Namaste.
What do you think when you hear the word yoga?
Perhaps you think of stretching.
A sequence of posture.
Breathing Exercise.
Relaxation Balance Flexibility Or perhaps you think of meditation.
To think of inner peace.
All of these may form part of a yogic life.
But in the second Sutra of the Yoga Sutras.
Patanjali gives us a definition of yoga that is both simple and profound.
He does not define Yoga through the body.
He defines it through the mind.
The Sutra is Yogash Chitta Vritti Nidodaha.
Let's see it slowly.
Yo guys.
Sit down.
With Thee.
NEDOTAKA A simple translation.
Yoga is the stilling of the movement.
Of the mind.
It is sometimes translated as Yoga is the restraint.
Of the modifications of the mind-stuff.
Or also it's translated as yoga is the settling.
Of the fluctuations of consciousness.
Each translation.
It gives us part of the meaning.
But to understand what Patanjali is saying.
We need to look closely at the four key words.
Yogash Chittag.
With a theme.
Neither would the Hound.
The First Word Yoga The word yoga is often translated as union.
It comes from a root meaning to yoke,
Join or to bring together.
But in the Sutra,
Yoga is not being described as a vague feeling of unity.
It is being presented as a lived inner condition.
Yoga is what becomes possible when the movements of the mind no longer dominate our perception.
When the mind is agitated,
We do not see clearly.
We see through fear.
True Desire.
True memory.
Through expectation,
Through the stories we have created about ourselves and others.
Yoga is the movement from being completely ruled by these inner patterns.
Toward clarity,
Steadiness and freedom.
This does not mean that the mind disappears.
It means that we are no longer unconsciously carried away.
By every movement that arises within us.
The next word is CHITTA.
Chitta is often translated as mind stuff or mind field or even consciousness.
But Chitta is broader than what we usually mean when we say the mind.
Chitta includes the inner field in which thoughts,
Memories,
Emotions,
Impressions,
Reactions and perceptions arise.
Traditional Yoga describes several functions within this mental field.
There is Manas.
The part of the mind that receives information through the senses,
Compares,
Desires,
And and moves either toward or away from things.
There is Buddhi.
The faculty of discernment,
The faculty of understanding of decision.
There's Ahamkara.
The sense of I,
That tendency we have to make experience personal.
Imagine that you are sitting quietly and your phone vibrates.
First,
The senses register the sound or the movement.
And the mind immediately asks.
Who is messaging me?
Than the intellect enterprise.
It may be important.
The sense of identity joins in.
They should have replied earlier,
Or perhaps they are upset with me.
And within a few seconds.
A simple vibration has become anticipation,
Anxiety,
Irritation or excitement.
That entire inner process,
It unfolds within Chitta.
Chitta is not merely one thought.
It is the whole inner instrument through which experience is interpreted.
Then we have the next word Vritti.
Vritti is the movements of the mind.
The word vritti,
It means either a movement,
A fluctuation,
A modification,
A pattern or a wave.
Of the day.
Is what happens when the mind takes a particular form.
A thought arises,
A memory returns,
An emotion appears.
Elements 4 A judgment is made.
A story begins.
The mind.
Which moments earlier may have been relatively quiet.
Takes the shape of that experience.
One of the most useful images for understanding this is the image of the lake.
Imagine that clearly.
When the surface is still,
You can see through the water.
You can see the depth beneath it.
But when strong winds move across the surface,
Waves begin to form,
Ripples begin to form.
The water reflects that the sky is broken.
The water reflects distorted shapes.
And if the water is also muddy,
It becomes almost impossible to see what lies beneath.
The lake is Chitta.
The waves of the Thieves.
The depths beneath the water represent the deeper reality of who we are.
The problem is not that waves arise.
Waves are part of the nature of water.
Thoughts and emotions,
They are part of the functioning of the mind.
The difficulty.
The difficulty begins when we become so absorbed in the waves that we forget the depth beneath them.
Authoritarianism.
I am going to fail.
And instead of recognizing this as a movement in the mind,
We accept it as reality.
A feeling of sadness arises.
And instead of noticing sadness as an experience that is just passing through awareness,
We conclude that my whole life is sad.
Or someone criticizes us and a wave of defensiveness appears.
And suddenly That one moment determines how we see ourselves,
How we see the other person,
How we see the entire relationship.
How we see the entire relationship.
The vritti arises and we become the vritti.
Nirodhaha,
Stilling regulation and freedom.
The final word,
Nirodhaha.
And this is perhaps the most easily misunderstood word in the sutra.
It is often translated as restraint or control or suppression or cessation or stilling.
And when people here control the mind.
They may imagine forcing the mind to become blank.
They may think that yoga means eliminating every thought.
They sit for meditation,
Thoughts arise,
And they conclude,
I am probably doing it wrong.
But forcibly suppressing thought usually creates more struggle.
It's like if I tell you,
Do not think about a dead apple.
The image of a red apple may immediately appear.
The effort not to think becomes another movement of thought.
Becomes another vipti.
Nirodhaha does not need to be understood as violence against the mind.
It can be understood as the gradual settling,
The regulating,
The quietening of its movements.
When muddy water is left undisturbed.
The sediment slowly settles.
When the wind stops.
The surface of the lake becomes calm.
In the same way.
Yoga creates the conditions in which the mental field can become clearer.
True practice.
True ethical living.
True attention,
True breath.
To meditation.
Through non-attachment.
Through learning not to feed every thought.
With more thought.
The mind begins to settle.
Nirodhaha is not deadness.
It is not dullness.
It is not the absence of intelligence.
Nidodaha is gladity.
Without agitation.
Stillness that is a way calmness that is fully alive.
The mind,
Is an instrument.
One of the central insights of the Yoga Sutras is that the mind is an instrument.
It is extraordinarily valuable.
We needed to learn to remember,
To plan,
To communicate,
To make decisions,
To imagine,
To create.
The aim of yoga.
Is not to destroy the instrument.
The aim is to stop confusing the instrument with the one who uses it.
Think of a pair of glasses.
When the lenses are clear,
You see accurately.
When the lenses are scratched or colored,
Everything you see is affected.
You may believe the world itself has changed when in fact you are seeing it through a distorted lens.
The mind is like that lens.
If the mind is colored by fear,
The world appears threatening.
If it is colored by attachment,
We see only what we want to see.
If it is colored by resentment,
Even a neutral action may appear hostile.
If it is colored by insecurity.
Another person's success may feel like a judgment upon us.
Yoga invites us to become aware of the colouring.
To recognize.
This is not necessarily reality as it is.
It is.
Reality as my mind is currently interpreting it.
This is not necessarily reality as it is.
It is the reality as my mind is currently interpreting it.
And that recognition.
Simply being able to see that it creates space.
And in that space.
.
.
Freedom begins.
Imagine you send someone a message.
Our spot.
And they do not reply.
The fact itself is simple.
A message was sent.
A reply has not yet arrived.
But the mind,
It rarely leaves the fact alone.
It begins to move.
Maybe they are angry.
Perhaps I said something wrong.
They are ignoring me.
They do not respect me.
This always happens.
One event.
Has produced many vrittis.
One event has produced many vrittis.
Anxiety rises.
The body tightens.
You may send another message.
You may withdraw.
You may become angry with someone who has not done anything yet.
And later you discover that the person was in a meeting or the person was traveling or the person was simply away from the phone.
The suffering did not come only from the unanswered message.
Much of it.
Came from the movements the mind created around that message.
Yoga does not ask you to stop caring.
It asks you to see the difference between an event and the story that the mind builds around it.
And that difference is the beginning of clarity.
Does yoga mean never thinking?
No.
The Yoga Sutras themselves are the product of extraordinary intelligence,
Observation and discernment.
The issue is not thought itself.
The issue is a lack of freedom.
In relationship to thought.
Can you think when thinking is useful?
Can you stop thinking about something when it is no longer useful?
Can you observe a thought without immediately obeying it?
Can you feel an emotion without allowing it to determine your entire identity?
Can you use the mind as an instrument without becoming trapped inside every movement it creates?
These are the practical questions of Sutra 1.
2.
Most of us do not consciously direct the mind.
The mind pulls us from one concern to another,
From memory to anticipation,
From comparison to judgment,
From desire to fear.
The body may be sitting in one room while the mind is living in 10 different places.
Yoga begins to gather this scattered energy.
It brings us back.
To the breath.
To the body.
To awareness to what is actually happening now.
Stilling.
Stilling is not suppression.
There is an important difference between stilling and suppression.
Suppression said.
This thought should not be here.
This emotion is unacceptable.
I must get rid of this experience.
That's what suppression says.
Stilling says.
This is pleasant.
I can observe it.
I do not have to become it.
I do not have to feed it.
I can allow it to settle.
Suppression creates conflict within the mind.
Awareness creates space around the book.
Imagine holding a glass of muddy water and shaking it while demanding that it becomes clear.
The harder you shake,
The cloudier it becomes.
Sometimes we do the same thing within ourselves.
We become anxious about being anxious.
We become angry about being angry.
Ashamed of feeling afraid.
The Original Vritti.
Become surrounded by many Movrittis.
Yoga invites us to put the glass down.
To stop shaking.
To allow awareness,
Patience and practice.
To do their work.
Yoga Sutra 1.
2 Yogas Chitta Vritti Nirodhara.
This does not apply only when we are sitting on a meditation cushion.
It applies.
Daily,
In real life,
It applies in the moment before we react.
When someone says something difficult,
Can we notice the first wave of defensiveness?
When fear creates a catastrophic future.
Can we recognize that the future has not yet happened?
When comparison arises,
Can we notice the mind measuring our life against another person's life?
Or when an old memory returns.
Can we recognize that memory is occurring now?
But the original event is not happening now.
All these moments are yoga.
Not because the mind is perfectly still,
But because awareness is beginning to see the movement.
At first,
We may notice only after the acting.
But later as we practice,
We begin to notice during the reaction.
And eventually we may notice before the reaction becomes action.
And that's that gap,
That small gap that we start to create.
It changes everything because in that gap.
We can choose.
So here's a simple practice for today or maybe a practice for this week.
Is based on this sutra.
Several times today just pause and ask yourself and maybe you can do this three times a day morning afternoon night just pause and ask yourself What movement is present in the mind right now?
What movement is present in the mind right now.
Do not ask what is wrong with me.
Ask what movement is here?
Perhaps it is planning,
Or remembering,
Or judging,
Or imagining,
Or worrying,
Or even comparing.
Or maybe even wanting.
Name a gem.
Name a gender.
Planning is happening or the existence is happening.
Or the existence is present or Judging is happening.
Name a change.
Judgment has a vision.
The language creates a subtle but important distance.
Instead of,
Instead of I am worried.
You recognize Vadhi is moving to the mic.
Instead of I am a failure.
You recognize.
The thought of failure is present.
You are not denying the experience.
You are seeing it.
More clearly,
You are seeing it as it needs to be seen.
As reality.
And clarity.
Is the beginning of Nidrodhaham.
So you might sit with these questions.
You might sit with these questions.
Which movement of mind often carries me away?
Is it worry,
Memory,
Comparison,
Self-criticism,
Desire,
Fear,
Planning?
Which movement of the mind most often carries me away.
And what changes when I observe the movement?
Instead of immediately becoming it.
You do not have to still the entire mind today.
Begin by recognizing one way.
See it arrive.
See that it changes.
See that it is not the whole of you.
The leg may be moving.
But underneath the waves.
The depth remains.
Yogas chittavati nidodaha.
This Yoga Sutra 1.
2 it offers us The clearest,
One of the clearest definitions of yoga.
Yoga is the stilling of the movements of the mind.
This does not ask us to hate the mind or force it into silence.
It asks us to understand its movement.
To stop being ruled by them and allow the inner field to become clear.
As you move through your day.
Pause and notice.
What wave is present now?
Can I observe it without becoming it?
In the next episode,
We will explore what becomes possible when the mind grows still.
Patanjali tells us.
Tadā drastu svarūpe vastanam Then the seer rests in its true nature.
Thank you for listening.
Namaste.
