Patanjali Yoga Sutra 3.2 - What Is Dhyana? | Yoga Teacher Training | Anvita Dixit

Transcript

namaste everyone in today's video we're going to look at muni patanjali's yog sutra 3.2 now in this yoga sutra muni patanjali is helping us understand the concept of dhyan and is showing us certain key characteristics that define dhan in his entire system of yoga so let's take a good look at the sutra start breaking it up word by word and understanding it a little bit better so the sutra itself goes [Music] all right so this is the sutra itself now let's break it up word by word and start understanding it the first word over here is tatra so tatra is referring again to the previous sutra which says and it's talking about the process of dharana and how it leads into dhyana so that's tatra then coming to the next word which is pratyaya prathaya specifically refers to an experience or what the chitta is experiencing at that moment and then we come to the next word which is now aker usually refers to one and tanata is similar to the tautness or the stretchiness of a particular object so a katana defines one subjectiveness but for a very long period of time so that is and the final word here is dhyan which is basically the word that the sutra is trying to define so on the whole what this basic sutestra says is that there on that particular spot when that focus becomes one pointed long and really deep and focused that is known as the process of dhyan so now that we've understood the overall meaning let's get much deeper into it and start understanding it a little bit better all right so in this particular sutra muni patanjali is explaining to us how we can go really deep into a particular subject and start to enter into meditative states of concentration as we were discussing in the previous sutra usually towards the end of nirivichara samapathi we start entering into a state of dhyan but dhyan is particularly characterized by very deep and one pointed concentration so if we have to continue the example that we were using last time which was also in the book that we use as our guidance source this example states that just the way initially in dharma an animal was tied to a rope and you know tied to a pole for example a horse the minute you try to make the rope smaller and smaller and the horse's field of movement becomes shorter and shorter that indicates moving towards the stage of dhyan because once that stage of movement reduces and all your focus and attention is completely on one object that is when you start to move into the state of meditation and or dhihan however also commentators do say that meditation is not an accurate word to describe the han because meditation still implies a certain amount of thinking and cognitive intellectual process but diyan the traditional sense of the word refers to no you know cognizance or no thinking from that intellectual perspective instead it refers to the subtle reception of an understanding of the object from an in from a more intuitive space and that is something that represents dhyan so meditation also as a word doesn't accurately kind of describe what we're trying to say but it's the most closest translation that we have now looking at this definition even further it's really important to keep in mind that the mind when it's focusing like that trying to stay in meditation a lot is going on and so this fear of the difference between dharana dhyana and samadhi is very very internal it's really hard to externally sit and say now you're in dharana now you're in dhyana and samadhi it is something the practitioner has to verify identify and check for herself or himself because it's such an internal process it's only something we will be able to say whether we're in it or not and eventually as you go deeper and deeper into these states of dhyan you understand an object so well experientially and intuitively that then you go into the state of samadhi where you become at one with that object and it's also said that through the process of dhyan the reality the reality behind an object gets reviewed to us because until then we're only experiencing preconceived notions whatever ideas our mind has created about that object but we're not seeing the truth of that object and the bliss of that object and what it has to offer us behind all those layers of intellectual thought and that's why it takes a long time to reach these real stages of dhyan i think most of us modern day meditation practitioners may not even be reaching the kind of dhyan that patanjali is talking about because we still stay in the realm of thoughts of intellectualization of cognition so it's very difficult to you know explain this process in words because it's such an experiential process but what we can understand is that through this sutra on dhyan muni patanjali is helping us understand that it takes a long time it's about a katana on that particular subject and that one pointed focus and concentration transforms into dhyan over a period of time so this is what muni patanjali was trying to explain to us in this sutra 3.2 where he describes the process of dhyan in further sutras we're going to look at the process of samadhi what happens and what all these three processes are called all together so do stay tuned for those future videos as well now if you've enjoyed today's video please don't forget to leave a comment in the comments box below we love to hear from you don't forget also to like this video and also because we release new videos every single week now we look forward to seeing you in the next video or in our next class workshop or course so feel free to sign up for that the link is in the description and we can't wait to see you very soon so until then take care keep practicing and we'll see you in the next one namaste [Music] you