Nirodhaḥ Yoga Blog
![]() Photo by mahamudul hasan on Unsplash Love is always the answer. - Sivakami Sonia Sumar This blog post is part of our Yoga Sutras series. Want to start at the beginning? Sutra 1.3 - तदा द्रष्टुः स्वरूपेऽवस्थानम् - Tada Drastuh Svarupe Avasthanam Then the Seer Abides in Its Own Nature Now we come to the result of practicing yoga. Abiding in the spirit’s nature. What is the spirit’s nature? What is the spirit? The spirit animates the body and mind. It uses the body and mind to participate in nature. “The spirit is like a constant light. It has no name. It does not feel pain. It has no likes or dislikes. Right now within you, there is an exuberant spirit taking delight in watching the world. Whenever you are completely involved in what you are doing, you experience the creative and timeless nature of the spirit.” (Bhakt, 7) We experience the spirit’s nature when our mind is calm. Our spirit’s nature is love. This Sutra really is as simple as that! Yoga Sutra 1.3 shows what our mind does when it is calm. What our mind does when it isn’t calm is explained in Sutras 1.4 - 1.11. When the mind isn’t calm, the spirit identifies itself with the mind’s thoughts. The mind’s capacity is twofold. It can identify with the spirit or it can identify with the mind’s inherent “thinking faculty,” in other words consciousness or the object of our consciousness. If the spirit identifies with the vacillations of its mind, the spirit “forgets his grandeur.” (Iyengar, 53) These vacillations can be either painful or pleasing. You could imagine that your mind is a wheel and the spokes of this wheel are pain, pleasure, awareness, and unawareness. The vacillations of our mind are turning the wheel. Although the wheel is an integrated whole, each of the spokes rises and falls, rises and falls, leading us to experience the fluctuations of both our conscious and subconscious minds. If the wheel is at rest, the mind experiences stillness, and ceases to identify with the vrittis or vacillations of our mind. (Iyengar, 55) There are five states of mind these vacillations create.
This summer we’ll discuss the Sutras that explain how to actually control the movement of our monkey mind, so that we can experience the true nature of our spirit, love. << PREVIOUS BLOG POST IN YOGA SUTRA SERIES NEXT BLOG POST IN YOGA SUTRA SERIES >> Can you think of examples of each of these states of mind? How do you feel when you experience them?
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