The Eight Limbs of Yoga Explained

Transcript

[Applause] [Music] hey everybody welcome to this episode of Enlightenment today I'm Jason today we're going to speak about the eight limbs of yoga or more commonly known as the eight-fold path of yoga now what are the eight limbs of yoga the eight limbs of yoga come from classical yoga from the founding father of yoga patan jali and his great scripture the yoga sutras now this is patanjali's method of practical spirituality for us this is what the eight limbs of yoga are now what are the eight limbs of of this practical spirituality of p and jali well first you have Yama which is discipline second you have Nama which is a restraint third is Asana which is posture or sit or to seat fourth you have pranayama which is breath control fifth you have prahara which is sense withdrawal sixth you have darana which is concentration seven you have Jana which is meditation or meditative AB absorption and the eighth limb is sadii or ecstasy as we commonly know know it now this eight-fold path is regarded as a ladder in some sense okay so this ladder of eight limbs of yoga leads from our normal life of self- involvement to The Uncommon realization of the self of the transcendental self the Pisha the pure awareness which is beyond the personality this is what this these eight limbs do it acts in a manner as almost like a ladder now there is actually two ways to see this in the yoga Sutra two angles that we could two views we could see these eight limbs within the yoga sutras so first of all the eight-fold path consists in the growing unification of Consciousness with the Pisha okay and the second angle is that the eight-fold path presents itself as a matter of progressive purification okay so you have this these two views where there's the the growing unification Consciousness and also the progressive purification of of your being now to understand this these eight limbs of yoga we need to unpack each limb okay so the first limb Yama which we mentioned as discipline relates to ethics now which is the now ethics as you probably know is the foundation of uh yoga itself and also the foundation of a lot of other spiritual Traditions so what y really means here in the eight limbs according to the individual is moral discipline okay so the practice of Yama is basically based on five moral obligations that we need to follow if we are sincere in the practice of Yama and and and the eight full Paths of yoga now these five moral obligations are Aima non-harming SATA truthfulness aaya non-stealing aaria Chast Chastity and aara greedless now let's begin with ahima okay the first moral obligation now most people might know Aima because it's it's related to um especially the diet in in Indian culture where most people are vegetarian and this is one aspect of Aima and also not hurting another being a lot of ancient Physicians and and sages actually in India actually believe that a h if you follow a hza it actually um if you it actually prolongs your life they believe that if you do harm to others this reduces your lifespan but on the other hand a hza prolongs life because it represents a positive life enhancing state of mind so a a yog's motivation for cultivating a hza comes from the impulse towards unification and Transcendence of of the ego so as a result the yogin seek to nurture these attributes that will help them realize what the bagavita calls the vision of sameness or sashana this is a vision that or this is a vision where we perceive the transcendental self within apparent Duality we we become aware of the Pisha within all beings this is what this is this is saying so this is what yogan does cult cultivate when they follow ahima so this is the first moral obligation the second moral obligation is uh such a truthfulness and this is a no-brainer this is you need to be truthful in thoughts and deeds and all everything that you do in your life now we all know how tricky the mind is the mind can elaborate stories it can sometimes tell a lot of white lies and you know accentuate the truth a little bit and this is actually against the eight limbs of yoga this is against that the the moral obligation of SATA of truthfulness you need to be truthful in everything you do now the third moral obligation aaya so non-stealing is actually linked to AA because when you steal from a person you are actually violating them you you are violating them because you are stealing something from them that is a form of violence actually so this is linked to Aima this non-stealing moral obligation now the fourth moral obligation is brahmacharya um which is uh Chastity now this is basically um a core practice within a lot of religious traditions where you know you have priests and Saints and that who who practice Chastity they they never have sexual activity ever so Chastity in the sense of this of um as the fourth moral obligation of Yama is basically the extension from sexual activity no matter whether that's in Deeds thoughts or words so that might be a difficult practice for a lot of people to apply but that's what this moral obligation within Yama actually requires now the fifth moral obligation is greedless as I said aara which is a difficult Sanskrit word to pronounce now greedless is basically the non-accepting acceptance of gifts so why they practice this is because when you continually accept gifts and so forth and so on or you can or you buy certain stuff this generates a lot of attachment okay this is why greedless is the fifth moral obligation so the practice of greedless is actually voluntary voluntary simplicity so making your life very simple um because the idea is that if you have too much stuff in your life um if you have too many possessions this actually distracts the mind so there's an emphasis on renunciation within this fifth moral obligation so renunciation is actually integral here not so much the physical renunciation the physical renunciation of gifts but also the mental renunciation of your attachment to certain things so now we come to the second limb of yoga which is Nama so I mentioned before n restraint so this really means self-restraint so the focus of the five rules of Yama the first limb was about harmonizing our relationship with other beings but the focus of Nama on the other hand is concerned with the inner life and how to harmonize our life to the to the Greater Life and the transcendental reality that's the focus of NY it's more of an inward thing as opposed to Yama is more of a moral and social limb so the five rules of Nama are sha Purity Sosha contentment Tapas a austery andaya study and the last one is isar Prana Devotion to the Lord these are the five the five rules of Nama okay so the first rule being purity being Shuler is is based on both external and internal so external Purity requires obviously taking a bath and proper diet but the focus of this rule is more about on mental Purity so more about concentration and meditation this is what it's based more on now the second rule Sasha which is based on which is contentment now this contentment is actually diametrically opposed to our modern consumerism you know our modern consumer mentality so this contentment is trying to teach you to be happy just with what you have no matter what it is you have and so when you have this constant practice of contentment you have this experience of everything with equinity so there's no high there's no low you see both um the same Mutual actually so the third rule of Nama is tapas aery so tap topass is these are basically practices um of a mobilizing sitting and standing a a mobilizing sitting and standing the ability the ability to Bear hunger thirst cold and heat and also formal silence and fasting these are parts of Tapas the ability to to be in silence for extended periods of times and the ability to physically fast now the idea of this of Tapas of aery is that if you follow these practic I es that I just mentioned then there is this great energy that is produced which actually gives birth to this higher awareness this higher state of consciousness this this is why it is very important as part of the five rules of Nama now the fifth oh sorry the fourth um rule of namaa study is basically not don't think about intellectual study this doesn't really have anything to do with intellectual learning it's about diving into the hidden meanings of the scriptures the ancient scriptures so this is the ability to absorb yourself into ancient wisdom which you could say in some sense is an intellectual learning if you want to be clever but this is not really accumulating daa and so forth and so on it's about contemplating the mysteries of life through these hidden scriptures and and ancient wisdom now the fifth rule of Nama as I mentioned was Devotion to the Lord so what does the Lord mean here now this is where it gets confusing because there's many different interpretations of God and the Lord throughout the world Pon jal's view is that he uses the word ishar this is why it's known as ishar Prana now ishvar is one of the multiple but coalescing transcendental selves Pisha so ishvar status among the many s is due to the fact that it can never be subject to the illusion that it is deprived of of its omnience and omnipresence which seems you know might seem confusing but you know Pon jali did incorporate the concept of the Lord into his jeis system because he actually believed in it that was the idea here his idea of ishara was not only that he thought it needed a concept of the Lord within the eight limbs of yoga or in the yoga sutras but he actually believed in the presence of of a of a god but in this sense you can't think of the god in in the normal terminology as I said this is related to one of the multiple but coalescing transcendental s of Pua which can appear confusing so put so ishara here is not a Creator like um like the Jude judeo Christian God nor is it a universal absolute like we discover in the upanishads or the scriptures of Mahayana Buddhism okay so now we come to the third limb of yoga of pan jali's philosophy of practical spirituality which is Asana now a lot of people are familiar with Asana because you know a lot of people practice ha yoga in the world now asani um literally mean seat or to sit or in this sense posture doesn't really emphasize which posture now when we looked at the first two limbs now the first two limbs were about regulating the social and personal life okay so this reduces the production of unh wholesome volition and action which usually you know increases our karmic stock within the samcara level okay this is why yam and N are important um now this is why Nama and Yama are basically focused on um the right environment within and without how to cultivate that um to contribute to the transformation of Consciousness whereas assana is the next level it focus is on the psych psychosomatic organism it's the focus of practice and internalizing the first two and this has um a tremendous effect on the endr endrocrine system so the practice of these postures um whether that be sitting meditation or some of the Hat the yoga postages postures that people are familiar with this has a tremendous effect on the transformation of Consciousness within the psychosomatic organ ISM so as I said the first two Y and Nama were focused on the social and personal where Arana is more focused on the actual deep level of the psychosomatic organism now we come to the fourth limb of yoga which is pranama breath control okay now to understand pranama you need to understand Prana life force the concept of Life Force energy that that um flows through this psychosomatic organism now this is known as chi in China but it's known in Sanskrit as Prana now what is PR so basically when you are when you are no longer distracted by muscular tensions and external external stimuli you become more attuned to PR circula in your body so when you when you're not identifying with ATT tension within your body um being overwhelmed by the external environment you start to become aware of this PR within you and obviously um hat the yoga and City meditation that helps to become more conscious of Prana so prama the practice of prama breath control is basically a practice to influence the bio energetic field of the body okay so it's a practice of influencing this this life force within our body becoming conscious of it and the movement and being able to move it within your psychosomatic organism but keep in mind that moral disciplines self-restraint sensory inhibition and concentration can also do this as well you don't just have to do prama or breath control to do this but the focus is with the regulation of the breath combined with concentration The Prana can be stimulated and directed to any part of the body you know that's the focus in pranama becoming extremely conscious of your brain bre and being able to control it like a master as we see a lot of hat yogis around the world they employ a lot of prama and you can see them doing a lot of tricks with their body and so forth and so on and also you know achieving miraculous things and this is just the movement of primer within the body becoming conscious of that and you become you can become conscious of that just in simple practice of meditation and also becoming more conscious of your inner world you can become conscious of this life force so now we come to the fifth limb of yoga which is prahara sense withdrawal now the practice of both posture and breath control leads to a progressive desensitization that blocks out external stimuli so what happens then is when Consciousness is effectively sealed off from the environment this is the state of sensory inhibition prahara so this is when when you seal off the environment through the practice you know posture and breath control help to do this is this does um this is a progressive desensitization that does you know ultimately begin to block out the external world this is this leads to naturally to prahara but you don't need to think that when you're in this state of prahara that you are you know empty and blank and just lying on the ground like a log in a coma which is what a lot of people believe they reckon if they get to this state of prahara that because they're not um attracted or engaged to the gravitational pull of the external world they're just going to be you know unconscious but you know the miraculous thing is that when you get down to this state of sensory inhibition is that the Mind becomes very active at that very subtle level what is that activity why does that happen now this is demonstrated by experiments on sensory deprivation so we all we've all heard of the sensory deprivation tanks or isolation tanks which were created by the American physician and neuroscientist John C Lily now what they realized is that through this sensory inhibition something else is going on here not it's not literally that you begin to hallucinate which is what people believe they believe when the Mind becomes active at this subtle level down when the senses are inhibited that a lot of people believe that we begin to hallucinate or trip out and this is actually not really especially um what not what yogis yo yogin verify or and not even what John C ly verified sensory inhibition has nothing to do with hallucination or sleep but instead it's about holding the Mind steady on an object of concentration so the Mind becomes steady and it can be absorbed on a point of contemplation so it is very steady and stable as opposed to hallucinating tripping or anything to do with sleep so this is prahara is the ability to hold this mind steady and being able to focus directly on this object of concentration so now we come to the sixth limb of yoga darana concentration now this limb is a direct continuation of the process of sensory inhibition now the reason for this is because darana is the holding of the Mind in emotionless state so keep that in mind it's the holding of the Mind in emotional in emotionless state so the verbal root of the is three which means to hold so what is held now what is held is the attention the the attention is fixed on an internalized object an internalized object that's where the attention is fixed this is why it is a direct continuation from prahara the previous limb now the underlying process of concentration is eaga now eaga means one pointedness or focused attention Okay so one pointedness of focused attention this is the ability of danana concentration but you need to think of it differently danana is different from normal concentration Okay so danana is a whole body experience free from psychosomatic tension it is an extraordinary dimension of the psyche where creative inner work is born so though Dan so though keep in mind but Dan is difficult it's not something that you can just employ like normal concentration it is a whole body experience it is that subtle depth of the psyche where creativity and inner work are born so you know to articulate or to explain the difficulty of this form of concentration Charles tart Psy who is a psychologist he had a wonderful experiment now this experiment I want you to do if you're watching so his experiment was if you have a watch or or a clock pay attention to the second hand on the watch while simultaneously remain aware of your breathing okay so keep be aware pay attention of the the secondhand but also be conscious of your breathing now what most of you will probably experience is is that within 5 or 10 seconds your your mind starts the race or something else happens and your concentration is is thrown off this is was was Charles tart's point but this is a great experiment for cultivating theana the the the whole body experience okay of concentration now danana um leads into the seventh limb now the seventh limb of yoga is Jana which is uh meditation or meditative absorption so we experience Jan when we're in prolonged um concentration when we are deepening our concentration this this leads to um meditative absorption J so when we're in that state for a long time the concentrated State the darana then you start to become a absorbed in in a very subtle form of meditation which is known as Jana now this is where the internalized object fills the entire space of Consciousness okay so the the internalized object of contemplation or whatever it may be fills the whole Space within your Consciousness so the underlying process of J is EA tanata which is one flowing that can be trans ated as one flowing so this is where the the wakefulness is intensified it's intensified that much that you begin to have little or no awareness of the external environment this is the the purpose of Jana and this is Jana is the original practice which leads into to Zen Buddhism you know you have Jana then it became Chan in China and then it became Zen in Japan this is this uh waful which is very intensified where everything becomes blocked out and you are just within yourself with in contemplating whatever it may be it fills the whole Space of Consciousness now British psychologist John H Clark he explains what this experience of genre is meditation is a method by which a person concentrates more and more upon less and less the the aim is to empty the mind while paradoxically remaining alert normally if we empty our minds as we do when we settle down to sleep for instance counting sheep to narrow our thoughts we become lethargic and eventually go to sleep the Paradox of meditation is that it both empties the mind and at the same time encourages alertness this is the Paradox of Jana which John H Clark points out so the point of uh this yogic meditation of Jana is to intercept the flux of ordinary mental activity which is known in Sanskrit as V now that's the point of J is to intercept this normal flux of mental activity that most of us carry with us each day now there are five categories of this mental activity that which I explain the first one is Prana which is knowledge der derived from perception inference or authoritative testimony the second is via which is misconception or perceptual error Okay the third one is viala conceptual knowledge or imagination the fourth is Nidra sleep and the fifth is shiti memory okay so in the the seventh limb of yoga Jana there's a process of restriction to deal with this mental activity okay and there's actually three major levels within this process of restriction so the first one is Roda which is the Restriction of the five mental activities which I just mentioned the second one is pra neroda which is a restriction of the present ideas in ious types of conscious ecstasy s samadi and I'll explain s samadi in a minute and the third one is samcara naroda now this is a restriction of subliminal imprints or activators or mental Impressions um which disable the depth of memory itself where the habits and traits Al Arenas constantly generate new psychomental activity so samcara nooda is is basically the elimination of that deep karmic stock that we have within us and this is what Janna um provides Jana the practice of Janna meditative absorption um begins to uproot a lot of this karmic stock that we have and that's what the practice of samcar nooda does now Janna naturally leads to the eighth limb and the final limb of pan jali's eight limbs of yoga which is STI or ecstasy a lot of people are familiar with samadi this word and a lot of people have interesting ways of interpreting it so this samadi is basically complete annihilation of the karmic stock wound up in our Sams scaras so as I mentioned the practice of samcar naroda within Jana this begins the process of stepping into samadi and we start to annihilate the comic stock within our samcar level our deep subliminal level now the the when we begin to uproot that we start to have this feeling of somei this feeling of Ecstasy but you can't confuse this with what with what a lot of people confuse it with which is trance or unconsciousness Sami is actually Bliss non non-associated Bliss a bliss that naturally arises from within which is not associated to any external object or emotion okay it's just this Bliss that we have deep within us but often is never uncovered this is what Sami naturally is within the yogic system so P jali he he actually distinguishes two species of samadi now there's conscious ecstasy s prata samadi which I mentioned earlier and superconscious ecstasy which is Asam prata samadi now these two correspond to the vidanta distinctions of formative ecstasy which is savp samadi and formless easy which is nerva samadi so when we look at these two species of samadi if we look at samat samadi some Prat samati is basically still based on an object of contemplation so this still implies a subject and object so a subject contemplating an object this is sub Pro not to Somey conscious ecstasy so being fully focused and present on a particular object and an internalized object I should say whatever that may be the second speci Asam is that there is no object of contemplation nor is there a subject contemplating so this is the elimination of the idea of a object and a subject so this is the elimination of the subject object split you could say so Asam Prat is basically the absorption in the self in the Pisha the pure awareness and experiencing its Eternal Freedom which we have deep within us this is the the highest level within the eight limbs of yoga thisam so when we are in Asam for long periods of time the fire of this ecstasy gradually transmutes transmutes the unconscious destroying all the Sam scaras that give birth to new egoic activity and it's resulting karma when you get to that level all of the karma is destroyed all of that which is wound up within your Sam scaras begins to be eliminated and when you follow that those eight limbs the purpose of following these eight limbs and getting to this point of Asam praat MDI on the eighth limb is Liberation now Liberation is obviously the focus of most eastern Traditions um but from pan jali's perspective this Liberation is the point of no return it's like you've gone to the the furtherest shore and you are not coming back so yoga in this sense basically implies the dropping of the finite body mind all right so the complete droing of that so according to yogic philosophy a liberating a liberated being is in perfect aloneness or or perfect Solitude or isolation which is known as Calia in Sanskrit this doesn't mean isolation in doesn't mean isolation in nature or something like this this isolation is the isolation of Pisha the transcendental self from procity nature or the movement of uh the universe so when you have isolated you have become pisher and you have isolated yourself from procr which is everything within the world then you are in a sense from Pon jali's perspective liberated from rebirth because you've you've come to your true identity the transcendental self which in yogic philosophy is actually separate from procr from nature this is why it's a dualistic philosophy now this differs this idea of Liberation actually differs to vidanta because vidanta is B on non-dual Liberation so they the perspective that you can be liberated right now um the idea of a jivan MTA you know you can be liberated within the body is is uh perspective in pant but Pon jelly doesn't doesn't to these views okay so he subscribes to this other view of Liberation which I pointed out which according to him comes at the end of this these eight limbs of yoga so when we look at the eight limbs of yoga this yogic technology it is only a ladder we climb to eventually cast it off at the last moment so we climb this ladder and we throw it off at the last moment patan jalis eight limbs of yoga are a guide for us to realize our inherent Freedom which gives us the power to see reality as it is in its purely naked State beyond all mental conditioning Frameworks and points of view that's pon jol's persp perspective and that's his great wisdom which he left behind and I believe that the eight limbs of yoga is a as a still sufficient to follow in our modern day it's a great not not just a a personal system for your own Liberation but also to be a authentic individual in society it's a beautiful system to follow so I hope you enjoyed this episode today and I hope you dive more into the eight limbs of yoga cuz I've only just scratched the surface but continue to explore the the great Master's wisdom p and jali of yoga and continue to liberate yourself in this life or from this life it depends on your own perspective and I'll see you again next time hey everybody thank you for watching this episode of Enlightenment today if you enjoyed this episode and want to see more to my YouTube channel right here also to watch some of my previous episodes of Enlightenment today click down here okay so thank you for watching and let's continue to learn grow and love more together