Book Two: The Path to Realization

How to Practice Yoga?

II.1 Yogic action has three components - discipline, self-study, and orientation toward the ideal of pure awareness.

II.2 Its purposes are to disarm the causes of suffering and achieve integration.

II.3 The causes of suffering are not seeing things as they are, the sense of ‘I’, attachment, aversion, and clinging to life.

II.4 Not seeing things as they are is the field where the other causes of suffering germinate, whether dormant, activated, intercepted, or weakened.

II.5 Lacking this wisdom, one mistakes that which is impermanent, impure, distressing, or empty of self for permanence, purity, happiness, and self.

II.6 The sense of ‘I’ ascribes selfhood to pure awareness by identifying it with the senses.

II.7 Attachment is a residue of pleasant experience.

II.8 Aversion is a residue of suffering.

II.9 Clinging to life is instinctive and self-perpetuating, even for the wise.

II.10 In their subtle form, these causes of suffering are subdued by seeing where they come from.

II.11 In their gross form, as patterns of consciousness, they are subdued through meditative absorption.

II.12 The causes of suffering are the root source of actions; each action deposits latent impressions deep in the mind, to be activated and experienced later in this birth, or lie hidden awaiting a future one.

II.13 So long as this root source exists, its contents will ripen into a birth, a life, and experience.

II.14 This life will be marked by delight or anguish, in proportion to those good or bad actions that created its store of latent impressions.

II.15 The wise see suffering in all experience, whether from the anguish of impermanence, or from latent impressions laden with suffering, or from incessant conflict as the fundamental qualities of nature vie for ascendancy.

II.16 But suffering that has not yet arisen can be prevented.

II.17 The preventable cause of all this suffering is the apparent indivisibility of pure awareness and what it regards.

II.18 What awareness regards, namely the phenomenal world, embodies the qualities of luminosity, activity, and inertia; it includes oneself, composed of both elements and the senses; and, it is the ground for both sensual experience and liberation

II.19 All orders of being - undifferentiated, differentiated, indistinct, distinct - are manifestations of the fundamental qualities of nature.

II.20 Pure awareness is just seeing, itself; although pure, it usually appears to operate through the perceiving mind

II.21 In essence, the phenomenal world exists to reveal this truth.

II.22 Once that happens, the phenomenal world no longer appears as such; it continues to exist as a common reality for everyone else, though.

II.23 It is by virtue of the apparent indivisibility of the phenomenal world and pure awareness that the former seems to possess the latter’s powers

II.24 Not seeing things as they are is the cause of this phenomenon

II.25 With realization, the appearance of indivisibility vanishes, revealing that awareness is free and untouched by phenomena.

II.26 The apparent indivisibility of seeing and the seen can be eradicated by cultivating uninterrupted discrimination between awareness and what it regards.

II.27 At the ultimate level of discrimination, wisdom extends to all seven aspects of nature.

II.28 When the components of yoga are practiced, impurities dwindle; then, the light of understanding can shine forth, illuminating the way to discriminative awareness.

II.29 The eight components of yoga are external discipline, internal discipline, posture, breath regulation, concentration, meditative absorption, and integration.

II.30 The five external disciplines are not harming, truthfulness, not stealing, celibacy, and not being acquisitive.

II.31 These universals, transcending birth, place, era, or circumstance, constitute the great vow of yoga.

II.32 The five internal disciplines are bodily purification, contentment, intensity, self-study, and orientation toward the ideal of pure awareness.

II.33 Unwholesome thoughts can be neutralized by cultivating wholesome ones.

II.34 We ourselves may act upon unwholesome thoughts, such as wanting to harm someone, or we may cause or condone them in others; unwholesome thoughts may arise from greed, anger, or delusion; they may be mild, moderate, or extreme; but they never cease to ripen into ignorance and suffering. This is why one must cultivate wholesome thoughts.

II.35 Being firmly grounded in non-violence creates an atmosphere in which others can let go of their hostility.

II.36 For those grounded in truthfulness, every action and its consequences are imbued with truth.

II.37 For those who have no inclination to steal, the truly precious is at hand.

II.38 The chaste acquire vitality.

II.39 Freedom from wanting unlocks the real purpose of existence.

II.40 With bodily purification, one’s body ceases to be compelling, likewise contact with others.

II.41 Purification also brings about clarity, happiness, concentration, mastery of the senses, and capacity for self-awareness.

II.42 Contentment brings unsurpassed joy.

II.43 As intense discipline burns up impurities, the body and its senses become supremely refined.

II.44 Self-study deepens communion with one’s personal deity.

II.45 Through orientation toward the ideal of pure awareness, one can achieve integration.

II.46 The postures of meditation should embody steadiness and ease.

II.47 This occurs as all effort relaxes and coalescence arises, revealing that the body and the infinite universe are indivisible.

II.48 Then, one is no longer disturbed by the play of opposites.

II.49 With effort relaxing, the flow of inhalation and exhalation can be brought to a standstill; this is called breath regulation.

II.50 As the movement patterns of each breath - inhalation, exhalation, lull - are observed as to duration, number, and area of focus, breath becomes spacious and subtle.

II.51 As realization dawns, the distinction between breathing in and out falls away.

II.52 Then the veil lifts from the mind’s luminosity.

II.53 And the mind’s potential for concentration is realized.

II.54 When consciousness interiorizes by uncoupling from external objects, the senses do likewise; this is called withdrawal of the senses.

II.55 Then the senses reside utterly in the service of realization.

For the full Sanskrit and English Translation

https://www.arlingtoncenter.org/Sanskrit-English.pdf