DECODING THE YOGASUTRA, THE INDIAN MANUAL FOR A LASER-FOCUSED MIND | Roopa Pai | TEDxSIBMBengaluru

Happened to listen to the talk by roopa pai , shared by Kalyan Gullapalli on this topic in his source post https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/kalyangullapalli_decoding-the-yogasutra-the-indian-manual-activity-7263745805063254016-JL-P?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

Felt very inspired to share with you all. Listen to the source if you have 18 min time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsKa0DGNMjA

For those who want a quick read, have used Transcriber Turboscript.AI for text content (any errors please apologize).

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Mindfulness, neuro-linguistic programming, the power of now, these are phrases that we are all familiar with. Many of us perhaps also believe that the ideas contained in these phrases are somehow new age, modern, maybe even western. Well, prepare to be surprised, for all of these ideas and dozens more dazzling ideas have already been explored, laid bare, analyzed in a little ancient Indian text written 2000 years ago called the Yoga Sutra.

So what is the Yoga Sutra? More specifically, what is yoga? It depends on who you ask. What yoga is not, or at least exclusively not, is what many of us in the 21st century actually believe it is. A fitness practice involving lots of physical postures designed to reduce your stress and keep your body limber.

So if yoga is not that, what is it? Let's go back in history for some context. The word yoga first appears in the Upanishads, a sprawling body of philosophical literature composed in India between 2700 and 2000 years ago. The Upanishads changed the way in which Indians engaged with the universe.

The composers of the Upanishads, some of the brightest and most sophisticated minds of their day, actually shifted the focus from the dazzling external universe to the chaotic internal universe, believing that this was the only universe that mattered. They shifted the focus from capricious super beings with the power to control the cosmos and human lives to human beings themselves, empowered human beings who used their gifts of reason and logic to fashion their own destinies and to make sense of the world in their own way. When they did that, everything changed.

Now, the Yoga Sutra, about 2000 years ago, came up as a result of all these different ideas expressed in the Upanishads and were put together in a very compact text by a sage that we know very little about apart from his name, Maharishi Patanjali. The foundational book, the foundational text of the school of yoga philosophy that he compiled is known as the Yoga Sutra. Unlike the sprawling text that went before it, like the Mahabharata or some of the larger Upanishads, the Yoga Sutra, as I've said before, is a very compact text.

Only about 195 sutras or aphorisms, many of which are not more than six words long. Now, because the Yoga Sutra is so succinct, it's also very difficult to comprehend for the lay reader and if not for the reams and reams of wise commentary left behind for us by later scholars, many of Patanjali's dazzling insights into the human psyche would have been lost to humanity forever and that would have been a real pity. So what is the Yoga Sutra about? Well, it is about many things, but basically it's about stilling the mind.

If we asked Patanjali, what is yoga? Like I said, you would get different answers if you asked different people, but if you asked Patanjali, what is yoga? He has already anticipated the question and gives us the answer in the very second sutra. But what we are more interested in is the very first sutra because Patanjali wants to convey to us the urgency of setting off on our yoga journey and heading to the top, to the summit of the yoga mountain, where he informs us, awaits us, what awaits us at the top of the yoga mountain? Absolute boundless freedom. How do we get there? Using his eight-step process, the eight-limbed process that he puts together in the Yoga Sutra called Ashtanga.

Now we can imagine it in our own minds for our own convenience as an eight-rung ladder that will help us summit the yoga mountain. And why should we get there? Because what awaits us there, as I said, is boundless freedom. What kind of freedom? Freedom from what? Freedom from negativity, freedom from expectations, others' expectations, freedom from anxiety, fear, freedom from social conditioning, freedom, the kind of joyous liberation that those of us waiting at the base of the yoga mountain cannot even begin to imagine.

And Patanjali tells us that we should get on this journey now. We are talking about the power of now. The Yoga Sutra has it in the very first word.

Patanjali opens the Yoga Sutra with the word Athah, now, to convey to us the urgency. Stop the doubts, he says, do away with the excuses and the procrastination and the delays and the overthinking and the fear of getting out of your comfort zone. Begin on that yoga journey now, which is all very well.

And we can now go on to the second sutra, where he gives us the answer to what is yoga. According to Patanjali, yoga is nothing but the stilling of the movements of the mind. The stilling of the movements of the mind.

Achieve the stillness, he says, and you can see reflected in the calm surface of your mind lake an accurate reflection of who you really are. And what are you? A glorious, complete, whole, powerful being, infinite in your ability for compassion and for intelligence, a luminous spark of a cosmic energy, able to achieve anything that you put your mind to. But ignore my advice and let your mind lake be roiled by thought waves and emotion waves and what you will see as a reflection of yourself in that muddy churning is a distorted reflection.

What's worse, you will begin to believe that that reflection is what you truly are, a helpless, flailing, powerless thing tossed about by the raging tempest of waves that you cannot control. And you say to Maharishi Patanjali, well, that's good enough incentive, let's be on our way. But seriously Maharishi, stilling the mind, isn't there, is there anything more difficult than that? Is it really possible to get to a point where we are able to still our minds? Of course it's difficult, says Patanjali, but I have done a deep dive into the human psyche and I can assure you that using a few simple but powerful techniques that I have put together, it is actually possible to do so.

Here I have put them all together in this little text called the Yoga Sutra and you can take it from here. This, my friends, is my ultimate handbook, India's ultimate handbook of mind control. Here then, for your benefit, are eight tips and pointers from the Yoga Sutra so that you may yourself begin your journey to a calm mind and absolute freedom.

Tip number one, are you bored? Are you looking for a new hobby? Why not pick this one, watching your thoughts? It's our thoughts, thousands and thousands of them that dart in and out of our minds like quicksilver in every given moment that actually whip up the waves on our calm mind lakes. We react to each thought wave with emotion, which churns up the mud at the bottom of the mind lake, making it impossible for us to see and leading us to make terrible, ill-advised decisions that we soon regret. What if we could step back from that mind lake and just watch the thought waves rise in it? If we did that for long enough, we would realize that just like any other wave, a thought wave rises and then harmlessly falls away.

By not reacting with emotion to every thought wave that arises in our mind, we are already leading ourselves to a much calmer mind, which, of course, is the point of yoga. Tip number two, once you've gotten good at watching your thoughts, classify your thoughts and then toss out the ones that are not useful. Oh, come on, Maharishi, you say, there are hundreds of different kinds of thoughts that pass through our heads in any given instant.

How is it possible for us to classify our thoughts? Aha, says Maharishi, that's where you're wrong. There are only five kinds of thoughts that you experience in any given moment. The first kind is right knowledge, pramana.

How do I know that a thought I'm experiencing is right knowledge? Ask yourself three questions. The first, is this something that comes out of my own personal experience? The second, is this information something I have deduced using my logic? The third question, is this something that comes to me from a trusted source? If you can say yes to one or all three of those questions, it is possibly right knowledge. Retain those thoughts.

The second kind of thought that we experience is viparyaya, wrong knowledge. How do you figure out if anything is wrong knowledge? By taking it through the exact three questions that I have mentioned before. What is the best illustration of wrong knowledge? Unverified WhatsApp forwards.

Toss them out. The third kind of thought that we experience is rooted in imagination, in the future, vikalpa. And most of these thoughts are our own unsubstantiated fears and anxieties about the future.

We cannot control the future. This is something that hasn't even happened yet, but our mind legs are completely churned up thinking such thoughts. Completely not useful, toss them out.

The fourth kind of thought that we experience, according to Patanjali, is rooted in the past, in memory, smriti. Now most of those thoughts have to do with a regret or longing or yearning for something that was and cannot be again, or a kind of guilt or remorse for what might have been. Again, these events have already happened.

There's nothing you can do to change them. They are completely unhelpful, toss them out. The fifth kind of thought that we experience is what we experience in deep sleep, nidra, which is no thought at all.

Don't worry about it. Once you have classified your thoughts, toss out the ones that are unhelpful and see how quickly, how instantly you have reduced the number of thoughts in your head. Now, tip number three, as prep for your yoga journey, drink deeply of this four-ingredient tonic for mental calm.

What are those four vital ingredients? The first is maitri, or friendship with good people. The more time you spend with people who are equanimous, harmonious, cheerful, optimistic, large-hearted, open-minded, their positivity will rub off on you and lead to a calm mind. What is the second ingredient? Karuna, or compassion.

Cultivate compassion, not disdain, for those who are bitter, negative, angry, sad, for compassion illuminates the mind, helping you to see, while disdain darkens it. Now, the third ingredient of this wonderful tonic is mudita, vicarious joy. Take joy in the joys of others.

That will leave no space for mind-churning emotions like jealousy, envy, pettiness. The fourth ingredient is upeksha, or dispassion. If you can brush off the mean and hurtful things people say and do to you without investing any emotion in it, that is a priceless quality for a calm mind.

Practice it relentlessly. Are we now ready to begin on our yoga journey? Wait. Tip number four.

Check your backpack, says Patanjali, for shraddha, faith, vivya, courage, and tapah, commitment. Now, no one said the journey up the yoga mountain was going to be easy, but you can make it better for yourself by first asking yourself these essential questions before you begin. What are those questions? Do you trust the process? Do you have faith in it? Do you have the discipline to persist and persevere day after exhausting day despite all kinds of reverses? Have you mustered the courage to go on this difficult journey, to confront the monsters that lie in wait for you along the way, but not only those monsters, but also the demons that lurk within? Do you have the kind of laser-focused concentration that will never let you forget why you began on this journey in the first place? If you can say a resounding yes to all these questions, you are ready for any journey in life, not just the yoga journey.

Now that we're all set, let's move to the first rung of Patanjali's Ashtanga ladder. Tip number five. On this rung, on the first rung of Patanjali's ladder, there are five qualities that you must cultivate before you can move on to the next.

What is the first one? Satya, truthfulness. Speak the truth. Not because that's the good and moral thing to do, which it is.

Not because it will earn you a place in heaven, because who knows, but simply because it leads to a calmer mind. Second quality to cultivate, ahimsa, non-violence, in word, thought, and deed. Not just towards others, but also towards yourself.

Third, asteya, non-stealing. Do not steal what is somebody else's. Not their things, not their words, not their work, not their dignity, not their reputation.

Fourth, brahmacharya, restraint. Hold back. Be moderate in the things that you do, for balance is the most important thing in the quest for a calmer mind.

Fifth, aparigraha, non-covetousness. Do not hanker after things that are somebody else's that you do not have. Fine.

Mastered all these five qualities? Now we are all set for the second rung of Patanjali's Ashtanga Ladder, and for tip number six. Now, what are the qualities you have to master on this rung before you can go to the third? Well, apart from discipline, self-enquiry, and a firm belief that the universe has got your back, always a very useful thing to have, you have to cultivate, says Patanjali, two things, shaucha, purity, and santosha, contentment. What kind of purity? Purity of body, purity of mind, in which you throw out negativity and your fears and anxieties using tools that Patanjali provides for meditation and mindfulness, purity of speech, purity of intent, and even purity of your surroundings, not just your home, but also your street, your community, and so on.

Now we come to santosha, contentment, which is a much harder thing to cultivate. But how do you cultivate contentment? Quite easy, says Patanjali. Acknowledge first what are the people, who are the people you can never be, what are the things that you cannot have, what are the things that you cannot change and control.

Once you have acknowledged this, accept all those things gracefully. Instead of hankering after what you do not have, practice gratitude for the things you do have. Gratitude leads to contentment, which automatically leads to a calmer mind.

Right. All set. All set for the third rung of Patanjali's ladder, which is posture, asana.

Now asana, finally we come across that word asana, and it's only mentioned three times in the Yoga Sutra, and Patanjali defines it as a posture that is comfortable and stable. Only if the posture is comfortable and stable, then can you forget about your body and go towards the mind, which is really what you're trying to control. Rung number four, breath control, pranayama.

The good Maharishi lays great emphasis on the breath, because as we all know, the breath is very closely intertwined with our emotions. But in Yoga, prana just doesn't mean the physical breath, it also means the vital life breath. If the vital life breath is coursing strongly through our energy channels, then we can be the best versions of ourselves that we can be, and that can happen only when our energy channels are not blocked with obstacles we ourselves put in its way, like negativity and fear.

Right, we've finished the eight tips, and there are still four more rungs of the ladder to go on. The fifth rung, Patanjali says, is about withdrawal, withdrawal of the senses from the material world, so that we can ascend into the next three rungs, which are all about going inwards, into deeper and deeper meditation. It all sounds very intimidating, but don't worry about it, says Patanjali.

I assure you that anyone, just anyone can get to the top of the yoga mountain by practicing, practicing, practicing the things that I've already told you about, with great dedication, great effort, and with absolutely no cheat days for year after year after year. Now, he doesn't make it easy, does he? But the golden carrot of incentive that he dangles before us is so enticing that all of us, even the most pessimistic among us, is quite ready to sling on that backpack and begin that yoga journey. And what is that incentive? Control your minds, my young friends, says Patanjali, his voice booming down the millennia, for they who control their minds control the universe.

Thank you.

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