Yoga Sutra II- 10 - TE PRATIPRASAVA HEYAH SUKSMAH - In subtle form, these obstacles can be destroyed by resolving them back into their primal cause [the ego].Yoga Sutra II- 11 -DHYANA HEYAS TAD VRTTAYAH - In the active state, they can be destroyed by meditation.
Swami Satchidananda comments on the above sutras above together. In Yoga Sutra II- 10 he speaks about breaking the ego and likens it to a pot. The ego has the "smell "of thoughts and in order to get rid of the impressions of the thoughts, one has to break the pot (ego) . He then uses the analogy of using meditation as a process to understand the thoughts and to clean them up. When uprooting a tree, the branches are cut first and then the roots of the tree are dug up.
From the book "How to Know God - The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali" translated and commented on by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, for these sutras they start with the latter sutra to the former one. Instead of starting with the subtle, the gross form of the fully developed obstacle is to be overcome first. Then when they (the obstacle or klesas) exist vestigially as tendencies (samskaras), they are only destroyed "when the mind is resolved back to its cause, that is, into Prakriti, from which the mind was projected." This the process that leads to samadhi.
2 comments:
I love the analogy of the tree and of the pot! Excellent post. -ss
Glad you liked the analogy. I can't take the credit for that, as it is from Swami Satchidananda. I think the Yoga Sutras are fascinating!
Thanks for your comment SS.
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