Showing posts with label Eight Limbs of Yoga. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eight Limbs of Yoga. Show all posts

Yoga Sutras of Patanjali in Today's World

 Written centuries BC, Yoga Sutras by Patanjali is known as the greatest scriptural text from the yogic Indian philosophy. The characteristics of these "threads" are intensely brief, mentioning succinctly and often precisely, important points or techniques. Initially these wisdoms were oral, were made clear and construed by remarks from a teacher directing the student.

This meditative obedience of liberation is known as Raja - Royal yoga or the yoga of the eight limbs that are described below:

1. Restraint: nonviolence, not lying, not stealing, not lusting, and nonattachment
2. Observances: cleanliness, contentment, discipline, self-study, and surrender to the Supreme God
3. Posture or physical exercises
4. Breath control
5. Sublimation or withdrawal from the senses
6. Attention
7. Concentration
8. Meditation

Yoga can explained as Union, yoga is also an effort to educate the yogi, the one who practices yoga and how to attain union with the Supreme consciousness we call god. Yoga trains us to overcome the thought that our 'self' identity is a false impression and our soul is the real us.

The aim of these sutras is not to show how to do the asanas correctly or the best way to sit for a meditation. It was presumed that the students would have already been taught by their teacher the essentials and the basics of the meditativetechniques and asanas before practicing the principles.

These sutras are organized in four parts (padas).

1. Samadhi Pada I: Contemplation and Meditation
2. Sadhana Pada II: The Steps to Union
3. Vibhuti Pada III: Union Achieved and Its Results
4. Kaivalya Pada IV: Illumination and Freedom

The Yoga Sutra gives a most outstanding cohort for those who would use meditation (dhyana) and other additional yoga practices as a realistic spiritual passage to rouse and self liberate. Yoga Sutras can be utilized like any instructional book, or industry manual ensuring that the genuine educator within is to be woken up through their own practice. Some translators recommend reading a little then practicing it, the read more and practice further and that way the practice can be improved. So to train our beliefs we must experience yoga and the only way to reveal its true nature is to practice it. Our beliefs must match to "truth", not vice versa.

An open heart divulges Yoga Sutras as the experiential workbook, it is also misunderstood as viewpoint of a religious book that could be used to study and intellect or common mind. The complete universe as well as the true character of mind is the laboratory. Finding the knowledge and the instrument of knowledge is finding the field of knowing and experiencing that is freedom in this very life. Wisdom is trans-rational and trans-conceptual by character; it also is larger than any synthetic notion, technology, or created thought wave. To completely map the gyred spirals of the holographic universe a human intellect and its five senses are inadequate, but yet Patanjali everywhere authenticates that this Holographic Reality can be closely experienced should we let go of our prejudice and predetermined outlooks and false impressions.

According to Patanjali, insight as well as the intellect (buddhi) comes from a native source-less wisdom of the universal infinite mind and that is the ever available clear light inhabiting behind the awareness also called as the param purusha. It is always available but only if we choose to look for it.Patanjali says that when the common linear thinking ends and disbands, the meditation starts to bear its fruitful results; and conclusion of the meditation might as well be Samadhi (complete incorporation). Yoga practice here should be the verb, the performance and the process. An unconditioned natural true self should be the objectless goal. Therefore an ultimate liberty can be attained through the uncultivated samadhi. Only practice can help you succeed in yoga. Just by reading about it in a book and quoting from it or talking about it isn't going to help. Having said that this book still holds a significant value when it is used in combination with yoga practice.

Thus Patanjali reiterates the warning against the uselessness of advancing meditation via the intellect; instead advises that the fruits of yoga are to be experienced such as attaining trans-conceptual wisdom. Thereforeliberation becomes reliant upon throwing away conception structures and belief systems. The initial indications of achievement in the experience ofmeditation are the releasing of such boundaries and immediately realizing them as obstructions.

To understand the sutras in a deeper level one has to practicemeditation , this will permit one to look at the sutras from their own perception and meditative experience. So to accumulate the real and permanent advantage one has to reflect on the sutras in a much deeper occurrence and living wisdom of the impartial heart. The aim is not to learn theYoga Sutras as a conclusion in itself or as an outer entity that can be understood, but to utilize it as a combined effort to the practices, and that merged in an authentically poised manner induces wisdom andliberation which patents in our day by day lives.