kāya-rūpa-saṁyamāt tad-grāhya-śakti-stambhe cakṣuḥ-prakāśāsamprayoge ‘ntardhānam
kāya-rūpa-saṁyamāt tad-grāhya-śakti-stambhe cakṣuḥ-prakāśa-asamprayoge antar-dhānam
“From saṁyama on the form of the body, [one learns] placement [of the awareness] within. [As this happens], one is freed from the power of others’ perceptions. [One feels within], disconnecting the light from the eye.”

Kāya is body and rūpa is form, though what “form” means here includes a sense of identity, characteristic, essence. To study the “form” of one’s own body is to come into its truth, its reality. To practice body awareness, central to yoga, is to come to know one’s own self. At the start of Ch. 1, Patañjali describes the purpose of yoga being “to stand in one’s true self” (I.3, tadā draṣṭuḥ svarūpe ‘vasthānam).

Today’s sūtra describes the power of antar-dhānam, the placement of the awareness within. This has been interpreted traditionally to mean invisibility, meaning the practitioner actually can stop others from seeing her. It has an important less-literal meaning. The power to place awareness within is the power to not be ruled by others’ perceptions of us. Feeling myself from within, I am freed from others’ view of me. The word Patañjali uses for perception, grāhya, derives from grah, “to grasp.” To be seen is thus “to be grasped.” In our modern world, where outer appearances are given so much weight, especially for women, it can be a powerful struggle to break from being treated as object, indeed, treating oneself as object (interestingly, III.20 speaks of citta as non-object-like).

Power relations within society do ultimately happen on a physical level; they are established through bodies. To understand the world, and the violence of this world, through our bodies, with our bodies, is critical.

Ta-Nehisi Coates has taught me this lesson in his searing book Between the World and Me, a letter to his teenage son. We have so many abstractions to describe how our society works. They are not sufficient.

All our phrasing–race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy–serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must never look away from this. You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economies, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body.

It is through the body that we must strive to understand events like the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breanna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, or the traffic stop of Lieutenant Caron Nazario in Virginia, during which he was held at gunpoint, pepper sprayed and threatened with electric shock. Coates contrasts the real violence on bodies to the convictions of “those who believe themselves to be white” and the story of American progress we hold dear.

When the killers of Michael Brown go unpunished, Coates is not surprised; he had not expected them to be. But his son had stayed up late waiting for an indictment. He was crushed when there was none. Coates writes,

I did not tell you that it would be okay, because I have never believed it would be okay. What I told you is what your grandparents tried to tell me: that this is your country, that this is your world, that this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.          –Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me, pp. 10-12

We must inhabit our bodies better, and feel our way to other bodies, extend our imaginations to other experiences. These are our bodies. This is our world.

—–

“It is possible to attract more or less attention. One can disappear, like a chameleon, by imitating the dress, behavior, and personality of others, or stand out by being different. Unless there is interest in the thing seen, there is no perception. Interaction between the eye and the object registers the view, but the mind has to send out its intention to perceive the image. A person can attract another’s eye to a greater or lesser extent by playing on the spectator’s interest.” –Bernard Bouanchaud, The Essence of Yoga, commentary on III.21

Questions:
• What have you learned about your history and your life from focusing on the body?
• How do you perceive others differently if you sense them through the body?
• Has yoga affected your experience of your body in the world?
• How important is it to you how others’ see you? Has this shifted?

na ca tat sālambanaṁ tasyāviṣayī-bhūtatvāt
na ca tat sālambanaṁ tasya aviṣayī-bhūtatvāt

“But one cannot know the cause [of that thought], because [citta] itself is not object-like.”

Yoga teaches us to attend to our physical experience, to the subtle movements in the body of breath, feeling, thought. It can bring an increased awareness of the other, a consciousness of the other’s physical experience, sensitivity to the other in space, body to body. And it can bring greater insight into another’s mind.

But there is a limit to the knowledge we have of another. Na ca tat, “but not that,” says Patañjali. Not what has given rise to another’s thought. Nor what has shaped another’s citta. Mind is not an object. It is aviṣayī-bhūtatva, in the nature of not-object. Mind is ineffable; it escapes observation. Patañjali, as psychologist, cautions us not to presume we have full understanding.

Sūtra III.20 holds up a mirror to our presumptions. In intimate relationships as well as more distant ones, what do I miss? Do I suppose I understand my cranky neighbor? Do I make space for those I work with to express their views, maybe disagree? What kind of authority do I claim as a teacher? Do I set myself up as knowing more than I do?

In my marriage–for more than thirty years–I have repeatedly had to work to not know. That is, I have had to let go of my conclusions–about myself as well as about my husband. The great Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh suggests a practice of deep listening for longtime couples; a practice of being present to the other. He chides:

“If you have the impression that you know the other person inside and out, you are wrong. Are you sure that you even know yourself? Every person is a world to explore.” –Thich Nhat Hanh, How to Love

Likewise, psychotherapist Esther Perel looks at our expectations of relationships, especially intimate ones. In an interview on NPR, she references twentieth-century social psychologist Erich Fromm:

“[He observed] that we think that love is easy and that finding the right person is what is difficult; that it’s the love object that is complicated, [not] the experience itself, of loving — and of course, he turned it on its head: [he said] that love is a verb, that it’s not a permanent state of enthusiasm, and that it’s an actual practice… and that practice gets repeated all the time.” –Esther Perel,  On Being with Krista Tippett

We can perhaps find our way better into right relationship by letting go of certainty about what we know. This is not to say that we know nothing, nor that we shouldn’t trust the knowledge that we have, especially of dangerous people and situations. It is just to say, like Patañjali, Na ca tat, “but not that.” Remember we do not know the cause.

—–

“One can know how the mind of the other person works, but not why the mind functions that way.” –Rohit Mehta, Yoga, the Art of Integration, p. 320

“If we are speaking with someone and we sense something of their psychological complexion or have flashes of insight or images that reinforce this intuition, how can we be sure where they come from? … This aphorism emphasizes the possible danger in interpreting one’s impressions too quickly, so great is the risk of mistakes. Patañjali is extremely wary in this sphere.” –Bernard Bouanchaud, The Essence of Yoga, p. 172

“Perfect empathy does not involve perfect knowledge but rather a surrender to the unknowability of another’s internality. Ideally, this feeling does not alienate, but invites ever deeper levels of dialogue and intimacy.” –Matthew Remski, Threads of Yoga, p. 175

Questions:
• Do you respect others’ boundaries? If you are a teacher, health practitioner, or have authority over others, how do you remind yourself of the limits of your knowledge?
• Do you tend to focus on others’ thoughts? Do you resist interpreting what you perceive?
•What do you practice in relationship? What does it mean to you to say that love is a verb?

pratyayasya para-citta-jñānam

“[From direct perception] of a thought, knowledge of the citta of another.”

In sūtra III.18, Patañjali describes direct observation of long-established patterns that shape our thoughts. From that observation, he says, one learns one’s past. In today’s sūtra, he shifts attention to the rising thought itself–and to other people. From observation of the movement of thought, he says, one comes to understand another’s mind.

There is no good English translation for pratyaya. We make do with “thought,” but the word is literally a “movement toward” (from prati-, “towards,” + i, “to go”). It could also be considered a perception, idea, notion, feeling. As discussed in I.10, yoga philosophy considers citta (mind, consciousness) to be fluid, and the pratyaya is a movement within that fluid, a rising of intention toward an object. Earlier in this chapter, Patañjali describes citta in a wavelike way, with thoughts rising and subsiding naturally (see III.12).

How do we observe the thoughts of others? There are words, of course, what they say. There is also, always, how they say it. And as Patañjali points out in III.17, words and objects are often at variance. We get a tremendous amount of information from sound, look, feel. We sense through the body other bodies. This is a key way we understand people. We sense the movement in the thought, and the thought in the movement.

How roused we are ourselves on any given occasion, how tense or relaxed, poised to fight or flee or calm and receptive, will alter our perceptions of the other; mutual misunderstanding can happen in already pitched conditions. Body awareness, knowledge of one’s own pratyaya, in this sense, is key to better communication.

Physical therapist and dance innovator Irmgaard Bartenieff believed movement patterns are an essential way we “feel” each other. Here, she beautifully sketches our interactions with each other and our world:

We stamp in anger, curve in love, retreat in fear and advance in confidence. We make jerky angular progress toward our goal or progress with smooth, rounded symmetrical or asymmetrical phrases and rhythms. We drive ourselves without respite, blind to all but our goal, or we prepare, initiate and move in a particular sequence so that transitions along the way are economical and changes keep us refreshed without waste or losing sight of the goal.

Bartenieff describes, much as Patañjali might, the inherent quality of movement and change in nature and our experience:

We see light etched by shadows, feel joy emerging from sorrow; the present hovers between the past and the future. Between all these opposites, there is a sense of movement that renews the clarity of each experience. Even in apparent stillness, movement variables are active.  –Irmgaard Bartenieff and Dori Lewis, Body Movement: Coping with the Environment

During this time of Covid, we have lost much of our physical connection with others. We see each other virtually, in small frames on a screen. There is a concept in Japan called “forest-bathing”: it is a practice of spending time among trees. It is seen as a way to refresh the senses and spirit. Similarly, yoga class is an opportunity to bathe in each other’s presence. It is a kind of group pratyaya, a harmonic body-to-body experience.

So what happens during a Zoom yoga class? Or, perhaps more significant, what is the effect of school, volunteer work, business, family meetings all moved online?

Jeremy N. Bailenson, director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, has been exploring a phenomenon that he calls “Zoom fatigue.” He says Zoom is different from in-person interaction in four ways: (1) we tend to maintain eye gaze at close distances, in a manner usually reserved for intimate relationships, (2) movement cues are reduced and more awkward, (3) we see a mirror of ourselves throughout the interaction, and (4) we adjust our movement to the camera, restricting ourselves to the area of the “frustrum,” the cone-like space framed by the computer screen.

Bailenson’s observations emphasize the importance of our body-to-body connections–in ourselves, in our surroundings:

In face-to-face interaction, nonverbal communication flows naturally, to the point where we are rarely consciously attending to our own gestures and other nonverbal cues. One of the remarkable aspects of early work on nonverbal synchrony is how nonverbal behavior is simultaneously effortless and incredibly complex. …

During face-to-face meetings people move. They pace, stand up, and stretch, doodle on a notepad, get up to use a chalkboard, even walk over to the water cooler to refill their glass. There are a number of studies showing that locomotion and other movements cause better performance in meetings. — Jeremy N. Bailenson, “Nonverbal Overload: A Theoretical Argument for the Causes of Zoom Fatigue,” in Technology, Mind, and Behavior

Bailenson makes makes some suggestions to reduce Zoom fatigue: turn off the self-view (I began to do this yesterday, and I did feel more relaxed), use an external camera to give yourself more movement flexibility, and–perhaps this is surprising–consider talking on the phone instead, as he puts it, “to free your body from the frustrum.”

—–

“An expressed thought has to function under the limitations of words. But howsoever limited the language may be, if one communes with these verbalizations then one can understand how the mind of the other person works. …This is the way of putting oneself in rapport with the mind of another.” –Rohit Mehta, Yoga, the Art of Integration, p. 320

“Before we examine another person’s mind, we must become conscious of the factors that condition us. We must first know and accept ourselves, so that we are sufficiently calm. Then, the image of the other can be reflected on the calm surface of our mind. When we are calm and listening, and accustomed to seeing the influence of fear on our own attitudes, breathing patterns, and facial expressions, we will be able to feel another’s fear. If we have not gotten over our own fears, we are likely to see only our own fear in another. This is the same for all human feelings.” –Bernard Bouanchaud, The Essence of Yoga, commentary on III.19

“That principle by which objects are known is called pratyaya. By samyama on the process of the psychic mechanism, modus operandi of mindstuff, there arises knowledge about others’ minds. The process of the psychic mechanism consists of the laws of the mind, how the mind operates. These mental laws are not corporeal. They are incorporeal, but they move the entire body, which is corporeal, in a particular way. Every inner feeling will move the body in its own way. … Everyone can read others’ minds to some extent. We see that mothers, teachers, and psychologists can imagine something about the minds of their children, pupils, and patients respectively.” –Sri Brahmananda Sarasvati, The Textbook of Yoga Psychology, commentary on III.19

Questions
•Has increased body awareness given you greater insight into others? Greater understanding of situation?
•Have you come to understand your own thinking better–where your thoughts arise from, how they connect to your feelings? How they move in your body?
•What happens to you physically when you are reactive? When you think you are in danger, where do you feel it in your body?
•What person-to-person experience do you miss?

saṁskāra-sākṣāt-karaṇāt pūrva-jāti-jñānam
“From direct observation of saṁskāra, knowledge of previous births.”

The idea of saṁskāra, imprints on the consciousness, is central to the yogic endeavor (see I.50, III.10). The yoga practitioner comes to see in herself the imprints that create patterns of movement and thought, as rocks on the beach will pattern the water flowing over them.  Dhāraṇā, dhyāna, samādhi–the three components of saṁyama–are, in an essential way, a process of self-observation.

Here, in sūtra III.18, Patañjali explicitly says to observe “with your own eye” the imprints that pattern you. He uses a compelling compound word: sākṣāt-karaṇa (from sa, “with,” + akṣa, “eye,” and kṛ, “to do”), which might be understood to be “doing with the eyes” or “putting before the eyes”–direct perception. In Sanskrit, the word “eye” often stands in for all the senses. Thus the term for direct perception used in Chapter One, pratyakṣa, is literally “toward the eye” (from prati-, “towards,” + akṣa, “eye”), but refers to hearing, taste, touch as well as sight.

Directly observe the patterns in you, says Patañjali, see them, feel them, hear them, and you will learn of your past experiences (the term used is pūrva-jāti, literally “past births”). Knowing the past lessens its hold, helps untangle the pattern the saṁskāra create.

Yoga has revealed to me many patterns: in my body, a constriction here, a tightness there, perhaps a twist or drop; in my mind, a conviction, a false belief, a habit of thought still there though it is outworn. Yoga has brought before me old experiences, many of them from childhood. I can see better how I have been conditioned, and I am coming to understand, as Bernard Bouanchaud has put it, that conditioning is “atavistic, hereditary, family, educational, social, professional.”

I am considering this week a trait that I believe to be not just personal, formed by unique and individual experience, but is wide, formed by the society, the group of which I am a part.

In exploring the yama of asteya, non-stealing, I wrote of feeling “not enough.” I might describe this as a mood of insufficiency, of being found lacking. I recalled yoga teacher Matthew Sanford’s beautiful admonition: You are enough (see II.37).

Fullness, enoughness, is a spiritual value. The ancient mantra pūrṇam adaḥ sings of abundance: “Fullness there, fullness here. Fullness arises out of fullness. Take away fullness from fullness, fullness remains.” I have chanted this for many years, and I have practiced the principle of enough-ness. I begin to see that the economy I am living in, and the group that has formed me, operate on an assumption of scarcity, not abundance.

In her 1989 book Fear of Falling, Barbara Ehrenreich studies the middle class, or rather, as she puts it, the professional-managerial class. She observes that, despite enjoying the full benefits of modern society, this class is “insecure and deeply anxious.” Taught from an early age that education and effort is the path to security, its children steel themselves through years of school and advanced training and dedicate themselves to work life. The class is an elite, yet feels itself to be always on a precipice:

It is afraid, like any class below the most securely wealthy, of misfortunes that might lead to a downward slide. [And] in the middle class there is another anxiety: a fear of inner weakness, of growing soft, of failing to strive, of losing discipline and will. Even the affluence that is so often the goal of all this striving becomes a threat, for it holds out the possibility of hedonism and self-indulgence. Whether the middle class looks down toward the realm of less, or up toward the realm of more, there is the fear, always, of falling. –Barbara Ehrenreich, Fear of Falling

In the more than thirty years since Ehrenreich wrote these words, income inequality has increased, student debt has skyrocketed, and health care has become prohibitively expensive for those with no health insurance and who do not qualify for Medicaid Expansion (twelve states, mostly in the South, did not take federal funds to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act). Our public health infrastructure, like our other public systems, are crumbling.

I have become interested in looking back at our history, and how a sense of the commons, of security for all, of enoughness, has been established in the past. In 1941, Franklin Roosevelt outlined four essential freedoms necessary to our society, the third of which is surprising to my ears today: freedom from want.

In 1948, the United Nations encoded freedom from want as a human right: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his/her control.” (Article 25.1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.)

In the first part of the twentieth century, following the collapse of the stock market and the widespread misery of the Great Depression, progressives fought to put limits on the market and the influence of the wealthy on our society. Social Security, a massive, government-managed social welfare program–still popular today–was enacted in 1935, and then in 1965, Medicare followed suit. Both these programs recognize that the market does not provide for the necessities of life for all, but government, pooling the abundance of our resources, can. The idea is that our security, our stability and our freedom, come from our connection to others, not in spite of them.

Mike Konczal, in Freedom from the Market, describes how in the past forty years, we have suffered a reactionary re-assertion of the power of the market. Economists and pundits hold up the market–and its freedom–as the highest good.

The things we need to lead our lives are forced into markets where we are compelled to obtain them, at the mercy of private, profit-seeking actors and our own ability to pay. Many of our needs are left unmet or poorly provided for by the market—from health care to retirement security to providing for children—and more suffering is the result.

He continues:

It’s impossible to say exactly when it started, but viewing the market and our dependency on it as something that needs to be checked has dropped out of our politics. Instead, we’ve watched as the market has extended further into our lives and even further into how we view ourselves and our society.   –Mike Konczal, Freedom from the Market

The values of our society affect how we see ourselves, can even influence us to see ourselves as commodities. When might we begin to assert again that freedom from want is a human right? How can we know ourselves to be living in abundance when we have lost the sense of our common lot, our shared common purpose? Pūrṇāt pūrṇam udacyate.  “From fullness comes fullness.”

—–

“By turning our attention inward, directly observing subconscious impressions, and noting when, how, and why they manifest, we will see themes, keynote thoughts–the essential plot line around which our current life was formed.” -The Reverend Jaganath Carrera, Inside the Yoga Sutras, commentary on III.18

“With this aphorism, Patañjali proposes we look our own conditioning squarely in the eye: atavistic, hereditary, family, educational, social, professional, and so on….Knowing more about our origins enables us to make new choices and get a fresh start.” –Bernard Bouanchaud, The Essence of Yoga, commentary on III.18

“The operative nature of the past resides not in events and happenings but in tendencies and reactions that are embedded in one’s consciousness. And so the past in its real sense is not away from us, but is there in the very situation in which we are. The past is in the present, and this can be comprehended by communing with the present. This means seeing one’s own tendencies, habits and reactions without any explanation or interruption. Then they themselves tell us the nature of our past. Once again it is only the new mind that can cognize the real nature of one’s past.” –Rohit Mehta, Yoga, the Art of Integration, p. 318

Questions:
• Do you look at the patterns of your mind without judging them? What do they teach you?
• How is your past in your present? Does practice reveal your past to you?
• In what ways do you work to stay open-minded, to see things with a fresh eye?
• Have the events of this year given you perspective on society’s influence on you–your values, your psychology, your spiritual struggles?  Have events changed anything about your sense of your role in society? What part do you play?

śabdārtha-pratyayānām itaretarādhyāsāt saṁkaras tat-pravibhāga-saṁyamāt
sarva-bhūta-ruta-jñānam
śabda-artha-pratyayānām itara-itara-adhyāsāt saṁkaraḥ tad-pravibhāga-saṁyamāt
sarva-bhūta-ruta-jñānam

“Word, object, and thought–piled one upon the other–get confused. From saṁyama on the distinctness of these, knowledge of the sound of all beings.”

Language shapes thought. This is why I study Sanskrit. The different words used, their distinct implications and connections, open up meanings not in English. To study another language is to see in a different way.

In today’s sūtra, Patañjali reflects on language, a recurring theme in the Yoga Sūtras (see I.9, I.42, and I.49). This is not accident. To penetrate inward, to come to know self better, is to come to see how language works. Ultimately, in practicing direct observation, one comes to see the limit of what one has seen–how mingled, confused (expressed here by saṁkara, which literally means “mixed together”) most observation is. Patañjali puts it this way: śabda (word), artha (object), and pratyaya (thought) overlap, one on the other (itara-itara) and so intermingle. Despite this, he continues, these three are distinct. Observe that.

Naming things helps us to know them. But it is not the end of knowing. There is more observation to be done after the word is said. Indeed, Patañjali suggests here, observation may be a kind of listening. Look feel listen to the vibrations, to the object, to the world.

Sound and vibration are mystical entities in Indian tradition. Creation, it is said, began with the word atha, and the sacred syllable OM is considered to contain all the sounds of the universe. Thus, when Patañjali says that saṁyama on word, object, and thought bring knowledge of the sound of all beings, he alludes to deep mystical knowledge, an understanding of the nature of things, the hum of life.

It is beautiful to consider that in conversation with our friends, we might listen past their words to their hum. That we might attempt to “hear” an animal. Do I speak dog? Not really. Yet my dog and I understand each other. It is possible, really, that he is the more attentive one.

In hatha yoga, the element of space is related to sound. Through āsana practice, we come to experience space in and around us in a physical and tactile way. This can help us become more sensitive to vibration. To the touch of sound.

Today’s sūtra is an important one. It demands that the yoga practitioner question assumptions and the status quo. I have been writing in recent months about the crises we face on a political and global level. Examination of assumptions in a society-wide way is critical–I do not exaggerate–for our survival. I was excited to hear, this past week, an interview with Gina McCarthy, recently appointed by President Biden to be the first United States National Climate Advisor. She is the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency and has worked as a health advocate and protector of environmental well-being her entire career. In this interview, McCarthy assesses what the word “government” means to us today. What does the word conjure up? On right-wing talk radio, it is a pejorative term. Yet government is what we as citizens make. Government is how we govern ourselves. The way we come together for the common good. Gina McCarthy explains:

“Since the Reagan administration there has been a concerted effort to say that government is dysfunctional, it can’t work, and as a result a lot of government right now is dysfunctional and isn’t working. There are so many ways we can have the kind of future we all want as long as we are willing to make government work for us.”

Gina McCarthy emphasizes that individual solutions will not solve the environmental nor social justice crises we face: she says we must work in community, whether that is local, state, or federal government. We must demand that government become active in encouraging, through regulation and enticement, the solutions we already have. What prevents us from unleashing these solutions? McCarthy suggests that our sense that “there is nothing to be done” has been created in us:

“People with money seem to be able to mess up our perception of reality–not just science but our reality. I don’t see any way that gets us out of this without people becoming more active, much more vocal, us demanding that we be served, not just the wealthy. … The young people get it. They know it. They’re demanding it.” *

The solutions, says McCarthy, are not painful. They are fun and good. They will make a better world. Listen to the hum of that world.

*From the podcast How to Save the World, hosted by Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Alex Blumberg,  Jan. 14 episode: “Meet Your New Climate Czar.”

—–

“Śabda, when manifest as the audible aspect of a word, is, in and of itself, simply an arrangement of sounds or phonemes, which contains meaning of some object, artha, that produces an impression on the mind of the listener…. Therefore, the word is one thing, the meaning of the object itself something else, and the idea or knowledge of the object something else again.” –Edwin Bryant, The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali, commentary on III.17

“Concentrate separately on the word, the meaning and the object, which are mixed up in common usage; understand the speech of every creature. When we utter the word ‘elephant’, we find that the word, the meaning and the object are mixed up; the word lives in air, the meaning lives in mind, the elephant lives by itself.”

“Very often there is a gap between the words we use and what these words really mean, because our inner and outer experiences color them. Something that sounds like a compliment might really be expressing jealousy that the speaker seeks to hide even from him or herself. The first stage, then, is prolonged observation of the possible gap between our own words and what we are really saying, given our situations, our experiences, and our emotional and mental states. It is a matter of knowing what we say, why we say it, and in what circumstances we say it.” –Bernard Bouanchaud, The Essence of Yoga, commentary on III.17

“Speech is the most powerful means of communication. And yet much misunderstanding is created by the spoken word resulting in unhappy relationship. If one could go behind the verbal meaning and cease projecting one’s own meanings on words that are spoken by the other then life would be much simpler causing no strain in relationship. But how is this to be done? Only by an act of communion, which means noting the movement of one’s own mind when one listens to the words uttered by others.” –Rohit Mehta, Yoga, the Art of Integration, p. 316

Questions:
• Has yoga helped you become a better communicator? Can you understand someone who speaks another language? How well do you listen to animals? To yourself? How tuned into your environment are you?
• This sūtra asserts that there is a distinction between words and the objects they describe. What is an example of an incident when words prevented understanding?
• What are the sounds of a healthy world?
• Do you have access to the sounds of nature where you live?

pariṇāma-traya-saṁyamād atītānāgata-jñānam
pariṇāma-traya-saṁyamād atīta-anāgata-jñānam
“From saṁyama on change and its three aspects, knowledge of the past and future.”

“All is pain,” says Patañjali in Chapter Two. The discerning know this. The pain is not accidental or incidental–it is the pain inherent to transformation (pariṇāma). Change brings pain. (See II.15.)

The yogic path brings us to greater awareness of change and enlists us to be in dynamic relation to it. In yoga practice, we work to transform citta, our own minds, to strive for a neuroplasticity, if you will, an awakening of the senses, a freshening of our perceptions. We aim for greater participation and presence in our lives. We seek to be fully embodied. This is a way of partnering with change. We will not stop change, not any more than we will stop aging, but we might enter into co-creation with it.

In today’s sūtra, Patañjali shifts from his consideration of change and moves into an expansive description of the powers (vibhūti) of yoga practice. Some commentators, as I have mentioned, are concerned that practitioners do not mistake the attainments of yoga to be the end goal; some grapple uneasily with the mystical, over-the-top quality of the claims. My own experience of the chapter, to sum it up, is delight. Patañjali here draws us into the natural world, helps us consider the marvels of this life, helps us know our own possibilities more profoundly.

At the beginning of Chapter Three, Patañjali defines saṁyama to be a threefold process: dhāraṇā, binding the awareness to a place, dhyāna, extending and returning attention to that place, samādhi, the emptying out of self as a fuller, truer perception dawns–it is as though the object alone “shines out.” This is saṁyama. The best translation for it is probably “meditation.” (See III.1-4.)

The pattern of the rest of Chapter Three goes like this: From saṁyama on a given deśa (place to hold the awareness), comes an attainment or understanding. In sūtra III.16, Patañjali says, “From saṁyama on change and its three aspects, comes knowledge of the past and future.” (The three aspects–or axes–of change, to review, are form, circumstance, time. You can think of them as the vertical, horizontal, and sagittal dimensions of change. See III.13.)

The more I contemplate–the more I return to consider–the roots of myself, the circumstances of the society around me, and the workings of time, the more of the past, and the potential for the future, I understand. Hearing the information of others, opening to perspectives beyond mine, are crucial.

The Covid epidemic has revealed inequity in this country in stark and terrible ways. Corporations receive bailouts, the rich the best medical care, while the poor, including “essential workers,” many of whom are people of color, must fend for themselves.  All this has heightened my desire to know and understand the unfoldings around me. But the first big break from what I knew and what I thought I knew, came in 2016, when we elected an ignorant, racist, misogynist, con-artist of a man to be President of the United States. It was a nightmare, and it felt like a break with reality. At that time, I heard an interview with Ta-Nehesi Coates. He was asked, Do you find the election depressing? He said he was not depressed, because he was not surprised, and he suggested that those who were depressed–that would be me–need to ask themselves: What story about this country have you been telling yourself?

I have become intent on learning the full story, the true story, of what this country is. I have turned to black, indigenous, and women writers, filmmakers, podcasters, to get the story I didn’t get from my formal, white education. I described, in my last entry, Adrienne Rich’s search for the origins of herself. She writes here about the loss of one’s idea of country:

What if I told you your home
is this continent of the homeless
of children sold    taken by force
driven from their mothers’ land
killed by their mothers to save from capture
–this continent of changed names and mixed-up blood
of languages tabooed
diasporas unrecorded
undocumented refugees
underground railroads    trails of tears
What if I tell you your home
is this planet of warworn children
women and children standing in line or milling
endlessly calling each others’ names
What if I tell you, you are not different
it’s the family albums that lie
–will any of this comfort you
and how should this comfort you

–Adrienne Rich, In the Wake of Home

Once we have laid aside nostalgia about our nation, about “home,” the ideas of what it was supposed to mean or be, where do we go? Standing in reality is its own comfort, a good starting place for partnering with existence.*

The late anthropologist and social visionary David Graeber (he coined the term “the 99 percent” during the Occupy Wall Street protests), urged us to intervene in our own future, to build a society that prioritizes care and creativity, not whatever activity produces a profit. Interviewed for the volume Everything Must Change!: The World after COVID-19, he declared,

“There has been a 30- to 40-year war against human political imagination. In the 1930s through to the 1960s, it was just assumed that we were living in a somewhat terrifying, but nonetheless exhilarating, new age where almost anything was possible. Creations such as the United Nations or the space program were epical feats of statesmanship. This is inconceivable now. We are given this line that there are economic machines beyond our control that are propelling us toward a better future and we just have to trust in them; we certainly can’t intervene in history…. If there was ever a stupid time to give up on trying to imagine a better future, this is it…. Care and freedom, instead of production and consumption, should be the bases of our economy.”–https://lithub.com/do-global-financial-crises-inevitably-reinforce-capitalism/

As the world adapts to and recovers from Covid-19, we are poised to undertake great change. Governments around the world will be forced to make substantial investments to rebuild their economies? What will we invest in? How will we build our future?

Perhaps, to understand the actions we must take, we must come to know how homeless we truly are, how knit together our fates.

—–

“The seeming stability of experience is an illusion, as are the enduring qualities of objects. In fact, the universe is unfolding, expanding, advancing through time–not just as stars, planets, and gas clouds hurtling outward from their explosive beginnings, but also in our molecules, fibers, bodies, families, communities, and species. The universe’s unfolding can even be sensed in our consciousness, whose flux is displayed before awareness moment by moment.” –Chip Hartranft, The Yoga-Sūtra of Patañjali, p. 50

“As we have already seen, the culminating point of the threefold transformation is an awareness of silence in the midst of noise. This is the awareness of the Transcendent in the Immanent, or of the timeless in the sequence of time…. The timeless moment is the Infinite Rest even as the flow of time is Infinite Motion. Motion becomes meaningful only in the context of rest. It is the timeless moment which gives significance to time. The new mind born in the moment of communion knows the secret of the time process because it comprehends the mystery of the timeless moment.” –Rohit Mehta, Yoga, the Art of Integration, pp. 308

“Saṁyama is a way of obtaining knowledge through experience: direct perception of the highest order. There are no intermediary words, biases, blind spots, faults of logic, no history, no agendas–just the mind confronting an object head-on, penetrating it to its core.” –The Reverend Jaganath Carrera, Inside the Yoga Sūtras, commentary on III.16

Questions:
• Can direct perception cut through bias or preconception? What is an example of that in your own experience? What did the process demand of you?
•What is your relationship to change?
• Have the events of the past year overthrown any previously held ideas for you?
• Are you active in your political imagination? Can you envision a society with different priorities?

*Much thanks to adrienne marie brown for ongoing lessons on shaping change. See her book Emergent Strategies.

kramānyatvam pariṇāmānyatve hetuḥ
krama-anyatvam pariṇāma-anyatve hetuḥ
“The unique path is the cause of the uniqueness of the transformation.”

The last sūtra offered us a chance to explore the scope of change, to consider our limits and our potential. Today’s reading challenges us with how.  What are the steps to change? How does it happen? How do we invite change in and partner with it? What methods and practices do we embrace?

Krama (from kram, “to walk, go, step”) refers to the steps we have taken, the path we have walked. In the context of yoga practice, it is taken to refer to the sequence of instruction, the method of learning.

Anyatva  is distinctness, otherness, the particulars of a thing. To understand a transformation (pariṇāma), says Patañjali, look at the particulars of what has come before. Notice the details. How have events unfolded? The uniqueness of the steps explains the uniqueness of what unfolds.

B.K.S. Iyengar, in his commentary on III.15, examines the importance of proper sequence for “harmonious and organic growth.” Bernard Bouanchaud, similarly, discusses method and results. Different individuals, he states, will benefit from different approaches.

I have translated krama not as sequence, but as path, to emphasize the more general implications here. The distinctive events of our lives, and how we have met them, stepped through them, affects how we develop. The steps that have been taken before we are born set the circumstances that we are born to. They live in us.

Adrienne Rich, in her remarkable poem Sources, searches out the foundations of herself. She proclaims that she does not look to another person or thing to heal or fix her. She looks to herself.

I refuse to become a seeker for cures.
Everything that has ever
helped me has come through what already
lay stored in me. Old things, diffuse, unnamed, lie strong
across my heart.

The old things, the things stored in her, include places, parentage, and upbringing. She contemplates the powerful influence of her father on her, her Jewish heritage he never acknowledged, his gift of drive and purpose, his fear and concealment, his domination. She sees his formidable effect on her, her own revolt against his “power and arrogance.” She grapples with how he has shaped her identity, and she looks past him, to the sources that shaped him, to the choices that are her own.

With whom do you believe your lot is cast?
From where does your strength come?

I think somehow, somewhere
every poem of mine must repeat those questions

which are not the same. There is a whom, a where
that is not chosen that is given and sometimes falsely given

in the beginning we grasp whatever we can
to survive

–Adrienne Rich, “Sources”

Like Adrienne Rich, we might consider what we have grasped at “to survive.” Are there teachings we have been given, perhaps when we were very young, that we may need to cast off? Are there stories about our origins, or who our people were, that we now question?

Krama refers to the steps that have brought me to where I am today, the steps of my parents and their parents, my steps. Krama also casts forward. What steps will I take? How will I live? What are the methods I choose, personally and as a participant in society? I must know where my strength comes from. Change requires strength.

—–

“Different methods produce different changes. … To acquire a certain level in a foreign language, for example, one might take classes, individual lessons, or a correspondence course, or one might stay in the country where the language is spoken. The rate of learning differs according to the method used. The method must also suit a student’s aptitudes and temperament. For example, a gregarious person who is not so fond of books and solitude would learn more with a maximum of human contact and, therefore, might prefer to spend time with native speakers of the language.” –Bernard Bouanchaud, The Essence of Yoga, commentary on III.15

“There is a logic to the involutionary spiritual journey, just as there is in the growth of a plant from seed, to stem, to bud, to flower, to fruit. The original, pure consciousness which we trace through Patañjali’s method is the seed of transformation in oneself. Our own self is the maker of our own spiritual destiny.” –B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali, commentary on III.15

“When time-succession is seen without the comprehension of the timeless moment then the former makes no sense whatever. It appears to be a frustrating process moving in a seeming aimlessness. Rabindranath Tagore states this beautifully in his book Sadhana: ‘If we do not see the Infinite Rest, and only see Infinite Motion, then existence appears to us a monstrous evil, impetuously rushing towards an unending aimlessness.’ … It is only when the manifest drops away that the Unmanifest can be seen in all its glory. And the dropping away of the manifest is the cessation of the thinker and the thought. In this utter silence of consciousness the timeless moment conveys the secret of time; it is in this timeless moment that the meaning of the Time-sequence is comprehended.” –Rohit Mehta, Yoga, the Art of Integration, commentary on III.15

Questions:
• Do you tend to repeat or vary the sequence of practice? What are the benefits of repetition? Variation? Can you trace your own development as a yoga practitioner? What was the start like? How has the change gone?
• Do you recognize that a method that you value might not be right for another person? What is an example of that?
• With whom do you believe your lot is cast? (Who have you been walking with? Who do you choose to walk with going forward?)
• From where does your strength come?

śāntoditāvyapadeśya-dharmānupātī dharmī
śānta-udita-avyapadeśya-dharma-anupātī dharmī
“The holder of the forms (dharmī) is present in all the forms (dharma)–past, present, future.”

Throughout Patañjali’s sūtras on transformation (pariṇāma), there is a theme of threes. He describes pariṇāma in three ways (sūtras III.9-12). He delineates three axes of change: form, time, and circumstance (III.13). And in today’s sūtra,  he points out that form (dharma) has a threefold aspect: śānta (dormant, or past), udita (manifest, or present), avyapadeśya (indistinct, or future). The form of the child that I once was is my past, the woman I am now my visible present, the old one I might be yet to come.

The number three suggests change. According to yoga philosophy, the three essential forces of nature–tamas, rajas, sattva (see sūtras II.15 and II.17)–do not rest. They combine and recombine, tumble forward. The nature of nature is change.

Underlying this world of changing forms, says Patañjali here, is a substratum, the dharmī. Let us look at the two words dharma, dharmī.

The most familiar meaning of dharma is duty, purpose, goodness. One’s function in the world, the part one plays or is meant to play, is one’s dharma. It can be understood to be what supports the functioning of the world. I might ask myself, How do I help “hold” the world? In the context of today’s sūtra, dharma is the essential characteristic of a thing, its form (also related to function). Dharmī  derives from dharma plus the suffix –in.  It means that which possesses the forms (as a yogī possesses yoga). It is the holder of the forms.

Rohit Mehta says the ultimate holder of the forms is the Unmanifest, the ground of all that is manifest. Yet we can also interpret dharmī to be the template that determines forms, a blueprint of what is possible–like DNA. Bernard Bouanchaud emphasizes this meaning, and he argues that the dharmī establishes the limits of change we might expect.

Both these meanings are useful and interesting. In the sense that we are all made of the same stuff, there is untold possibility. Insofar as there is a template of forms–shaped over generations,  we are constrained.

Somatic therapist Resmaa Menakem describes how our bodies carry imprints from generations that have come before us. Epigenetics research indicates that experience affects how DNA is expressed in the cells. In this and in other ways, Menakem explains, racial trauma is passed down from mother to child. Our bodies carry in them events our ancestors endured. (See My Grandmother’s Hands, by Resmaa Menakem, pp. 39-40.)

Menakem believes that there is a settling, a healing, that is possible for white bodies as well as black bodies, and he believes that it is through this healing, this transformation of our bodies’ nervous-system patterns, that we can move toward greater truth and justice. The impression of trauma, in other words, is not unchangeable. There is a holder of forms deeper than the trauma, a template for a settled, wholesome, healthy being.

I am a white body, and I am coming to see that it is vital for me (and other white bodies) to come to a better understanding of my white past, the role that my ancestors played in enslaving fellow human beings, and my part in the perpetuation of the racially based caste system we live in today. I must know my white body–its anxieties, its shame, its constraints.

In a 1963 interview with Dr. Kenneth Clark, James Baldwin said the following:

“What white people have to do is try and find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a nigger in the first place, because I’m not a nigger. I’m a man, but if you think I’m a nigger, it means you need it. … If I’m not a nigger and you invented him–you, the white people, invented him–then you’ve got to find out why. And the future of the country depends on that, whether or not it’s able to ask that question.” –James Baldwin, public television, GBH Archives

To understand my people, to be truthful about my society, I must know my own body. I must ask Baldwin’s question.

We live in a moment of great potential change. And that potential change is charged by the Black Lives Matter movement, by climate justice activists, by young people around the world who are facing the devastation of our times with a readiness for a new way.

Dr. Kenneth Clark asks James Baldwin in that 1963 interview whether he is pessimistic or optimistic. Baldwin answers: “I can’t be a pessimist, because I am alive.”

We do not know what is possible from the substratum that shapes us. We do not know what is the limit of possibility. But we are alive. And we can choose to move toward life. A more equitable, sustainable life.

—–

“This aphorism sets out the limits of change. Every element takes on numerous forms, for example, water can be a solid (ice), liquid, or gas (steam), depending on temperature. At a given moment, a single form manifests, ice for example, when it is cold. In the same way, each of us carries a multitude of gifts within–qualities that may or may not show themselves, depending on the situation. Our capacities may be categorized in three ways: those that have been shown–the past; those that are showing–the present; and those still hidden away–the future. Our changes are limited by a basic substratum, characteristic of our inner nature, that resists all outside influence. Our personalities rest on this substratum and our influence on another stops here.” — Bernard Bouanchaud, The Essence of Yoga, commentary on III.14

“The word dharmī used here denotes the Ground or the substratum of all manifestation. Dharmī also means something that holds, or something which constitutes a dependable base. Now this Ground is obviously the Unmanifest, for, the entire manifestation rests upon it. It is the Unmanifest that permeates the whole manifestation.” –Rohit Mehta, Yoga, the Art of Integration, commentary on III.14

“All forms share the same basic particles through time. … Patañjali’s general notion of ‘substrate’ (dharmī) remains thrillingly current, especially if we emphasize the notion of forms ‘sharing’ particles through fields and field-activities–which contemporary physics points to through the recent Higgs boson discovery. The Higgs boson points to the existence of a hypothetical unified field at the heart of our matter-energy complex–a kind of syrupy substrate by which elementary particles acquire mass.” — Matthew Remski, Threads of Yoga, p. 174

Questions:
• Does your practice help you settle? To heal?
• Does practice help you be less reactive, especially to those from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, or to those who have difficult truths to tell you?
• Are you able to listen and learn about the history of violence and injustice in this country?
• Are you preparing to live into a future that looks different from today?

etena bhūtendriyeṣu dharma-lakṣaṇāvasthā-pariṇāmā vyākhyātāḥ
etena bhūta-indriyeṣu dharma-lakṣaṇa-avasthā-pariṇāmāḥ vyākhyātāḥ
“By this, the transformations of the body and the senses are explained. These transformations are significant in relation to one’s role in life, one’s age, and the circumstances one endures.”

In her prophetic science fiction novel Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler speaks of “shaping change.” Apparent stability will disintegrate, she says, and a living world will demand more of us–more attention, more patience, more adaptability.

How does yoga practice prepare us to adapt? In sūtras III.9-12, Patañjali has described the transformation of citta (consciousness/mind). He has said that the practice brings a peaceful flow to awareness (III.10), that discernment of value rises (III.11), and that equanimity and acceptance become more established (III.12).  In today’s sūtra, he emphasizes how thorough these changes are and how far they extend through the whole being.

Citta is in and of the body. Yoga as a method begins with a focus on the body. The practitioner comes to know mind through the body. Indeed, body is citta, and citta is body. By what has just been described (etena), says Patañjali, you can understand (vyākhyātāḥ) transformation of the body (bhūta, specifically, the material elements of the body) and its nervous system (indriya, the sense organs, the apparatus of our sensing, thinking, feeling).

Much traditional commentary on this sūtra reflects on the nature of change in a large, philosophical sense. The terms dharma-lakṣaṇa-avasthā are taken to refer to the three axes of change: form, time, and circumstance. In my translation, I have focused on the change in the human being, and so have translated the terms as one’s role (dharma), one’s age (lakṣaṇa), and one’s circumstance (avasthā). None of us control these three aspects of our lives. To some extent, we must submit to them. Yet yoga can support us in moving with them and through them. Yoga can help us come unstuck.

Isabel Wilkerson, in the recently published Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, has written a masterful examination of our racially constructed society. The framework of the country’s founding affects us all today. We assume hierarchical roles–based on race–and may have little awareness of how artificial this construct is. We accept inequity, injustice and cruelty because it is baked into our system.

Day after day, the curtain rises on a stage of epic proportions, one that has been running for centuries. The actors wear the costumes of their predecessors and inhabit the roles assigned to them. The people in these roles are not the characters they play, but they have played the roles long enough to incorporate the roles into their very being, to merge the assignment with their inner selves and how they are seen in the world. … We are all players on a stage that was built long before our ancestors arrived in this land. We are the latest cast in a long-running drama that premiered on this soil in the early seventeenth century. … It was in the making of the New World that Europeans became white, Africans black, and everyone else yellow, red, or brown. It was in the making of the New World that humans were set apart on the basis of what they looked like, identified solely in contrast to one another, and ranked to form a caste system based on a new concept called race. It was in the process of ranking that we were all cast into assigned roles to meet the needs of the larger production. None of us are ourselves.  –Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, pp. 40-53

The roles we have been assigned are not immutable. If we are willing to see them for what they are, we have a better shot at imagining new possibility.

Are we working, in our practices, toward flexibility and adaptability? Does the peaceful flow of practice extend out through our nervous systems to our society? Does a deep knowledge of our connectedness inform our actions? Does our yoga practice prepare us to adapt?

—–

“The range of influence exercised by this transformation is expressed in the above sūtra by bhūta and indriya. Now bhūta represents the basic structure of things, for the five elements are the very foundation of the material world. Similarly indriya or the senses represent the functional base of all activities. …. The impact of the new mind is such that the entire being of [a person] in the whole gamut of [his/her] expressional range undergoes a fundamental change.” –Rohit Mehta, Yoga, the Art of Integration, commentary on III.13

“With appearances, everything changes. The paper I am reading was once a tree and one day will be recycled or burned. My gold ring was once ore in the soil. What will it become in the hands of my great grandchildren? It is the same with our physical forms and psyches, which change constantly within the fields of our potentials. Three successive specific states have been presented [in sūtras III.9-12]: the transformations toward stability, contemplation, and one-pointedness…. Such changes appear in one’s body and in one’s relationship with the surroundings. In this way, health and physical form and possibilities evolve along with the way one perceives the world, acts, thinks, and behaves.” –Bernard Bouanchaud, The Essence of Yoga, commentary on III.13

Questions:
• Have your body, your attitudes, or your relationships changed [since beginning yoga]?
• What roles have you assumed in your lifetime? What roles have you left behind?
• How are you aging? What aspects of your aging might you pay more attention to, be more respectful of? What aspects might you shape?
• How do you respond to adversity?

tataḥ punaḥ śantoditau tulya-pratyayau cittasyaikāgratā-pariṇāmaḥ
tataḥ punaḥ śanta-uditau tulya-pratyayau cittasya-ekāgratā-pariṇāmaḥ

“Again then, the pacified thought and the rising thought become equal. That is ekāgratā transformation of citta. “

Patañjali describes a third way that citta (consciousness) transforms with yoga practice. As in sūtras III.9 and III.11, he uses the dual case to describe the movements of consciousness. Those two sūtras conjured a sense of a wave pattern, and they set up what seemed to be a kind of opposition between rising and settling thoughts (III.9), and between the wide, “all-purposed,” view and the focused one (III.11).

Here, Patañjali again uses the dual case to expresses thoughts, or pratyaya (from prati-, “towards,” + i, “to go,” the Sanskrit word suggests the always-moving nature of citta). Yet, marvelously, there is no opposition. Patañjali says that the pacified thought (śanta pratyaya) and the rising thought (udita pratyaya) are equal in the consciousness. They are tulya–equal in worth, in weight or value.

Some commentators interpret tulya to mean that the successive thoughts are literally the same–like images of an object succeeding each other in the frames of a film. These writers emphasize the continuous flow of attention as an ultimate yogic ability.

However, ekāgrata does mean more than single-pointed focus. As B.K.S. Iyengar has written, it also means “one without a second.” It is the ultimate value. The ekāgrata transformation of consciousness happens as the ultimate is experienced–in oneself, in another–the waves of old and new patterns, of many purposes versus one goal–no longer seem contradictory.

Old patterns in the consciousness are never entirely removed. The samskaras are deep within. They continue to shape citta. They make themselves felt, in various ways. We may find this baffling and frustrating: “I thought I had changed that pattern!” An old injury, an old hurt, once again seems paramount, as though we had not recovered from it at all. Bernard Bouanchaud, in his commentary on this sūtra, says that the transformation described here is equanimity: we no longer “pass judgment” on our old patterns. Matthew Remski, likewise, describes developing equanimity about the changes of life, the ongoing movement that we continue to be part of. We develop acceptance of, as it were, our own lack of transcendence.

Similarly, this “equality of thought” leads us to see that others’ perspectives are critical to the whole, even that are own various interests, some perhaps petty and symbolic only to us, are worthy of care. This, says Rohit Mehta, is discovering “silence in the midst of noise.” We can hold a sense of purpose and a wide view as well.

The Bhagavad Gītā describes a transformation in which one comes to “see the self in all beings” and “all beings in the self.” There is something that stands in us, charges us with life and strength, and we are all soaked through with it. We live in it:

sarvabhūtastham ātmānām

sarvabhūtāni cātmani 

īkṣate yogayuktātmā

sarvatra samadarśanaḥ

The self connected in yoga sees the self standing in all beings and sees that all beings exist in the self–everywhere, she sees this equality.

—Bhagavad Gītā, VI.29

The self (ātman) can be understood to be the agra–the ultimate value. It is the web of life. It is what holds that web. Once one sees this, Krishna says, one sees it everywhere. We are all connected.

—–

“The above sūtra speaks of śāntoditau tulya-pratyaya. It means that the pratyaya or the content of the mind remains tulya or unchanged whether there is the subsiding of distractions or emergence of distractions. A mind that is undistracted experiences silence in the noise itself. The silence that comes from the cessation of noise is superficial; it is only the silence that is discovered in the midst of noise that has depth; in fact, such silence has enormous depth…. Communication from the base of silence never fails.” –Rohit Mehta, Yoga, the Art of Integration, p. 301, 303

“As integration deepens, the stresses of consciousness–maintaining a self-sufficient story along with an identity to tell it–resolve into equanimity, so that the changes of life, things rising and dissipating, are not only tolerated, but expected, and perhaps even quietly enjoyed. Like watching waves on the sea.” –Matthew Remski, Threads of Yoga, p. 165

“Following contemplation is transformation to one-pointedness, in which one experiences with equanimity both mental peace and the return to a less coherent former state…. This aphorism describes a state in which we no longer pass judgment, but fully accept our own reality, whatever it may be. At this point, success, or the lack of it, no longer directly influences the direction we choose. That does not mean it is an immobile state free of questioning, but a state that perpetually evolves toward a stable course.” –Bernard Bouanchaud, The Essence of Yoga, commentary on III.12

Questions:
• Have you experienced silence in the midst of noise? What resulted from that?
• What does it mean to you to communicate from the best part of yourself?
• How do you respond to success and failure? What disturbs your equanimity more?
• Is your practice bringing you to more acceptance? of old patterns in yourself? of other people?