Yoga Sūtras
- Language:
- English
- Translation:
- Charles Johnston
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Attributed (authorship debated)
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~31,800 words · 151 passages
Cite this work
- APAPatanjali. (n.d.). The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali [Yoga Sūtras] (Charles Johnston, Trans.). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/patanjali/the-yoga-sutras-of-patanjali
- MLAPatanjali. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali [Yoga Sūtras]. Translated by Charles Johnston. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/patanjali/the-yoga-sutras-of-patanjali.
- ChicagoPatanjali. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali [Yoga Sūtras]. Translated by Charles Johnston. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/patanjali/the-yoga-sutras-of-patanjali.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The Yoga Sutras (c. 2nd–4th century): 196 aphorisms.
Context and history
The text that defines classical yoga — 'yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind' — and lays out the eight limbs. So condensed it was never readable without commentary. English translation; the Sanskrit is not in the catalogue.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
We must seek spiritual life in conformity with the laws of spiritual life, with earnestness, humility, gentle charity, which is an acknowledgment of the One Soul within us all. Only through obedience to that shared Life, through perpetual remembrance of our oneness with all Divine Being, our nothingness apart from Divine Being, can we enter our inheritance. 15. Ceasing from self-indulgence is conscious mastery over the thirst for sensuous pleasure here or hereafter. Rightly understood, the desire for sensation is the desire of being, the distortion of the soul’s eternal life. The lust of sensual stimulus and excitation rests on the longing to feel one’s life keenly, to gain the sense of being really alive. This sense of true life comes only with the coming of the soul, and the soul comes only in silence, after self-indulgence has been courageously and loyally stilled, through reverence before the coming soul. 16. The consummation of this is freedom from thirst for any mode of psychical activity, through the establishment of the spiritual man. In order to gain a true understanding of this teaching, study must be supplemented by devoted practice, faith by works. The reading of the words will not avail. There must be a real effort to stand as the Soul, a real ceasing from self-indulgence. With this awakening of the spiritual will, and purification, will come at once the growth of the spiritual man and our awakening consciousness as the spiritual man; and this, attained in even a small degree, will help us notably in our contest. To him that hath, shall be given. 17. Meditation with an object follows these stages: first, exterior examining, then interior judicial action, then joy, then realization of individual being.…
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