Yoga Ācāra

This is a teaching of Bhīshma in the Mahābhārata, in the Śānti Parva, Mokshadharma Parva, Chapter 274. Bhīshma explains the practical means of yoga (yoga, the discipline of joining the mind with the highest truth). He shows how to find and overcome the inner obstacles that stop a practitioner from reaching moksha (freedom from rebirth).

The teaching has four parts. It names the means for overcoming obstacles, the five defects of yoga, and the eight sādhanas (practices). It then describes how the layers of the mind settle one into the next, until only pure awareness is left. It ends with the teaching that the path to moksha is one.

The twenty-three means to overcome obstacles

Bhīshma’s teaching begins with three main obstacles: anger (krodha), desire (kāma) and sleep or torpor (nidrā, which includes laziness and dullness). For each he gives means of overcoming it.

Against anger:

  • Kshamā (forbearance, patience): the power to receive a provocation without answering it in anger.
  • The understanding that anger destroys the one who holds it more than the one it is aimed at.

Against desire:

  • Saṃkalpa-varjana: giving up the plans that are driven by desire, and not acting from the planning mind that schemes for future pleasure.
  • Sattva-sevana: living with, cultivating and keeping company with what is sāttvika (pure, bright, turned toward truth). A sāttvika surrounding slowly loosens the hold of desire.

Against sleep and torpor:

  • Apramāda: watchfulness, the opposite of carelessness. It means staying awake in the inner sense.
  • Bhaya: the right use of the awareness that time passes and death is certain. It is used as urgency, not as a fear that paralyses.

Other means are also given. They include prāṇāyāma (control of the breath, which purifies and steadies the prāṇamaya layer, the layer of life-breath). They also include dhairya (steadiness), applied to rāja and kshobha (agitation and disturbance), to dvesha (dislike) and to kāma (attachment). With steadiness each of these can be met calmly and not with a reaction.

The chapter gives twenty-three means in all. They reach from the coarsest obstacles, of the body and of behaviour, to the finest, those of the mind.

The five defects of yoga

Bhīshma names five yoga-doshas (defects of yoga). These are inner conditions that stop yoga from bearing fruit even when the outer practice is kept up.

  1. Kāma: desire for the objects of the senses. The mind keeps turning toward vishayas (sense objects) even during formal practice.
  2. Krodha: anger. It is the reaction that breaks the stillness needed for dhyāna (meditation) and viveka (discernment).
  3. Lobha: greed, the grasping mind that is never satisfied. Even when the coarse desires are held back, a fine greed for experiences, states or attainments can stay.
  4. Bhaya: fear. Awareness shrinks around a self that feels threatened, and this stops the open inquiry that yoga needs.
  5. Nidrā: sleep or torpor. It is the pull of tamas (dullness) toward unconsciousness, and it can spread through the hours of meditation as well as real sleep.

All five can exist together with a correct outer form of practice. A practitioner who has overcome all five in their coarse forms must go on watching for their fine forms.

The eight sādhanas

Bhīshma lists eight basic yoga sādhanas. These are the positive practices that support the removal of the defects.

  1. Dhyāna: meditation, the central practice.
  2. Adhyayana: study of the sacred texts, which keeps the mind on the highest truth through svādhyāya (self-study).
  3. Dāna: giving. Letting go of what one owns purifies the grasping mind.
  4. Satya: truthfulness in speech, thought and action. It is the base of all the other practices.
  5. Hrī: modesty, a right sense of shame. It keeps a person from wrong even when no one else is watching.
  6. Ārjava: straightforwardness. The inner state and the outer behaviour agree.
  7. Kshamā: forbearance. It is listed here again as a practice in its own right, and not only as a means against anger.
  8. Śauca and āhāra-śuddhi: purity of body and purity of food. The state of the mind is touched by what a person eats and by the cleanliness of the body.

With these goes indriya-saṃyama, the restraint of the senses. All the other practices work within it. Together they form the whole practical frame of yoga. They cover every layer of the person: the body (śauca, āhāra-śuddhi), speech (satya, ārjava), action (dāna, kshamā) and mind (dhyāna, hrī).

The settling of the mind: indriya, manas, buddhi, jñāna

The chapter also describes how the layers of the mind are laya (dissolved, settled) one after another as yoga deepens.

  1. Indriya (the senses). First the senses are drawn back from their objects. This is pratyāhāra, withdrawal of the senses, in the yoga system. The senses stop pulling awareness outward.
  2. Manas (the mind that handles what the senses bring). When the senses are still, this mind grows quiet too. Its chatter, its linking of one thing to another and its reactions settle.
  3. Buddhi (intelligence, the power of discernment). When manas is quiet, buddhi becomes clear and steady. It can now do its own work, telling ātman from anātman (what is not the self) and nitya (lasting) from anitya (passing), without being bent.
  4. Jñāna (pure awareness, the twenty-fifth principle). When even the discerning work of buddhi is no longer needed, because discernment has finished its work, what is left is pure jñāna: the ātman as it is, with none of the earlier layers laid over it.

The path to moksha is one

The chapter ends with the teaching that the moksha-mārga (path to moksha) is one and not many. The Mokshadharma Parva describes many practices and many schools. Still, there is a single direction in which moksha lies. Whether a practice stresses jñāna, karma (action), bhakti (devotion) or yoga, all of them lead to the same settling of the finite into the infinite.

Sources

  • Mahābhārata, Śānti Parva, Mokshadharma Parva, Chapter 274