S2E2 Gita & Yoga Sutra

This episode focuses on the intersection of the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, which is a key text for modern practitioners. We compare and contrast the aims and means of the two texts by way of the three great yogas, karma, jnana, and bhakti, which show up in new forms in the Yoga Sutra as the elements of Kriya Yoga, known as tapas, svadhyaya, and Ishvarapranidhana. Contrasts center around the place of devotion and surrender in the two texts.

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Episode Transcript

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Welcome everyone. Let's begin by giving a quick summary again of the last episode for those who might just be joining us, last time we talked about the Mahabharata, the great epic of India, Maha meaning great, and Bharata being a traditional name for India, the Bhagavad Gita is the central chapter in the Mahabharata. And if we're looking to find key ideas in history that point us in the direction of the practice of modern yoga, I think we really have to include the Bhagavad Gita. We talked about the Gita being a great synthesis of the two primary paths that preceded it, one, the Vedic path of sacrifice, and two, the Upanishads path of renunciation. What we're doing this time is focusing on the Gita still, but we are focusing on its intersection with the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, which is also a pretty important source of ideas for modern yoga and the practice of it. How do we begin to talk about this intersection between the two texts? Let's look back at the dates of composition of each and then I'll tell you an anecdote that most of us my age have or learned in the beginning, sitting in circle with teachers and so on and so forth, about the the way the yoga sutra was compiled. In a way you can take the relationship between the Gita and the yoga sutra as a case of concurrent emergence. So remember that Dr Wendy Doniger gives dates for the composition of the Gita that cover about 600 years, 300 BCE to 300 CE during all that time, the material that eventually becomes the Gita that we know, pretty much the Gita that we know is circulating around and it's coming together, coagulating, if you will, the composition of the yoga sutra is estimated to be about 150 years into that cycle. So that would put it, let's see at 150 BCE. So the sutra is coming together during the time that Doniger gives that the Gita is coming together also. So the ideas are kind of all mixed together and concurrent. The story we were told about the yoga sutra, one of the stories about the nature of it as a text in relation to the other stuff that's out there is that there is not anything new in the yoga sutra, and that's because potentially teacher supposedly sent him out into the culture, the surrounding cultures, to see what was being done that was called Yoga, And to try to understand that, and then to come back and compile that in a particular way. And the yoga sutra is said to be, you know, a composition of that nature. It's, it's kind of like what was going on at the time. And what do we want to know about what people think about yoga. How does all that relate? And here it is, in a way that you can practice it now. Like I said, that's an anecdotal story, because I've seen a lot of talk about the historical composition of the sutra and ideas like some of the commentators added things later, and stuff like that. So it kind of has a history like that too. But I do think it's safe to say that this surrounding context of Gita like material is something that the yoga sutra could have drawn from. And today we're kind of looking at some parallels between the two, or some correlations between the two, to see how that idea shakes out. Now, if there's a large body or a quantity of information that's central to the Gita that's circulating around during that 600 years, where it's composition is said to come together, we we need to kind of see that and talk a. Out that you could certainly say that the Gita is about devotion, but I think it's just as safe to say that the some of the most central content is the content on what they call the three yogas. That's Yana yoga, Karma Yoga and bhakti yoga, Yana being the yoga of knowledge, yoga of insight, Karma Yoga being the yoga of selfless service, and bhakti yoga being the yoga of devotion. So I want to talk about these, these two ways. The first way is, I want to show how they're the the sequence of the teaching that Arjuna receives. So he's being taught yoga, for sure. And he's taught all three of these, and he's taught them in kind of a particular sequence. And so we can certainly see them as types of yoga, and we'll look at them that way after I talk about them as the sequence of the teaching that he receives, I'll look at them then as as sort of individual yogas that have become traditions and how they have have developed since then a little bit so Arjuna gets taught yoga to help him after he falls down in the middle of the battlefield in his chariot because of the despair he feels for seeing what's about to happen. So if that's the case, then Yana is the first kind of yoga in a sense, that he's taught. And I think that's true, because he gets taught the the illusory nature of his egohood of his own volition. He gets taught you're not the doer Krishna tells him that everything you do is because of your nature, and even the wise act that way. And so he gets to learn, oh, okay, I thought I was doing it all, but it's God doing it all. It's ultimately the something much greater than me that's doing it. And that's the beginning of his emerging self knowledge, because he's pointed to the self after this happens. And the self is the locus, of course, of true identity. It's the Atman. And so he needs to understand that that's who he really is. Therefore his action can be transformed, sort of out of this space of clarity. So after these elements of Jnana show up in his teaching, Karma Yoga shows up, and he's taught about renouncing the fruits of his actions. And after he learns the the the essence of that, he begins to move towards something called wisdom. And he learns about the nature of making an offering, that it comes from a certain kind of action. And this action has to be the action of renouncing the fruits. Krishna tells him that those are those fruits of actions are mine, and so they're not yours. And after that teaching, he, of course, gets a teaching on meditation too. We're going to talk about that a little bit. But then he gets taught about bhakti, what it means to to ultimately, spontaneously, have his attention be absorbed in Krishna, and what love really is like, what devotion is like, and all the things that might count as devotion. So these three flavors of yoga, knowledge, insight, action, certain kind, a special kind of action and heart. These make up the order of the teaching, what we would call the karma of the teaching to Arjuna. I think that's really important to see, because it shows that those ideas were floating in that mix in those 600 years before we go on and start making correlations to the yoga sutra, I want to talk about Yana yoga, Karma Yoga and bhakti yoga in a little bit more detail, because they are important. They deserve that. That kind of focus we've already seen that Yana Yoga is the yoga of knowledge. It's also called the yoga of Self Realization. This is why I mentioned that part of this Yana piece, this knowledge piece of Arjuna, is overall yoga that leads to devotion is is his attention being pointed to the self, to the Atman. He gets told that the Self cannot be pierced with a spear. It cannot be burned with fire, it cannot be made wet with water. It cannot be dried with. Wind. And this is this knowledge is points him to who he actually is, and it begins to alleviate some of his fear. So the yoga self realization is, is a lot. It reminds me a lot of the Upanishads giving a lot of weight to to realizing something. Remember, the example from the Upanishads is realizing that this snake that was in the corner of the room is not a snake. When the light comes on, you see that it's a rope, and the weight of that, seeing clearly that knowledge of how it actually is is enough to free one from birth and death. And so knowing that if I'm a practitioner of Yana, I can know that I'm free and feel that and act that way when I know who I am at the deepest level and throughout time, this particular flavor of yoga has drawn certain what you might say, types of humans, humans who have a predilection for, say, internal realization, for insight, for what someone would would call knowledge. You can also see it as a necessary part of an overall system, like it is for Arjuna but over time, it's become a particular place where certain of us have gathered. Then there's Karma Yoga. You know that? That's the yoga of action. It's also called the yoga of selfless service. You know it means being surrendered to the fruits of the action. Christian makes this very clear in chapter two, sloka 47 he says, your right is to the action alone, never to its fruits at any time. Never should the fruits of action be your motive. Never let there be attachment to inaction. And so we have a right to the action alone. This is a powerful reorientation of our motive. It'll be a revelation of our motive if we take on the task, you know, of karma yoga, will come face to face with what it is that we desire as a result of these actions, and if it's if that desire emerges in control of the way it turns out, then, remember, the Gita says that all action like that binds the world into repetitive karma. I have heard teachers talk about karma yoga in an interesting way, when they talk about object relations. That's a term that probably comes from psychology somewhere. And it's a, it's a some, a developmental marker, in a sense of a, you know, an integrated personality. And when your object relations are messed up, you you think you own things that you don't. You project things in a sense, that are not there. You need constant praise in a certain way there. There are things that show that you don't have the right relationship with the objects in the world. And that ownership one is a big one. So folks who who relate to the things in the world that way, very often, are given karma yoga as a way to to immediately change the feeling tone of their relations to others, because they now begin to serve those others inherently, rather than seeing the things around them as means for their own, say, power and status or something like that, just just you know more pleasure. And even when that's really innocent, it's really pervasive in a certain sense. And so Karma Yoga is it teaches right relationship, according to the to the map, that's here, certain types of people do, well, want to be in that kind of service with folks. And sometimes, again, it's part of an integral system that's bigger than it itself. And then there's bhakti, or devotion. Bhakti is really multi faceted. It's really really polyvalent. I have a list of words here that have come up in in researches that all have some flavor of bhakti, devotion, of course, attachment, participation, fondness for homage, faith, love, devotion, worship and purity. So generally, Bhakti is devotion. To a personal God. Doctor Doniger says that bhakti was somewhat of a revolution in the in the spiritual imaginary of India when it when it happened, I'll throw out a guess, sixth, seventh century. It's it. This stuff sort of starts to happen. Has a particular relationship with Islam being there, according to Dr Doniger, and it signals an increase in sort of access to ritual and spiritual treasures, an increase in access just for the individual alone. So bhakti is a little bit upstart and rebellious in the sense that it might recruit across classes, the way that it involved women, things that were that were anti tradition in a certain way. And so we get a good example of that. This, this personal focus in chapter 12 of the Gita, when Krishna says to Arjuna, keep your mind on me alone. Your intellect on me. Thus you shall dwell in me hereafter. There is no doubt of this. So the mind here, keep your mind on me. Manas the senses. Keep those trained toward God, keep your intellect on me. That's booty, that's the higher mind and the intuition. Keep that also trained on the divine. And you shall dwell. And so a dwelling is a place where it's easy to stay, a place where we belong, a place where we are when our highest intellectual faculties and our senses agree that the object of meditation is the divine, then the heart is participating in a certain way, and you Get and you get bhakti, and it has a personal flavor. Remember that? So the question would be, do we find material like this in the yoga sutra? Do we find these flavors? And I think also not just do we find the flavors, but do we find them given the significance that they're given, for instance, in the Gita? And I think we do so in order to see that we talk about the second chapter of the yoga sutra, which is called sadhana pada. So sadnapada is the chapter on practice, and this is the chapter on kriya yoga. And that's important to know, because kriya means action. It has kind of two, two valences. One is action, and that immediately starts sounding like the teaching in the Gita. I mean, how much teaching on action is in the Gita? What's right action? What's wrong action, what's non action? Okay? What's being itself? Turns out to be an action. All the sacrifices that have ever been done and ever will be done, turns out they're composed of action. So there's a massive amount of teaching. And here the second chapter of the sutra is about action, and it's about a particular kind of action. So this is not really about things that just happen, that kind of happening or action. This is about sadhana. This is about practice, and it's supposed to be purifying in some sense. The sutra says what Kriya Yoga is for, actually, in the second sutra, the second chapter, I think, and it says that it's for Samadhi, and it's also for diminishing, reducing, paralyzing, the the effects of something called klesha. That means affliction. So we're trying to bring about, or invite an ecstatic state here Samadhi. That's why we're doing kriya yoga. That's why we're doing this purifying action. But also we're hoping that this action will have a character that can reach deep inside the place where these afflictions are. So these afflictions are the things that drive rebirth. That would be why they're the things that shape the nature of desire. One is called ignorance. One is called mindness, or this false sense of ownership. Asmita. One is called lust. Raga. One is called like disgust. Divesha, and one is fear of death, of hinovesha. This stuff is this. Stuff that drives our attention and our preference and so on and so forth, and it also drives rebirth. You the Gita would call it the place where desire sort of comes from. And Kriya Yoga is designed to get there and to modify that somehow so that we're not liable for rebirth. And action doesn't proceed that way. So Kriya Yoga has three parts. One is tapas, one is FAU, and one is Ishvara, pranidhana. Let's go through these, one at a time. Let me make some connections. So tapas, we've already seen, mainly in the Upanishad in our discussion of the Upanishads internalization of the sacrifice and the fire that is internalized, and that fire being fed with pranayama, the values that are internal, that run the physiology, but also provide the air for the fire so that it can eat and the food that it eats, of course, in that ceremony is our ignorance or or Karma that's left over from lifetimes of ignorant action. So there's a heat involved here. Spadia, yeah, is self study. Spa being the self knowledge of the self is sometimes what is said spa DIA is there's a tradition in which it was considered to be the chanting of sacred texts like the Veda or or something else that the teacher would give and that's an interesting discussion about what that means and why we probably took it as sort of like the individual self knowledge. And there is a sense of it like that too. It's a sense that this would be knowledge of the Atman in the yoga sutra. It would be called purusha, ultimately. And so getting to know that is what is in addition to this heat. And then there's Ishvara pranidhana. That's devotion and surrender. Ishvara is a deity of sorts. He's called the guru of the ancients. I shouldn't say he. That's a habit, really. It. Ishvara is neuter. I think neither he nor she, and this is the one that we are to focus on and think of and practice. But it classically speaking as it comes out of Sankhya. It's not theistic in the way, for instance, that that Krishna is in the in the Gita. But nonetheless, pranayama means to kind of align oneself with this source surrender to and so the action that's going to penetrate deeply and purify me at the level of ignorance and false ownership and so on, it has to burn and it has to know the self, and then it's surrendered, in a sense, to the source. Now I think we can see something of the flavor of the three great yogas here. Tapas would be karma yoga. It would be the giving up of attachment to fruit. Sometimes tapas is translated as asceticism, and I think that fits perfectly with what Karma Yoga is, renouncing attachment to the fruits and keeping responsibility for the action that we take. Renouncing those fruits means that we don't get rewarded in the same way, the same way, taking away, for instance, food, in ascetic fasting, in celibacy, or periods of celibacy, a heat, a certain kind of heat arises because there's a there's a repetitive thing that's being frustrated and not and not fulfilled. And so I really see Karma Yoga being here. Not that it's the same thing exactly, but I see the need for this heat that comes from religious austerity. Then there's Fadia, yeah, that obviously corresponds to Yana yoga, right? Knowledge of the self. And then, of course, something like bhakti, Ishvara, pranidhana, devotion, sometimes that's translated that way, right in surrender. And so Arjuna needs the three yogas, all of them he gets taught, all of them, in order to eventually reach devotion and the state that allows him to act and be congruent with his action, so that his senses and his intuition are trained on what is important and right. And I don't find it strange that the Kriya Yoga, the yoga that's supposed to penetrate deeply and purify us all. Contains all three of these basic flavors. Now, another place that the Gita and the yoga sutra intersect is in the idea of meditation, or placing great importance on meditation. Edwin Bryant has a great translation of the yoga sutra. He's one of the folks that figures strongly in this history that we're presenting. He says this quote, potentially type yoga is outlined throughout this entire sixth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, albeit subsumed under devotion to Krishna. So what he says is that people have seen the similarity between what is recommended in chapter six and what potentially is talking about when he's talking about concentration and meditation. There's a subtle difference here. We'll get to that at the end. So I want to just focus on what's happening in the sixth chapter in meditation and make these correlations with potentially direct Radha Krishna translates the title of the sixth chapter as true yoga, renunciation and action are one. And so in slocus 11 through 15, meditation is described, and it's described as an aspect of this renunciation in action. And so if that's Karma Yoga also, and Yona yoga and bhakti yoga, meditation is a piece of what it means to act wisely in the world, just like those. Here are the verses he should set in a clean place, his firm seat, neither too high nor too low, covered with sacred grass, a deerskin cloth, one over the other, there, taking his place on the seat, making his mind one pointed, and controlling his thought and sense. Let him practice yoga for the purification of the soul, holding the body, head and neck erect and still looking fixedly at the tip of the nose, without looking around, without allowing his eyes to wander, serene and fearless, firm in the vow of celibacy, subdued in mind, let him sit, harmonized. His mind turned to me and intent on me alone, the yogin of subdued mind, ever keeping himself thus harmonized, attains to peace, the supreme Nirvana which abides in Me. So what are the parallels here? The first parallel is that the Gita calls this Diana yoga, or the yoga of meditation. Those of you who know anything about Ashtanga Yoga, Patanjali system, know that Diana is the seventh limb, and it's generally taken to mean meditation, also sometimes concentration. In the yoga sutra, concentration and meditation and actually Samadhi, also are so close together that potentially groups them under us a heading called samyama, that some people translate as perfect discipline. So once what he's talking about as being concentration starts happening. Meditation is so close. So the meaning of the word is is very close. It has a little bit of concentration, a little bit of meditation. Second this section from the Gita emphasizes Asana when it says he should set in a clean place, his firm seat, that firm seat, that word is Asana in the Gita, it's neither too high nor too low. It's covered with a sacred grat, with sacred grass, maybe moonja grass, a deer skin cloth, one set over the other. So this place is firm and stable. It's also comfortable. It's got a little grass a deer skin. That idea really smacks of patanjalis idea of Asana. That's the third limb in the Ashtanga system. And when I was looking through all this stuff and going back over all of it, I I saw that s Ramachandran, the great scholar and translator, actually refers to the yoga sutra in his commentary on sloka 13, which we just read. And he draws a clear parallel between the two texts he actually uses, potentially to make his point about this. This verse. Talking about or employing the a similar idea of Asana, he says, quote potentially points out that posture should be steady, firm and pleasing so as to aid concentration. So third, because the all meditation is meditation on an object. Attention is directed somewhere, and it's held there in some way. I know that there are several ways, but there's something that's focused on in a way, or something that's returned to, or something that's created in a way, in a visualization. So there's a firmness or a steadiness in the attention, and what you would call meditation, it says here in 11 making his mind one pointed one pointedness is actually a definition, right of yoga. It's a definition of concentration. But this one pointedness is about Krishna, and because it has this theistic flavor, Ishvara, pranidhana, which, remember, is a part of Kriya Yoga. We've mentioned it already, that's also a flavor here of this meditation. It has this dedication, surrender and devotion aspect to God. It's crucial for us to understand what's meant in the Gita by meditation, but they both share an emphasis, in a way, on this idea of Ishvara pranayama, surrendering or aligning oneself with the ultimate this idea of Ishvara pranayama being one of the correlates is a is an interesting place to end up, because each text has this idea in common, but they don't place each one doesn't place the same emphasis on it. Let me see if I can flesh this out for you. Here's what Edwin Bryant says. Let's let him do it first. So with regard to Isvara pranidhana, or devotion to God, that becomes the essential teaching of the entire Gita and of all the yoga systems prescribed in it, rather than the more discreet ingredient promoted in Patanjali. So whatever you want to say about devotion to God or aligning with God, that's the whole point in the Gita and so that's the point of Yana yoga of knowledge. That's the point of karma yoga of selfless service, and that's the point of bhakti yoga. And so it's kind of all about Ishvara pranidhana, but in the yoga sutra, Kriya Yoga, in the second chapter is is a piece of a larger project. And this larger project is called V yoga, vi yoga, the yoga of separation. And what that refers to is the Sankhya metaphysics, where Purusha or the soul or the person and property nature, those two things are separate. And the reason there's a problem is because of Sam yoga, they are identified with one another, or they're in close proximity. I think, is what the what the terms suggest, but in no way are they joined, and they need to be discerned. That's what V yoga is about. Vi means discernment and or separation, or to make a sejura and and so in the yoga sutra each for prana Hana is is really just an aspect of this overall revelation about the the non relationship between Purusha and property. So in addition to so many parallels, we also see that they differ over the use of a similar of exactly the same term. You know, we like to get as quickly as possible to to pointing directly to something about modern practice from the text that we examine and the historical ideas we're going over. So what I'm going to tell you now is, is I'm going to look at a particular sloka from chapter four, sloka 29 and this is a sloka about making an offering in chapter four, when Arjuna is told that many things are sacrificed, many things are offered, and there's a long list of things. Some offer the senses into the fires of the intellect, some offer their study, some offer fasting and so on. All of those offerings are considered to be acceptable, and. They're welcome. But he goes on to say that the greatest offering is the wisdom offering, or the wisdom sacrifice. So amongst all these offerings, we have the breath. And I think it's clear here that this points toward Hatha. This points toward how the modern world understands the relationship of the breath. Quote, some offer, inhalation into exhalation, and others, exhalation into inhalation, restraining the path of inhalation and exhalation, intent on control of the vital breath. That's Winthrop Sargent's translation. Here's one from Radha Krishna. Others, again, who are devoted to breath control, having restrained the paths of prana, the incoming breath and apana, the outgoing breath, they pour, as sacrifice, prana into apana and apana into prana. So that language is is very Vedic in the sense that it's this, this breath thing that's going on is seen as the ovation, the oblation, sorry, because it's poured into the activity. So this is obviously a reference to something like pranayama and also kriya and Banda, if, if we see, first of all, that we offer the inhalation into the exhalation, that means the inhale is placed inside the exhale somehow, and then vice versa, the exhale into the inhale. And then we see that that is that happens in relation to restraining the path of inhale. That means holding the breath in a certain way and restraining the path of exhale, holding the breath in a certain way. We have all of the elements we need for not only the Pranayamas that are generally done, but also the kriyas that are done, almost all of which involve like full exhalations and holding the breath after the exhalation and performing something Like the Mueller maneuver to some degree. So this sloka seems to be something that later generations mind and patterned activity on. I don't want to totally get rid of the idea that this stuff had been going on for a really, really long time, because the Gita actually says that this teaching that Krishna gives, He tells Arjuna that this teaching is super ancient and it's it's not something that is new. But while we admit that this stuff may have been going on for a really, really long time, it's very clear that what happens in the traditions that follow are patterned on these same ideas of basic religious austerity now with a highly developed technical expression of suspension of the breath and retention of the breath and placing one breath inside the other breath and so on. And this is a religious austerity that that's too juicy to leave out. So let's make a summary. We have talked about the Gita and the sutra coming together during overlapping periods in history, and that the made the statement that the intersection between the two of them is a good way to see crucial things about the way modern yoga is practiced. We've seen some pretty robust correlations between the three yogas in the Gita and potentially concept of Kriya Yoga as the essence, right of sadhana, the essence of if I'm going to take an action and it's going to be practice, it needs to be kriya. We've also seen correlations around the importance given to meditation, and even correlations between the specific elements of the meditations that are described down to the seat the asana down to the tip of the nose, or a drishti, for instance, being seen sensory control, concentration. It's called Diana in both places. And then finally, we saw that some of the all, one of the offerings in chapter four seems to contain most of the elements of really technical pranayama and bandha practice that shows up in later Hatha. Last we pointed out a difference about the way that the two texts. I understand the concept of each of our prana Hana, it's crucial to both of them, but not as crucial, for instance, to the yoga sutra. Remember that everything in the Gita is devotion and surrender to God. And devotion, or surrender to Ishvara, is a is a secondary thing that's part of Kriya Yoga. Once the purification of Kriya Yoga has happened and the the klesha has been stunned into submission, or some say eradicated, some say attenuated. Once that happens, then we're no longer liable for rebirth, and that means we see the distinction between Purusha and property. So it Isvara pranidhana is not the central thing in the yoga sutra, although it is crucial. So I hope these ideas, this this investigation of these intersections has been helpful or will prove helpful. We very much appreciate you listening. God bless you, and we'll see you next time.