Equanimity: Peace of Mind in Action

Photo by Samuel Austin on Unsplash

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Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.
- Carl Jung

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This blog post is part of our Yoga Sutras series.  
​Want to start at the beginning?
Yoga Sutra 4.7
र्माशुक्लाकृष्णं योगिनस्त्रिविधमितरेषाम् 
karmāśuklākṛṣṇaṃ yoginas trividham itareṣām
The actions of the Yogi are non-white and non-black; but in the case of others are threefold (white, black and gray).

Yoga Sutra 4.7 is a final punctuation to the thought we were exploring last month in Yoga Sutras 4.4 - 4.6.  When the mind of a yogi has been conditioned through meditation, the ego is slowly dissolved.  Thoughts created within this meditative, ego-less state are not subject to karma.

As we saw through the progression of the third pada of The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, by effort in concentration one develops the ability to meditate.  Through meditation, the seeker can learn to live their life in a deepening state of continual meditation and complete equanimity.  At least this is the goal.

As one learns to live their life in a state of equanimity - which means a state without attachments or aversions and therefore, without ego - all of one's thoughts and therefore, words and actions become ego-less and so untinted by previous impressions (samskaras) made in our mind.  BKS Iyengar compares this state of mind to a kite “released in the sky, without a string to bring it back to earth.” (254)  The kite is affected by the wind and may soar, divert its course or even crash but is not directing the action like a person (the ego) would holding the string.

In another comparison, Swami Satchidananda likens a Yogi to a knife.  “If a knife cuts a fruit you may say it is good, and if it cuts a throat it is bad. But to the knife, a cut is a cut.” (255)

Before reaching this stage, our thoughts, words and actions are all tinted by our samskaras.  Our samskaras may cause us to do good, bad or more likely, some mixture of the two.

Think of situations in which someone does something that benefits themselves or their close ones but creates pain and suffering elsewhere.  I’ve certainly had experiences where I try to do good.  But because I had some expectation of a particular result of this “good” action that didn’t come to fruition, I felt disappointed and hurt. 

Attachment ultimately always lets us down by creating more pain and suffering.  You can read more about this on our blog post on the kleshas and Yoga Sutra 2.3.

Interestingly, Iyengar also draws comparisons to the gunas in his commentary on Sutra 4.7.  We may be sattvic, tamasic or those two may mix, creating rajasic thoughts, words and deeds.  

In contrast, the Yogi’s actions are not even sattvic (calm).  They transcend duality and are instead colorless. (Iyengar, 253)

Sattva and tamas are two ends of a spectrum - though it's almost like a horseshoe. Sattva (calmness) and tamas (sleepiness) appear similar. 
Rajas is like a middle state. The seeker might be very active and trying to attain liberation and at least is not completely unaware and immobile. However, rajas is not the ideal state because it can stir up a lot of mental activity and therefore the craving/aversion dichotomy. 

Rajas is tamas (ignorance, inaction, pure potential) transformed by awareness and desire (action, activity, kleshas) of the sattvic state. 

Sattva is the goal because that way we learn to overcome the kleshas. But the Yogic state is even beyond sattva because there are no samskaras (even about sattva) to color one's thoughts.

This thought is echoed by the Shoshoni Yoga Retreat’s The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.  The translation here for Yoga Sutra 4.7 is “a true Yogi’s actions are neutral because they are untainted by the ego.  The actions of others can be sattvic, rajasic or tamasic.” (46)

I believe that Patanjali is ultimately saying that a Yogi's actions are beyond the gunas, which are the forces of nature, and therefore beyond nature’s cycle of cause and effect Patanjali refers to as karma.

One final point about Sutra 4.7 that I find important.  The direct translation of the text only describes actions as white, black, mixed and the implied “colorless” actions.  However, several commentaries I am using have made the comparison of white actions = good and black actions = bad.

This kind of interpretation comes from the caste system, by which Patanjali was likely affected.  But I find this comparison troubling because of the implicit racism of equating white to good and black to bad.  In fact, Patanjali doesn't even make this distinction!

We may as well say some actions are red, some are blue and some are various shades of purple.  That is the essence of this Sutra.  Ultimately, it is unnecessary to call certain colors good or bad because Patanjali is cautioning us that all tinted actions - whatever their color - are undesirable because even “good” actions can lead to more suffering if we still struggle with the kleshas.

In the next post, we'll see how Patanjali applies this idea of good, bad and mixed actions to the way we perceive the world through the gunas and our karma.

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Have you ever tried to do something nice that backfired?  What did you expect to happen?  What actually happened?  How did that feel?  If you did the same action but hadn’t any expectations of the result, would you feel any different about the result?