Yoga Sutras Q&A (Chapter 2)

While chapter 1 (part 1; part 2) of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali talks about yoga, how to achieve it through various techniques, and the different types of samadhi, chapter 2 deals with practice.

What constitutes yoga in practice?

• Tapas (accepting discipline as means for purification), svadhyaya (study of spiritual or inspiring books), and isvarapranidhana (surrender to the Supreme Being, in whichever form we acknowledge this being) constitute yoga in practice. - YS II:1

How can tapas, svadhyaya and ishvarapranidhana help us in the practice of yoga?

• They help us minimize obstacles and attain samadhi. - YS II:2

What are these obstacles?

• There are five obstacles in the practice of yoga: ignorance, egoism, attachment, aversion, and clinging to bodily life. - YS II:3

What is ignorance?

• Ignorance is the field of the others mentioned after it, whether they be dormant, feeble, intercepted, or sustained (basically the reason for the other 4 obstacles). It is regarding the impermanent as permanent, the impure as pure, the painful as pleasant, and the non-Self as the Self. - YS II:4-5

What is egoism?
Egoism is the identification, as it were, of the power of the Seer with that of the instrument of seeing, which is body-mind (Satchidananda, 1978). - YS II:6
It is to perceive the seer and the seeing as one (Maehle, 2006).

What is attachment?

• Attachment is that which follows identification with pleasurable experiences. - YS II:7
  

What is aversion?

• Aversion is that which follows identification with painful experiences. - YS II:8
  

And clinging to bodly life?

• It flows by its own potency due to past experiences and exists even in the wise. - YS II:9
  

All these obstacles, whether dormant, feeble, intercepted or sustained should slowly be gotten rid of. Only then are we ready to go further (Satchidananda, 1978, p93).

How?

• In subtle form, these obstacles can be destroyed by resolving them back into their primal cause which is the ego. In the active state, they can be destroyed by meditation. - YS II:10-11

Reference: All are from The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: Commentary on the Raja Yoga Sutras by Sri Swami Satchidananda unless otherwise specified.

To be continued...