Yoga means 'harnessing.' To practice Yoga is first to harness one's instincts, second to harness one's mind, and third to harness one's ego. With these elements of individuality properly joined together, they become a team of workhorses that can bring us ever closer to union with the soul. The greatest and most enduring guide to these efforts is the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. My translation of the Yoga Sutras makes a couple of assumptions and has several specific goals. I assume that you have or will be reading other translations and studying their commentary. I recommend the translations of Leggett, Woods, Iyengar and Taimni (for full bibliography go to
more
info).
My goals are to provide the reader unfamiliar with Sanskrit an opportunity to experience the original thoughts as though reading it in the original language. Another goal is to present each verse as a 'koan' (to borrow a term) worthy of meditation in its own right. And finally I hope to stimulate you into conjuring your own understanding and experience of this most durable of texts on meditation.
"The
Yoga Sutra"
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Here are the
writings included so far in this section:
The
Yoga Sutras: This is a complete translation of the Yoga Sutras of Patañjali.
I see this work as a collection of "koans" for meditation more than as a
rigid set of "rules to live by," and have translated each verse accordingly.
There
are three main aspects of this work:
1) A word-by-word translation from the Sanskrit, with derivations of each word and a concordance of every occurrence of every word in the Sutras.
2) My own translations of each Sutra, with special attention to the word-order and the multivalent meanings of many Sanskrit terms.
3) A selection of other good translations of each verse - so that the student may benefit from the full range of meanings implicit in each of these great sayings.