Vive la Difference: Yoga vs. Buddhism

by Nina

Lotus by Heidi Santschi of Heidi Santschi Garden Design

Did you know that a significant portion of the fourth chapter in the Yoga Sutras is an argument against Buddhism? That’s because Buddhism was already popular during the time the Yoga Sutras was composed so Patanjali was apparently feeling a bit defensive. And although there is much in common between Classical Yoga and Buddhism (which you may have noticed!), there are significant differences. The most significant of these differences is the whole premise of the yoga of the Yoga Sutras regarding what causes human suffering and what the purpose of liberation actually is.

“in Buddhism there is no autonomous atman (purusa) self that can be separated from its interdependence with prakriti. Not only is there no purusa, but clinging to notions of such an entity is a primary cause of ignorance rather than enlightenment. The two views are thus diametrically opposed—the very goal of yoga and human existence in the Yoga school is the very cause of bondage and ignorance in Buddhism.” —Edwin Bryant

I will try to explain this quote in—hopefully—simpler English. In our posts Spiritual Ignorance and Richard Rosen Clarifies the Meaning of Avidya (Ignorance) we discussed the concept of ignorance (avidya) as the cause of human suffering. The ignorance in question was specifically spiritual ignorance of the difference between the soul and the body-mind, with the soul (also called the “self” or atman) being eternal, pure, and joyful, and the body-mind (also called the “non-self”) being ephemeral, impure, and sorrowful. In Classical Yoga, understanding this difference is essential to achieving liberation. In Buddhism, however, clinging to this very idea that there is a separate soul (atman) itself the cause of bondage and ignorance. So, the whole aim of the practices described in the Yoga Sutras is, to Buddhism, based on a concept that will only perpetuate suffering and bondage.

Throughout the fourth chapter of the Yoga Sutras, Patajanjali makes several arguments directed toward the Buddhist point of view not just by saying what his yogic point of view is but also by stating pointedly what it is not:

“IV.9 Nor is the mind self-illuminating, because of its nature as the object of perception” —translated by Edwin Bryant

Here Pajanjali is arguing directly against a basic Buddhist concept by saying, no, you are wrong about the mind being self-aware. Edwin Bryant’s commentary on this sutra begins by explaining more about this particular difference between Classical Yoga and Buddhism:

“In this sutra, Patanjali rejects the position, identified by the commentators as being that of the Vainsika Buddhists, that the mind is itself self-aware or self-illuminating, svabhasa, like fire, which does not need any outside agent to illuminate itself. In this view, accordingly, there is no need to posit the existence of an outside source of awareness in the form of purusa—the mind itself is held to be self-aware, the source of awareness.” —Edwin Bryant

Bryant then goes on at some length detailing the yogic epistemological arguments about why that Buddhist point of view must be false. For a yoga nerd like me, it’s all very interesting, though a bit challenging to read. But because you’re not all yoga nerds like me—yes, I do know it—I realized some of you may feel completely overwhelmed by this or not even interested. And you might even be wondering, does it really all have to be so dry and complicated?

The problem is, according to Bryant, the only way these two differing points of view on the nature of the human mind and soul can engage in a debate about what is true and what is false is through these very types of nerdy, abstract logical arguments. Because when experienced yogis and Buddhists compare their lived experiences with meditation and liberation—which is when the answers to these questions about the human mind and soul (atman, according to yogis) actually become clear—their reported experiences don’t match up. 

“After all, where Hindu yogis might claim that they or their spiritual masters have perceived the existence of the atman in the state of samadhi, Buddhist meditators might equally claim that they have perceived precisely the nonexistence of any such atman in the state ultimate to Buddhists, nirvana, each laying claim to direct perception.” —Edwin Bryant

Well, that’s pretty interesting. You can meditate all your life and achieve the state of samadhi or nirvana and the clarity you experience during that state about the essence of human nature can be the opposite of some other person’s clarity. So, in the end, all us yoga practitioners who are trying to understand the Yoga Sutras can do is either take a deep dive into some challenging philosophical arguments and see how convinced we are by them, simply take the arguments put forth in it on faith. And some sincere and knowledgeable yoga teachers I know have even just gone ahead and rejected the basic premise of the Yoga Sutras. 

In fact, this post was prompted by some very interesting private email correspondence I had with an Iyengar yoga teacher who was starting to wonder whether the Yoga Sutras was outdated and who said they much preferred the work of Pema Chodron, who is a Buddhist nun. I did say to my correspondent that I knew some yoga teachers who were also Buddhists and that it is possible to be both and yoga practitioner and a Buddhist, but that it is important to understand there are some significant philosophical differences.

Now that I’ve finished reading Edwin Bryant’s The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, I’ve learned that even in Patanjali’s time everyone was having it out about those differences!

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For information about Nina's upcoming book signings and other activities, see Nina's Workshops, Book Signings, and Books.

Co-opting Patanjali

by Nina

Patanjali Store in New Delhi*

Just last night I finished reading Edwin Bryant’s extraordinary book The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Among the many, many things I learned from reading this work is that for those following the yogic path outlined by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras (the path of meditative absorption), it is clear that any attachment to earthly pleasures, accomplishments, or even yogic powers, will prevent you from achieving liberation, which is the goal of yoga.

Then I woke up this morning to this article in the New York Times The Billionaire Yogi Behind Modi’s Rise. It’s not exactly news to me that it’s not only the west that co-opts yoga for commercial purposes. But somehow I still stumbled over this quote, with its reference to Patanjali:

“One by one, the dignitaries rose to recount Ramdev’s extraordinary career: how he brought physical fitness to the Indian middle class with his mass yoga camps and television empire; how he built his medicine-and-consumer-goods company, Patanjali Ayurved, into a multibillion-dollar colossus.”

I just found it particularly sad that Patanjali’s name was being used to market commercial products in India, some of which turn out to be quite questionable. 

“Over the years, this way of fending off criticism has become a pattern; nonetheless, Patanjali has faced at least half a dozen legal actions over its products. In October 2016, the food and drug administration of Haryana State found Patanjali’s cow ghee (clarified butter) to be ‘substandard and unsafe.’ Last April, the Indian military stopped selling a popular Patanjali juice to soldiers after a government agency tested samples and found them ‘unfit for consumption.’"

Patanjali Juice? Ah, well. I decided to look on the bright side and to find it encouraging that I—who is often accused by friends of being overly skeptical and/or pessimistic—still have the capacity to be disillusioned. Why it was the use of the name Patanjali by an Indian business empire that was disillusioning for me is something for me to think about. Now here is a link to the link to the article The Billionaire Yogi Behind Modi’s Rise, which is quite long, in case you want to read it for yourself. It has quite a lot about Indian politics in it, which is something was somewhat aware of, but is always worth learning more about. 


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For information about Nina's upcoming book signings and other activities, see Nina's Workshops, Book Signings, and Books.

Metamorphosis

by Jivana

Photo by Sarit Z Rogers

The monarch butterfly spends two weeks as a caterpillar before metamorphosing into a butterfly. Then it lives as little as two more short, yet magical, weeks in an ethereal dance before it dies. Amazingly, the monarch’s annual migration across all of North America is achieved over the lifespan of four generations. One monarch can only make a portion of the journey and it’s up to the next generations to complete it.

Are our lives much different? In the U.S., women can expect to live to the age of 81 and men to 76. In the grand scheme of things, those eight decades are the blink of an eye and are as fleeting as the life of the monarch. These few precious decades hardly seem adequate to figure out what we’re here to do. Is reincarnation, a foundational concept of yoga philosophy, our version of the monarch’s migration journey? Will future me’s complete my soul’s work? 

Personally, I feel like putting all my chips on reincarnation is a risky gamble. Seems like I need to make the most of the time I have here rather than bargaining on future lives which I know nothing about. So, I should do my best to figure out what I’m here to do. As a long-time yoga practitioner it seems like enlightenment (samadhi) is supposed to be my goal, but that seems like such an impossible feat. 

In his Yoga Sutra, Patanjali describes how to achieve the state of samadhi, which he simply refers to as the state of yoga. He goes on to describe at least six distinct levels of samadhi. Reading through them recently I began to feel disheartened, and to doubt myself and my ability. I know I’ve learned so much about myself through yoga, but without working towards samadhi am I just fooling myself?

As I practice longer I am noticing a few important things. I’m more aware of a split within my own mind: the part of me that’s thinking and the Witness or inner consciousness observing it all. Patanjali would describe this separation as the dance of purusha (spirit) and prakriti (nature). I often think of prakriti as the natural world around us, but it’s not so simple. Every part of our human birth, including our mind and emotions, is prakriti. The only thing that is purusha is atman, the soul. 

Most of the time I’m talking to myself, aren’t you? But who is talking and who is listening? The mind, part of prakriti, is talking to purusha, the Witness, as Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra explains. If so, then my stream of consciousness is some kind of endless prayer—a continual flow of sensory experiences, self-criticism, and internal fights with everyone who bothers me. It’s embarrassing to think of all this mind-stuff as prayer, and I sure hope God isn’t listening when someone makes me mad!

I usually think of yoga as union–bringing something together. But, really, it’s more about separation. Using my discriminating discernment to tease out purusha, my Essence, from the complexity of nature. So much of my time is spent in the rituals of daily life: eating, sleeping, etc. But, as I go through all these activities, part of me is separate, simply watching the outer activity. This witness seems unaffected by these outward experiences. It’s always there, listening and watching. In my meditation practice I try to create an opportunity for that inner witness, the eternal Listener, to move into the foreground for a brief moment.

This shift, allowing the Witness to move from background to foreground, is unnervingly powerful, and yet I’ve noticed that sometimes I avoid it on purpose. Some days it feels easier to focus on what I’m going to eat for lunch or to allow my mind to be lost in the endless blur of other people’s lives in my Facebook feed. But in the end, I know for sure that I’m supposed to find a way to bring that Witness into the foreground more and more. Perhaps that is the experience of samadhi?

When I allow that shift to happen the experience is beyond words. It feels like my sense of self steps forward in a bold way that quiets the noise in my head. My normal experience of the world changes. The feeling that I’m seeing through my eyes shifts to an experience of my eyes. It’s not always so peaceful or some spiritual cliché. In fact, it forces me to feel whatever emotions I’m having, which I don’t always want to do. But it always feels honest.

And if I’m being honest with myself, then I also have to admit that my inner life isn’t really so private. The connection between prakriti in my mind and prakriti around me is very strong. For example, the idea that I can just think whatever mean thing I want about someone else or even myself is a lie I tell myself. It’s not that other people can hear my thoughts—at least I hope not—but my intuition tells me that my internal struggle is bound up with everyone else’s. At least if I act as if my inner experience is public, then I will clean up my mind. 

Ultimately, I know that we are all looking for happiness of some kind and maybe samadhi is simply happiness. According to the yoga teachings, happiness actually comes from peace of mind and not from any external thing or other person. Peace of mind occurs when I allow the Witness to come into the foreground. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says:

“There is neither wisdom nor meditation in an always-changing mind. Without a meditative, one-pointed mind, there is no peace. And without peace of mind, how can anyone be happy.” (2.66 Translation by Swami Satchidananda)

What a great question. Without peace of mind, how can anyone be happy? Ironically, I think that’s the exact opposite of what we’re taught in the West. We’re taught that external validation and material possessions will make us happy, and, sadly, my mind is still invested in those pursuits. I have to wonder why my mind allows itself to suffer when I know in my heart that samadhi is the answer. For now, I’m like a hungry caterpillar eating all the leaves. Hopefully someday the yoga chrysalis will transform me completely and allow me to spread my wings. 

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Finding Your Own Yoga

by Nina

Kitcheree

If you carefully read the Yoga Sutras cover to cover and learn about what the eight-fold path really entails, you would realize—and maybe you already have—that this path is not one that we householders can follow in a literal way. First of all, we would have to become renunciates because even being attached to people you love, including your family, interferes with your ability to achieve samadhi. And the path—with its intended goal of liberation from everyday life as we know it—is really quite arduous and severe as we would eventually have to let go of all connection to external reality. As Georg Feuerstein says in The Yoga Tradition:

“At the peak of this ecstatic unification, yogins reach the point of no-return. They become liberated. According the dualistic model of Classical Yoga, this implies the dropping of the finite body-mind. The liberated being abides in perfect “aloneness” (kaivalya), which is a transmental state of sheer Presence and pure Awareness.”

Yet you will also realize that the Yoga Sutras is clearly full of invaluable wisdom, which can bring you a deeper understanding of human nature and help you move toward equanimity in your everyday life. So what's an ordinary householder to do? If we can’t fully commit to the path detailed in the Yoga Sutras, is it okay for us to pick and choose and just use those things that are helpful to us and ignore what doesn’t apply to our every day lives or even our life goals? 

I was very pleased and a bit surprised to see Edwin Bryant address this issue way down deep in the third chapter of The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali under sutra III.29, which is about one of the siddhis (mystical powers). He was discussing how cakras, as well-known as they are, are not part of classic yoga, and he used the metaphor of kitcheree (an Indian dish of rice, legumes, spices, and other ingredients all cooked together) to describe how Westerners tend to mix different elements from different yoga traditions into one big single “generic” Yoga.

“Thus, while the siddhi/sakta/tantra metaphysics is a wonderful and vibrant spiritual universe in its own right, with deep roots in the ancient Indic past, and with its own internal coherence, logic, and appeal, it is not by any means the same as the system being taught by Patanjali. The integrity and distinctiveness of these traditions have a tendency to be erased into a hodgepodge in their Western exportations—into a kind of kitchorie Yoga.”

That sounds a bit negative, but Bryant later goes onto to say that this approach is actually “understandable” and perhaps “inevitable,” and that same type of approach occurred within the Indic culture itself throughout its own history. 

“Thus one finds a generic sort of yoga as presented here in the bits and pieces of Patanjali-type practices as presented here in the sutras but articulated with neo-advaita-vendanta/Brahman terminologies and flavored with elements from tantric subtle physiology, all blended together as if representing a single coherent homogenous tradition. This is understandable—and with plenty of antecedents in premodern Indic traditions themselves one might add (indeed it can be argued that such blending is the very nature of religious traditions)—and perhaps inevitable in the modern West.”

So now I have a name for the type of yoga I’m practicing: Kitcheree Yoga. And I’m willing to bet that’s what most of you are practicing, too. Of course, my kitcheree is created from different elements than yours because we have learned from different teachers and have different temperaments and inclinations. I, myself, don’t go for cakras or koshas, but I certainly mix some of Yoga Sutras with some Bhagavad Gita and other yoga texts into a kitcheree of Iyengar-style poses and mindful asana practice. And my personal recipe is always evolving based on new information I glean as I continue to study yoga history and philosophy. I just keep in mind this statement from Georg Feuerstein that has influenced my personal practice of yoga, in which he says that we should never accept a yogic path or yogic ideas and practices without questioning them.

“In our struggle for self-understanding and psycho-spiritual growth, we can benefit immensely from a liberal exposure to India’s spiritual legacy. We need not, of course, become converts to any path, or accept yogic ideas and practices without questioning. C.G. Jung’s warning that we should not attempt to transplant Eastern teachings into the West rings true at a certain level; mere imitation definitely does more harm than good. The reason is that if we adopt ideas and lifestyles without truly assimilating them emotionally and intellectually, we run the risk of living inauthentic lives.”

As an example of this in action, in his beautiful upcoming post "Metamorphosis" you’ll see how Jivana is currently striving to find what’s authentic for him in the Yoga Sutras and how to apply that to his everyday life as a householder. 

I personally find it "liberating" to have this permission for all of us to have our own individual yoga recipes. And because our blog is written by a collection of very different people, from different yoga backgrounds who practice very different kinds of "yoga," our blog itself is an even more complex and interesting kitcheree of yoga points of view.

My only concern here is that I think when we create our personal kitcherees, even from just those ideas and practices that feel authentic to use, that we should be clear to ourselves and others that this what we’re doing. If we’re not fully committed to the path outlined in the Yoga Sutras or any other path, we should be clear that we’re picking and choosing to find what’s useful for us and our students. And if we’re mixing more modern practices into our kitcheree—which most of us are—we should own up to where they come from and not claim that everything in the kitcheree comes from one single ancient yoga text. That will not only be a practice of truthfulness (satya) but will help avoid confusing yoga students who often struggle to make sense out of completely contradictory claims about what’s in the early yoga texts. 

What’s in your kitcheree?

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For information about Nina's upcoming book signings and other activities, see Nina's Workshops, Book Signings, and Books.