Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali is the most influential single text in the history of yoga. Compiled around 400 CE, possibly from older oral traditions, it consists of 196 short aphorisms (sutras) that systematise the entire philosophy and practice of yoga into a coherent framework. Patanjali did not invent yoga — practices existed long before him — but he gave yoga its first systematic philosophical statement, and it remains authoritative today.

The Opening Definition

The second sutra is the most often quoted: Yogas chitta vritti nirodhah — Yoga is the cessation of the modifications of the mind. This is a remarkable definition. Patanjali defines yoga not by any practice but by a state: the state in which the endless fluctuations of mental activity come to rest. Everything that follows in the text is in service of this definition.

The third sutra continues: Tada drashtuh svarupe avasthanam — Then the seer abides in its own nature. When the mind stills, what remains is the pure witnessing awareness that was always there. This is the whole of Patanjali in two sutras.

The Five Vrittis

Patanjali identifies five categories of mental modifications (vrittis) that yoga aims to still:

1. Pramana — correct knowledge, derived from perception, inference, or testimony.
2. Viparyaya — incorrect knowledge, taking something to be what it is not.
3. Vikalpa — conceptual knowledge not grounded in any actual object (verbal fantasy, abstraction).
4. Nidra — sleep, in which the mind is absorbed in tamas.
5. Smriti — memory, the recall of past experience.

All five can be either klishta (causing suffering) or aklishta (not causing suffering). The meditator learns to observe these modifications without being carried away by them.

The Eight Limbs (Ashtanga Yoga)

In the second chapter, Patanjali presents the Eightfold Path (Ashtanga) as the method for achieving the state described in the first chapter:

1. Yama — ethical restraints: non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing, continence, non-possessiveness.
2. Niyama — personal disciplines: purity, contentment, austerity, self-study, surrender to the divine.
3. Asana — stable and comfortable seat (posture).
4. Pranayama — expansion of prana through breath regulation.
5. Pratyahara — withdrawal of the senses from their objects.
6. Dharana — concentration: binding the mind to one object.
7. Dhyana — meditation: unbroken flow of attention toward the object of concentration.
8. Samadhi — absorption: the object of meditation alone shines, as if the meditator has disappeared.

The Five Kleshas

Patanjali also identifies the five root causes of suffering (kleshas): Avidya (ignorance of one’s true nature), Asmita (identification with the ego), Raga (attachment to pleasure), Dvesha (aversion to pain), and Abhinivesha (clinging to life, fear of death). All psychological suffering, he says, can ultimately be traced to one or more of these roots, and all yoga practice ultimately works on removing them.

Studying the Sutras

The Yoga Sutras are studied intensively in all Medhya Laya teacher training programs. Students work through the text sutra by sutra, exploring both the Sanskrit terminology and the practical implications. The traditional commentary by Vyasa and modern commentaries by Swami Hariharananda Aranya and B.K.S. Iyengar are recommended reading. The text rewards study across an entire lifetime — each year of practice reveals new dimensions in aphorisms that initially seemed straightforward.