Thread by @shrikanth_krish

On "Yoga day", one must reflect on our popular conception of Yoga

How removed is it from the Yoga defined in Indian classical texts?

How does modern postural Yoga relate to the Yoga of Krishna? Or that of Patanjali?

Also how different is the Yoga of Gita from that of Patanjali

These are inconvenient questions

And some of the answers can be inconvenient too.

In the world we live in, Yoga primarily connotes Asanas and prANAyAma

While both Asana and PrANAyAma are age-old terms, their end-goal today is very different from what it was in Patanjali's day

Let's face it

Yoga today is essentially not a quest for "Stilling the mind"

(Yogas-citta-vrtti-nirodhah) (Patanjali Yoga Sutra #1.2)

Nor is it a quest to seek equanimity

"samatvaḿ yoga ucyate" (Bhagavad Gita # 2.48)

Regardless of whether your school is that of Ramdev, or Iyengar, or Sivananda, the primary goal of practicing Yoga Asanas and prANAyAma today is to seek better health outcomes, and to a lesser extent, peace of mind

Period

Sure, the schools may pay lip service to Patanjali and Krishna. They may prescribe one of the fat Patanjali commentaries to you as weekend reading

But if you get right down to it, Yoga today seeks to compete with medicine, as being of therapeutic value

This is very different from the objectives stated in the Gita -

Seeking equanimity of the mind, in order to be able to handle success and failure alike

Or for that matter the sterner objective of Patanjali -

Stilling senses and consciousness (Chitta-Vrtti- Nirodha)

This therapeutic aspect to Yoga no doubt was present in earlier times

But the therapeutic value was always subservient to the larger purpose of this philosophical school

Sure, it's nice to do Asanas for "better health". But that's hardly the goal.

Let's now take a closer look at the two primary Yoga texts -

The Bhagavad Gita

and

Patanjali Yoga sutras

Both of which offer contrasting views on what Yoga is. Nevertheless both are pretty remote from the therapeutic, utilitarian Yoga of our times

The Bhagavad Gita as we are all aware is a very ancient text. Most likely dating to the middle of the 1st millennium BCE

As per most historians, it clearly predates the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali by a good 500 years if not more

And in it Krishna presents a view on Yoga that is worldly, embracing "action" and "karma"

While the Gita arguably took shape in an environment where asceticism was prevalent (circa 700-300BCE), it presents a form of Yoga that does not entail asceticism or renunciation

In Chapter 2, verse 50, Krishna defines Yoga as "dexterity in action"

Yogah Karmasu Kaushalam

बुद्धियुक्तो जहातीह उभे सुकृतदुष्कृते |
तस्माद्योगाय युज्यस्व योग: कर्मसु कौशलम् || 50||

Shri Ramanuja in his 11th century commentary on the verse says this

(srimatham.org)

Clearly the traditional commentators thought of Yoga as skill in action.

And the objective of Yoga was very much to devote oneself to "disinterested" action so as to gain mental equipoise

A couple of verses previously Krishna is even more unequivocal in defining Yoga as a quest for equanimity

योगस्थ: कुरु कर्माणि सङ्गं त्यक्त्वा धनञ्जय |
सिद्ध्यसिद्ध्यो: समो भूत्वा समत्वं योग उच्यते || 48||

Ramanuja in his commentary states (srimatham.org)

What strikes us here is that Gita is not presenting Yoga as a set of disciplines to still the mind, as we will encounter in Patanjali several centuries later

Nor is it positioning Yoga as a tool for material and physical ends (as is the case today)

No.

Yoga in the Gita primarily implies a quest for equanimity by engaging in dispassionate performance of duties with skill

Period

How does this change in Patanjali - whose Sutras clearly postdate the Gita by a few centuries?

Patanjalian Yoga no doubt is somewhat different in its emphasis from the Yoga of the Gita

Nevertheless it is not divorced from it. But v v closely related

Patanjali in his second sutra itself says -

योगश्चित्तवृत्तिनिरोधः॥२॥

Unlike Gita, the Sutras are harder to translate, and require more commentary

But roughly speaking this translates to -

"Yoga is the stilling of the changing states of the mind"

So the goal here is not just equanimity as envisioned in the Gita, but complete control of the senses. Nirodah.

A daunting task, but one that is accomplished through the stern discipline of Yoga

Now what is that? Patanjali elaborates with his eight limbs later in his work

In the 28th sutra of his second chapter he says -

योगाङ्गानुष्ठानादशुद्धिक्षये ज्ञानदीप्तिराविवेकख्यातेः॥२८॥

Translation:
Upn the destruction of impurities as a result of the practice of the "Limbs of Yoga", the lamp of knowledge arises, and culminates in Viveka (discernment)

Then he goes on to mention the Eight limbs in the next sutra - 2.29

यमनियमासनप्राणायामप्रत्याहारधारणाध्यानसमाधयोऽष्टावङ्गानि॥२९॥

Yama
Niyama
Asana
Pranayama
Pratyahara
Dharana
Dhyana
Samadhi

Here Yama and Niyama refers to the ethical don'ts and do's

Āsana refers to postures

Prāṇāyāma refers to breath control

Pratyāhāra to restraining the senses within one's awareness

Dhāraṇā - concentration / focus

Dhyāna - contemplation / meditation

And finally
Samādhi

So Āsana and Prāṇāyāma here are not merely therapeutic tools for better health, but stepping stones on the way to Samādhi

The ultimate objective is not better health. Or even peace of mind

But the stilling of the mind (Chitta Vrtti Nirodah)

Today Āsana/Prāṇāyāma have been "abstracted" out of the larger 8-limb framework, and taught in isolation

Not as means to the end of stilling mind (as desired by Patanjali) or seeking mental equipoise (as desired by Krishna), but just as tools for better physical well being

To my mind this is unfortunate, and represents a slight perversion of what Yoga actually is, as represented in the source texts

Sure, many later Tantric texts may have contributed to this somewhat innovative understanding of Asana and Pranayama. I am not sure.

But it is definitely far far removed from the Yoga of the Gita or that of the Yoga Sutras

The development of Yoga primarily as a postural discipline that drives better health emerged in late 19th / early 20th centuries when the traditions of Yoga interacted with Western disciplines of gymnastics and physical exercise

Nowhere was this interaction more fruitful than in the environs of Mysore palace.

The region that produced the great TT Krishnamacharya, widely regarded as one of the key figures in the development of postural Yoga

The disciples of Krishnamacharya, be it Pattabhi Jois, BKS Iyengar, Indra Devi, continued to push this more worldly Yoga with material ends, while paying lip-service to Gita and Yoga Sutras

This shift in emphasis has continued to this day as observed in the discourses of Ramdev

I am not necessarily bemoaning this.

It is a fruitful innovation - a result of much interaction with the West, and also something that draws heavily from medieval traditions of Hatha Yoga and Tantra

But it is not necessarily showing any kind of fidelity to the classical Yoga darshana as expounded in the Sutras or in the Gita

The great statesman C Rajagopalachari (Rajaji) in 1968, in his typically conservative way, bemoaned the rise of Postural Yoga in an article - reproduced below -

swarajyamag.com/from-the-archi…

Here's the concluding extract -

I wouldn't go as far as Rajaji does in condescending towards Postural Yoga

It has its merits

But it is worthwhile to take a step back and rediscover what Yoga really ought to mean and rescue it from those who wish to market it as a panacea for all bodily ills