in the thoroughness and completeness with which all the important stages of Yoga practice and mental experiences are included in his scheme, and in their systematic presentation in a succinct treatise.
[108][109] Robert Thurman writes that Patañjali was influenced by the success of the Buddhist monastic system to formulate his own matrix for the version of thought he considered orthodox.
[118] The Yoga Sutra, especially the fourth segment of Kaivalya Pada, contains several polemical verses critical of Buddhism, particularly the Vijñānavāda school of Vasubandhu.
[131] According to David Gordon White, the popularity of the Yoga Sutras is recent, "miraculously rehabilitated" by Swami Vivekananda after having been ignored for seven centuries.
The Sutras, with commentaries, have been published by a number of successful teachers of Yoga, as well as by academicians seeking to clarify issues of textual variation.
The text has not been submitted in its entirety to any rigorous textual analysis, and the contextual meaning of many of the Sanskrit words and phrases remains a matter of some dispute.
