Chapter Title Definition: Patanjali’s Chapter 3 naturally divides into two parts, each quite different. This part, Chapter 3-A, discusses the final three limbs of Astanga Yoga, Limbs 6, 7, and 8. These three are the inner meditative steps, levels, or parts. The previous first five limbs were discussed in Chapter 2-B. They are the outer life of yoga—the lifestyle of living a yogic spiritual life. Those first five help you better prepare for and maintain a life that supports yoga meditation. Here, now, in Chapter 3-A, are the three final, meditative steps of Astanga yoga:

Chapter 3-A of the Yoga Sutras calls these three the “Triple Discipline,” or samyama. Following the Triple Discipline takes a person deeper into experiencing spirituality and what might be called cosmic or universal consciousness.

This section, 3-A, then ends with an explanation of parinama, which might be called transformation by sustained union. Parinama literally means “around the bend into sunlight,” thus defining it as taking you around a bend in the river of life into the light of a new way of thinking and feeling. Successfully discovering and then continuing to use the Triple Discipline, in meditation and eventually in normal life, is the turning point to becoming what the world calls a mystic.

Comment: “Chapter 3-A” is of great importance: it is the defining core of inner meditation in ancient yoga. In its description of the ending three limbs of Astanga yoga, it offers concise instructions for finding the clear mind, samadhi. Samadhi carries you into a spiritual life.

Samadhi itself, while not easy to find and sustain, is discoverable by many, if even for a few seconds or minutes at first. This is so especially in its simplest form, which is no more or less than a lack of (or very little) thought, memory, emotion, and desire. In this beginning level of samadhi, two kinds may occur, sometimes switching back and forth between them: samadhi with seed, and samadhi without seed. “With seed” means there is a little bit of thought, memory, emotion, or desire going on, but so little that the clear-mind state is predominant. “Without seed” means that your mind is perfectly clear. Either form of this “starter” type of samadhi, when practiced regularly, leads to deeper insights and, indeed, to higher forms of samadhi itself.

In 2015 in “Attention Spans,” Microsoft defined a normal or typical human span as 8-12 seconds. Perhaps the range for low- to meditative attention bandwidth for the great majority is 5 to 20 seconds. Zen Buddhist Zenju Earthlyn Manuel comments on this when he explains in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, “Liberatory sublime meditative experiences arise 3,000 times a day…. Once you allow it to come and go, over time it will settle in you as a way of being.”

Between these periods of attention, a switch starts up to a new thought or focus, either with or without memory of the previous one. With practice, one can observe this. Different lengths of attention may occur with different objects/subjects or, in meditation, different levels of focus points.

But samyama takes you into a different league, a new level. Your awareness becomes capable of absorption into a continuous flow of consciousness for half a minute, several, and eventually hours at a time.

Of what value, then, are the first five limbs? They are the underlying preparation and condition for building and sustaining the clear mind. They construct your house of meditation; they set the table for the food of meditating on which you will nourish yourself. The experience of samadhi itself is the event of living in that home you’ve built, eating the food that you have prepared. Just as with a home or a meal, you need regular upkeep each day: cleansing and preparation. The first five limbs of Astanga are guidelines for improvement in your outer life so that your inner one may grow as well. And all of the limbs of Astanga are recursive: circling back upon each other in a regular improvement pattern.

All eight limbs are discussed singly or together in the world’s major religions under a variety of names. They are the inside workings of religions—the inner practices for approaching the ultimate Presence. For example, they appear especially in Buddha’s “Eightfold Path.” The first five limbs of Astanga resemble several of the “folds” in Buddha’s Path, and the last three limbs are similar to Buddha’s last two folds. This is not surprising, as both Buddha and Patanjali were Hindus. Though they lived several hundred years apart, both drew much of their inspiration from the same ancient Hindu traditions.

Whether you follow the highly practical guidelines of Buddha or Patanjali, or the less-easy-to-find similar practices in other religions, these paths are methodical and useful for advancing in ever greater , deeper, and broader spirituality.

*For most authors or works mentioned in these sutras, you may go to the “Endnotes” for further information.

Literal translation: “The pointed out [together with the] binding of awareness (field of consciousness) = one-pointed focus {dharana)”

A chant in English: “Give all your focus to your single object or subject.”

Definition: This is the Sixth Limb of Astanga yoga. It is the first of three internal or inner-practices limbs.

This sutra says that you can take the object or subject you have chosen from Sutras 1.33-39 (or elsewhere). Then you fasten your awareness on it (as in bandha—“binding,” “bonding,” or even rubber-banding” yourself to it). And this can place you in a state of awareness called “dharana”: the holding of a firm, alert concentration. Traditional meditation objects from which to choose may include an inner or outer image (e.g., a candleflame, flower, sunset), a sound (a chant such as “Om” or the act of humming), a point on the body, especially one of the main chakra energy centers, or any other helpful object within or without. You also may choose a subject such as a holy person, your experience of Iswara, Atman, or Brahman, or a memory of your best or strongest spiritual experience in any religion, according to Patanjali.

Comment: This sutra has very earthy roots. the idea of bhanda or “bonding” in ancient times implied a physical binding together of two objects, damming a river, and even a type of sex. In addition, notes Jaganath Carrera, dharana or “concentration” also can mean your connection as a child to “two female breasts.”

Together, he says, these words suggest that the state of dharana or “attention to your spiritual object” is not a masculine fight to maintain a mental hold. Rather, it is more of a calm, gentle, joining as a child its mother’s milk. In practice, this means that you do not have to struggle to maintain one-pointedness, but rather that such concentration is a heartbeat away: simply lean into it and give yourself over to it.

Unfortunately, for many just starting meditation, this is not so easy. They find their thoughts going all over the place. Astanga yoga has a simple answer to this. Find your resting point, an object or subject on which you can more easily rest calmly and bond, one that keeps you coming back for more.

Additional practices can help, which is why Patanjali names so many of them: slow, long, deep breathing (Sutras 2.49-2.53); warming or heating exercise (2.38 and 2.43); the ease found in good ethical and personal conduct (2.30-2.45); drawing closer to the Presence in ways in which you were brought up such as through music, prayer, or other pleasurable rituals; or an act that most mystics throughout ancient and medieval times took as a given—spending time in nature. All of these and more, according to an overall group of thousands of scientific studies, create the calmer, less busy mental, emotional, and psychological framework in which one-pointed focus is easier.

Patanjali points out clearly from the beginning of Chapter 1 that to reach dharana, you must calm and dissipate inner chatter, memories, emotions, and desires. He calls these vritti or “whirlpools” because they look and feel this way to the inner awareness—like dust devils or hurricanes, depending on their strength and complexity. We talk of how on our electronic devices it is easy to get sucked in, to “go down the rabbit hole.” The same thing happens in our inner thinking and feeling, leading us away from one-pointed concentration.

This state of concentration, by excluding mental thinking and memory—in short, doing without logic—also helps us develop a deeper way of knowing: accurate intuition. Swami Kriyananda tells the true story of a man he knew who loved horseracing and, one day, took his wife and daughter to the track. They were little acquainted with betting and used their intuition to place their choices. He used his usual form book to logically place his. He was amazed, says Kriyananda, to discover how consistently they won even as he lost.

Patanjali discusses other means, too, of stopping inner chatter. In addition, other methods exist. Some Zen Buddhists and New Age practitioners recommend during meditation that you stay in the Now—whether you are observing what is streaming through your mind, doing your dishes, or just breathing. Some suggest saying a firm “No” to every thought that enters. Still others suggest replacing the noise of thinking with mantras or images of beauty, loved ones, or gurus. Yoga advocates sometimes teach a deep form of guttural chanting that makes you increasingly aware of your throat muscles, with the goal of relaxing them entirely on the inbreath so that no thoughts ensue. Western psychologists often recommend becoming the Observer of (rather than the participant in) your emotional whirlwinds, watching them until they dissipate.

Whatever works to quiet the mental processes is good. It helps you start practicing one-pointedness.

Literal translation: “There (on that subject), awareness of holding one stretching flow = sustained attention (dhyana)”

Meaning: “Using the subject of your choice (as in the previous sutra), your awareness stretches unbroken for several spans of attention or more. This is called ‘sustained attention,’ or an enjoyable flow of focus (dhyana).”

A chant in English: “Continue to focus with delightful nurturing for a time that feels infinite.”

Definition: In dhyana or delightfully sustained attention, you learn to have ever fewer intruding thoughts until they disappear for minutes at a time, then longer. There are no or few vrittis—the swirling vortexes of thinking or emotions—for minutes or longer. Your mind is calm, peaceful, empty of concerns, and focusing on the subject of your choice, as noted in the previous sutra.

As you move from Limb Six, dharana, to this Limb Seven, dhyana, you learn to move from developing a one-pointed attention to creating a sustained experience of this one-pointedness. Swami Hariharananda uses a helpful simile for the difference: Limb Six, one-pointedness, is like a separated “succession of similar drops of water,” whereas Limb Seven, continuous attention, is similar to an unbroken “flow of oil or honey.”*

Comment: As in the introduction to this chapter, above, a normal human attention span lasts perhaps from five to twenty seconds. Microsoft says the average attention span now is about eight seconds (but was thirteen seconds before cell phones became common). This means that as a beginning meditator, you might sustain your unbroken attention for eight seconds; with practice in a calm meditative state, you should be able to move it—while meditating, at least, to ten-fifteen seconds.

After those seconds, your attention lapses. Then briefly, almost unnoticeably, there is an instant or gap in awareness. That is when your attention is lost. Most people perceive of it—if they notice it at all—as a quick instant of unconsciousness. Your brain returns to a default setting. And when your attention returns, just a small part of a second later, you mind may often, or more easily, jump to a different subject or object.

However, in dhyana’s sustained flow of attention, you return to the same one-pointedness of your previous attention span because you become aware of the gap. It appears as a mix of an unconscious and conscious blend, as if dark and clear waters are blended together. If you pay attention to this, rather than the contents of the previous or next bubble of awareness, you will achieve the flow of undivided attention.

If your awareness were a frog, then in normal life it would hop every five to twenty seconds to a different lily pad, into the water, and onto land, perhaps remembering where it was before the hope, perhaps forgetting. But in sustained attention, the frog might quiver a little every five to twenty seconds, but it would stay on the same spot until it consciously chooses to move. Once your frog (your awareness) becomes used to this continuity, it simply stays for a time.

In theory, this sounds easy. And for a person in a relatively deeper state of meditation, it can happen naturally. However, many struggle to attain this consistently—or at all. But it delivers to people some of the best intuitive perceptions they ever achieve in new ideas, artistic movement, physical success, or other worldly abilities of note. And of course it represents, in its sustained form, a great advancement in deeper spiritual formation. Training your attention makes this and more possible.

Sutra 3.3: Tad eva-artha-mātra-nirbhāsaṁ svarūpa śūnyam iva samādhiḥ

Literal translation: “That (sustained attention), intending it alone = a shining in one essence as if in a swelling emptiness; blessed freedom (samadhi)”

Meaning: “The state of sustained attention (delightful nurturing), intended as your sole purpose, becomes a shining onto, or blazing awareness of, your subject alone—an awareness that seems to exist in a swelling that is empty of opposites. This is the ‘blessed freedom’ called samadhi.”

A chant in English: “Practice your sustained attention. Nurture it into a blazing awareness of nothing else but the subject. This is your blessed samadhi.”

Definition: When you have an attention that is one-pointed (Sutra 3.1) and sustained (3.2), you move to absorption (3.3). It is, says Astanga yoga, a shining, total joining in which you dwell in swelling awareness with any subject or object involved, external or internal. This state is called samadhi. The experience is “empty” because you are not aware of opposites, not abstracting yourself from the experiencing of the subject, and not aware of your own self: you are just simply Aware of the subject or object in and of itself with no mental content about—or inner reaction to—that of which you are aware.

In the early stages of it, usually there are interruptions: you’ll experience samadhi for five to twenty seconds at a time during a normal attention span, then have a thought or two, then go back into it. If this happens, it is what Patanjali calls “samadhi with seed,” meaning you experience samadhi but mix it with other instants of being aware of your surroundings, yourself, or a thought or emotion.

In “samadhi without seed,” your everyday internal self, personality, thoughts, emotions, and desires fall away. This experience, too, can happen for a few seconds at a time—but also can last for moments, hours, or even longer. If, for example, you go into it in meditation when you are ignoring objects, yourself, or others, then you’ll continue to be absorbed in it without recognizing or thinking of these objects or subjects.

If, on the other hand, as sometimes happens, you enter seedless samadhi while interacting with objects, yourself, or others, an object or subject may remain in your peripheral attention, but will not be the center of your conscious attention, which will be absorbed in the fullness of samadhi itself. You may even continue to interact with the object or another person automatically, performing in a perfectly normal way, but you will do so (in this kind of samadhi without seed) with no loss of consciousness of your absorption state. You simply merge with consciousness itself, and it does the rest for you, seemingly out of nowhere.

Comment: What is the experience of samadhi without seed? If you first have it only for a few seconds at a time, you may find it difficult to quite know when you have fallen into it, except for the great calm and absence of mental workings: your mind “like a clear glass of water” has become so purified that it disappears, collapsing upon itself and disappearing. You have a strong, sustained Awareness, but without mind, thought, memory, emotion, or desire. It feels as if you are aware of Awareness. In the lower levels of seedless samadhi, you may become, for a short or a longer time, like a camera seeing and hearing others, even feeling the physical sensations of the body, while you only are Aware of the current of the flow of absorption.

As for samadhi with seed, it is not an unusual occurrence in the real world. As B.K.S. Iyengar notes, when “a musician loses himself and is completely engrossed in his music, or an inventor makes his discoveries when devoid of ego, or a painter transcends himself with colour, shade, and brush…they glimpse samadhi.”

Samadhi with seed is comparable to the lowest or simplest levels of Buddhist nirvana. In Mahayana Buddhism it is called “natural” and “non-abiding nirvana”; in Theravada Buddhism, “stream-entry.” (See Sutras 1.47-1.50 and “Appendix D.”) As Vietnamese Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh remarks, “You can touch nirvana right now by breathing, walking, and drinking your tea in mindfulness…. Everything and everyone is dwelling in nirvana.”*

Mystics in many religions have described samadhi long before the beginning of written records. They’ve used a variety of names. The goal is to sustain it for longer periods of time.

Some readers of these final three sutras become confused by the use of the phrases about concentrating on the “subject or object.” Patanjali understood there are many ways to reach the clear mind of samadhi, whether in an interrupted or a clear flow. Again, in his first chapter, he describes thirty ways (see them listed at the very beginning and in 3.11). Thus the “object” or “subject” that helps you arrive at samadhi—whether pure concentration, the image of a saint, the saying of a chant, or otherwise—may be very different from some other person’s object or subject.

But once you are there, once you discover the purity of the awareness and establish its continuous flow, you’ll have no question. You will have discovered a specific experience of consciousness that is beyond all temporary objects and subjects.

You may discover it at first through a shading of it that feels completely empty, as in some forms of nirvana. Or perhaps it is simply the leading creative edge of awareness in the Now. Or it might contain great waves of Bliss, Peace, or Strength. But these are just tinges or colorings of the experience. The sustained continuous flow is, or leads to, pure absorption into consciousness itself.

Sanskrit Text: Patanjali, c. 400 BCE-400 CE

Contact: richard.jewell.net/contact.htm. - Free Use Policy

Natural URL: https://www.richardjewell.org/YogaSutras/default.htm

See other works by Richard at RichardJewell.org/Meditation

About the Author