Thursday, September 19, 2013

The Restless River of Yoga (Itro!

Over the next two weeks, I will be giving my attention back to Yoga-taragin
commentary to Goraka-ataka as this project needs to be completed, and all that is left
to do is a final redaction of the text and translation, and writing an introduction. So I will
try to communicate those portions that I think are important or which affected me as I
was doing the work.
I must confess that there has been a considerable change in lifestyles between the way I
was living in Rishikesh at Swami Rama Sadhaka rama and the way I am right now in
!rindavan. "he three months at SRS were fairly intense. #ost of that time I spent in at
least verbal silence, although I still used the internet. $ut even in that I was far more
disciplined than I am now, as I kept my personal computer internet free. $esides that, I
regularly meditated three hours a day and did hatha-yoga on a regular basis, including
many of the disciplines that are described in the book I was working on.
Since coming back, one of the major problems %% besides this opening out to the external
world through the internet, etc. %% has been the return of my knee problem. I was sitting
for up to an hour in padmasana at SRS, but here I twisted my knee and that has made it
impossible to even sit in siddhasana. &lthough theoretically one should be able to do
pranayama and meditation while sitting on a raised platform, for me it is really a
complete letdown and disappointment. It has meant that the intensity of practices has
really just fallen tremendously. 'hanting japa while pacing, etc., is really not as effective,
as I have been saying for years and years now. "he situation has forced me to coast in
terms of sadhana and turn to more serious writing, which is od(s will I suppose.
In one sense I am trying to come to terms with my experience in SRS and as I as I go
through this final redaction of the text and composition of the introduction, I will try to
describe how I engaged in those practices and what I got from them.
$efore I do that, I would like to say a word or two about the mixing of mellows that
comes from being a bhakta in the !aishnava tradition and combining it with yoga. "he
$hagavata )urana contains a great deal of material from various strands of the yoga
school, and indeed the yoga school is universal enough within *induism that it can barely
be separated. )ractically speaking the reciprocal influences of the different practices and
philosophical systems are so universal that it is often hard to unravel them.
&t the same time, there are clear lines of difference. "he $hagavata also clearly states
that no system of spiritual practice is as effective in pleasing od as bhakti+
na sdhayati m yogo na skhya dharma uddhava
na svdhyyas tapas tygo yath bhakti mamorjit
#y dear ,ddhava, the unalloyed devotional service rendered to #e by #y devotees
brings #e under their control. I cannot be thus controlled by those engaged in mystic
yoga, S-.khya philosophy, pious work, !edic study, austerity or renunciation. /S$
00.01.234
So what kind of faithless apostate am I that I have taken to a non%devotional practice, or
at least have accommodated and adapted yoga practices into my bhakti sdhana5
"o some extent these 6uestions have been answered here and there on this blog. #aybe
this blog written early in my stay in Rishikesh will answer somewhat how I had been
thinking about it then. "herefore be a yogi, O &rjuna. Or another discussion of the Sixth
'hapter of the ita. &nd since this is one of the least read articles on my entire blog, I
will include it here, #indfulness.
& couple of others+ & few words about sitting. &nd one last Rasika $hakti and 7oga.
Of course there are many more, as over the past six years I have spent considerable time
in Rishikesh and had a great deal of opportunity to associate with the very learned and
gentle yogi, Swami !eda $harati, who is truly a uni6ue individual whom I much admire
and from whom I have learned a great deal. I worked on re%editing his first volume of
Yoga-sutra, and indeed he is still asking me to help him do the third and fourth volumes,
which as a scholar, I really should, for my own personal edification.
"he principal point, I think, is that whatever one(s particular spiritual practice, the goal is
to control the mind, to focus it and 6uieten it down. 8ssentially, you want to focus the
mind on od, however you conceive of od. &nd yoga is the science of perfecting the
control and concentration of the mind. If one thinks that concentrating on externals is the
most effective way of doing so, he will eventually find out, in my opinion, that all yoga is
about the 9internal organ9 /antakaraa4. "hough the bhakti-yoga methods tend to differ
in certain fundamental ways, the yogic techni6ues are 6uite useful and, in my opinion,
complementary %% if one has a clear sense of what one is doing.
Since #arch, Swami !eda has been in silence after taking a vow to not speak for five
years, but he told me several times /in writing4 that he never wants to speak again. *e
was :3 years old when he took the vow, and as he says, he has been speaking publicly,
lecturing and teaching, since he was seven years old. *e continues to write, but his
lecturing days are finished.
I can tell you 6uite honestly that in the three months I was in Rishikesh this time, I could
person observe and experience the depth of interiori;ation to which his silence has taken
him. I meditated for one hour and took my evening meal with him each day during this
period, besides which I worked in his personal library, often at the same time that he did.
*e has always shown great affection for me, making the entire six years, and particularly
these three month at SRS particularly memorable.
<hen I said to Swamiji that with all the responsibilities of a worldwide organi;ation of
disciples and managing the Rishikesh ashram, what to speak of his duties as chancellor of
the *I*" ,niversity in =ehra =un, he answered that he had been planning to go into
silence since he was a child. *e has, it is true, always been an outspoken />4 advocate for
silence, and visitors to the ashram are encouraged to take short vows of silence of one,
three or ten days. 8xperienced disciples are often asked to undergo longer vratas of 20, 13
or ?3 days.
$ut in all the years that I was there, I resisted silence to the point that I was even
considered by some people there to be something of a nuisance. "his time, though, it
became clear to me early on in my stay that it would be tremendously helpful to me in
getting the translation work done and in order to get a bit scientific here and personally
investigate to the extent I could the practices that are spoken of in Goraka-ataka and
Yoga-taragi, that it would be best to avoid sociali;ing as much as possible. "he hot
season is a 6uiet time at SRS, with only the most serious and full%time residents on%site,
so it was an easy decision to make, though not always easy to follow. "he idea was to
remain in mauna until the work was finished. &lthough I did not do so as perfectly as
those who attempt it usually do, I can say that I got a little insight into the benefits of
keeping my mouth shut for an extended period of time.
I wrote a few reflections of the silence as I was going through it back at the time, none of
which are particularly insightful+ Silence /04, Silence /24, Silence /@4
Arom http+BBgurugorakhnath.blogspot.inB
Itrodu"tio to the Te#t
Goraka-ataka is a a small book of 233 verses, an early text from the CDtha%yoga
tradition. orakanDtha is one of the early founders of this particular branch of yoga,
called haha-yoga, which has since developed and become a widely popular set of
practices in the <estern world, though generally speaking it is limited to its aspect as a
kind of physical culture, i.e., dealing with physical postures or sanas. $ut its influence
had already spread throughout India well before coming west, as well as Cepal and "ibet
and beyond, primarily as a specific development or refinement in the older yoga systems
that are far more ancient.
"he Cepali orkhas take their entire jati name from orakanDtha or
orakhnath. =escendants of his line in $engal are called jugis or jogis and have the
surname Cath or =ebnath. In many other parts of India, the weaver caste, to which Eabir
belonged, also have a connection with the yogi line descended from him, the influence of
which is felt in many other ways also. &lthough currently the Cath sampradaya is much
smaller and less influential and has little to do with the current interest in hatha-yoga, it
does seems to be experiencing something of a revival. "he miraculous powers and
adventures of orakanDtha and his guru #atsyendranDtha are the stuff of legend that
kept the mythology of yogic siddhis alive throughout the centuries to even the present
day.
"he Goraka-ataka, being an early text from this tradition, has therefore attracted some
scholarly attention and various translations have been made. #ore recently, renewed
attempts have been made to establish what the original Goraka-ataka is or was, as
there are several books carrying that name, which differ considerably from each other. I
myself noticed this many years ago when I first read through the book and typed it out for
the rantha #andir in two different versions. $ut I did not delve into the problem or
make any attempt to resolve it at the time.
"hese variants of this same work also go under the names Goraka-paddhati, Goraka-
sahit and Viveka-mrtaa. In particular, Goraka-paddhati /)4, having been
published several times from the !enkateshwar )ress in #umbai, has more or less
become the dominant version of the text and most resembles the Goraka-ataka used by
our anonymous 7" author, even though there are significant differences of verse order
and reading. "he most important problem being that though the book is widely known as
a ataka, i.e, a work of 033 verses, it nearly always contains 233, or two atakas. $riggs
in his Goraksha and the Kanphat Yogis /0?@@4 translated the first hundred of Goraka-
paddhati and called it Goraka-ataka. Researchers at the Fonavla 7oga Institute in )une
claimed on studying a large number of manuscripts to have solved the mystery and in
0?:G published a version of 033 verses that they claimed to be the original.
<e were 6uite fortunate that while our work was going on, we had a visit from )rof.
#ark Singleton, who had come to India to do some research on the Viveka-mrtaa
/!#4, particularly investigating a manuscript in Rajasthan that he had caught wind of. *e
put me in touch with Hames #allinson who has also done research in the matter of the
original Gorak a-ataka and has come up with 6uite a different conclusion than that of
the Fonavla researchers.
#allinson(s conclusions are based primarly on the evidence of the earliest manuscript of
the text, which he identifies with !#. In his estimation, verses were added to the other
versions, which were then given a variant of the name Goraka-ataka. "hen since the
problem arose of too many verses, abbreviated versions were made, such as the Fonavla
edition. #allinson(s original I is a completely different text from this set of texts and
bears greater similarity to the Yoga-kual paniad, with which it has some :3 verses
in common. &s the content of the two works diverges, we have not preoccupied ourselves
with this I, even though it would be tempting to attempt an in%depth comparison. $ut I
will leave such work to )rof. #allinson, who is no doubt far better e6uipped for such a
task than I.
"he popularity and influence of !# can be seen in the number of verses drawn from it
that found their way into some of the 7oga ,panisads, particularly the Yoga-bindu and
Yoga-!umai, as well as in the "aha-yoga-pradpik /*7)4 in both its four%chapter
and expanded ten%chapter version, published simply as "aha-pradpik #*)4. <e have
given a concordance of the verses from these various sources in an appendix at the end of
this book.
&s is to be expected, the variants in the readings between these various versions are
considerable, but since our primary objective has been to establish the correct reading of
the 7" and to give a translation of it, we have only commented on the reading of the
verse when it was felt that our author had unfortunately been saddled with an incorrect or
distorted reading of the original that corrupted his understanding. In some cases, this has
forced him to make somewhat convoluted interpretations that would have easily been
avoided had a better text been available to him.
J J J J J
<hen I began teaching Sanskrit at SRS, I learned from Swami !eda $harati of his
attempts to collect a commentary on the Goraka-ataka called Yoga-taragi. *is
guru, Swami Rama, had praised this commentary and asked him that if he ever could
manage to publish it, he would be most appreciative. Swami !eda had been working on
this project for some time and had finally managed to find four manuscripts in various
librariesKfrom $enares, Cepal, #ysore and $engal. Of these four, I looked at the one
from $enares, which in actual fact was a fairly recent /0?@34 =evanagari copy of a
"elugu script held in the &dyar library in 'hennai. Of our four manuscripts, this was the
only one that was complete, covering the full 233 verses. One of the evident problems
related to the Goraka-ataka is that there are not 033 verses as the title suggests, but
twice that number. $riggs, for instance, who published a version of the work in his book
on the orakh )anthis, took the first hundred verses as being the entire text. It seems that
others also followed this instinctive approach to the book.
I also typed out the $enares manuscript several years ago, but it was full of mistakes that
were difficult for me on a 6uick reading to decipher. Ainally, through the work in
particular of $ibek $anerjee of the &siatic Society of $engal, three of the manuscripts
were collated and variant readings noted. "hese three manuscripts only covered the first
ataka, but the fourth, the one from the Cepali government collection happily provided
alternate readings for the second ataka, without which it would have been very difficult
to establish correct readings.
J J J J J
So my first task was to come up with a clear and correct text. One of the first things that
was noticeable about the 7" was that there was clearly an ur%text which had taken two
directions due to the emendations and additions of later scribes. #ost of these are not
major, but in some cases they are not in agreement.
"hus we had three #SS for the first ataka, only two for the second. Our = manuscript
/from Cepal4 was a terrible mess, yet somehow or other it often was correct exactly in
those places where our & text was confusing. If not correct, it was mistaken in ways that
complemented & and made it possible to extract a decent reading.
<hat immediately became apparent is that any hope of finding an ur%text was not tenable
with the materials at hand.
It is clear that the #umbai Goraka-paddhati mentioned above, which the Fonavla
editors call the 9!ulgate9 edition, made use of the Yoga-taragin and $la-prabodhin in
its *indi translation. Some of those details are imported from an external source other
than Yoga-taragin in this translation, such as the description of a meditation on
CDrDyaa in one verse, but we did not have access to this $la-prabodhin, which I
suspect has some common ground with the 7". "his is admittedly another lacuna in the
research done on this project.
Cevertheless, even within the #SS that we do have of 7", there are sufficient variants
that we can recogni;e independent interpolations made on an earlier text. So it is 6uite
possible that an original document was elaborated on and emended by various subse6uent
copyists. In view of that and because we had limited materials to work with, we
determined that the best way forward was to simply come up with a text that scanned,
i.e., yielded syntactically comprehensible language that added the most insight into the
original I "hus we have adjudged each individual variant reading for the one that fits
this description.
& second major problem in editing and translating the text and commentary comes from
the clear inade6uacies in the text that the commentator was using. It is clear from the
variegated destinations that the I has known /please see the appendix+ 'oncordance of
texts of I4, that a wide variety of variant readings can be collected, not simply from the
!# or I, but also from the texts that directly 6uote or copy these sources, such as
7',, *7) and *). I have refrained from providing all these alternative readings.
&t any rate, we have not gone into this tangled web of trying to establish an original
reading for I. Cevertheless, here and there we have commented on the verses to point
out that the reading our commentator was dealing with was clearly not the best or most
appropriate reading.
J J J J J
<e know absolutely nothing about our commentator, nor can we make anything more
that the most general conclusions about his time nor place. "he only indications that we
can use to divine anything about him are the texts he 6uotes here and there in his
commentary. "hese are the following+
Gobhila-ghya-s%tra and &iraymta. In probably the only digression from the subject
of yoga, the commentator goes into a discussion of the compound word
s%ry!andramasau, refering to )Dini and these two works on karma-ka to make a
somewhat arcane point. In discussing mantras, he makes it clear that he does not approve
of non%$rDhmaas chanting the SDvitrL%mantra, recommending that they chant the
mantras of their own sect, but other than there is no particular bias to $rDhmaism. /'f.
2.24, though it seems clear that he was himself a $rDhmaa.
'nasollsa+ "he work of this name is a commentary on the (akim%rti-
stotra attributed to IakarDcDrya, written by SureMvarDcDrya, one of the four direct
disciples of the founder of the &dvaita school. <e were able to trace these verses.
$esides these citations of SureMvarDcDrya, there are two references to NcDrya%caraa and
one to IDkarDcDrya, as well as a verse introduced as Erishna speaking to Canda, none of
which we have been able to identify.
&radya-pura) Only one verse which we could not find in our edition.
&itya-ntha-paddhati) "his text is not available to our knowledge. It clearly covers the
same territory as texts like *iddha-siddhnta-paddhati and *iddha-siddhnta-sagraha.
"he 7" seems to assume that this work, also being ascribed to the Cath tradition /SS) is
usually attributed to orakhnath himself4 is in agreement with I, which is not the case.
"he fragments that our author cites from CC) also reveal some minor differences
between these three paddhati texts.
Other yoga works to which our author refers are Yoga-!intmai, Yoga-sra and Yogi-
yj+avalkya. Of these three, we were only able to get access to the last. 7" only refers to
this work to discuss the ten yamas and ten niyamas, making up for their absence in the
I. Other than one verse fragment, nothing from later texts like the "aha-yoga-
pradpik are to be found here /see I 0.:24. "his particular verse is likely not original to
*7), which is a compendium drawn from numerous extant sources including I itself,
than which it is later. "here are of course occasional 6uotes from the Yoga-s%tra /0.:?4 as
well as the occasional paraphrase.
"o be continued.
)osted by Hagadananda =as at 00+2O &#
Fabels+ &siatic Society of $engal, $ibek $anerjee, orakhnath, oraksha%shataka, Hames
#allinson, #ark Singleton, Rishikesh, silence, Swami !eda $harati, !iveka%martanda
3 "ommets$
Subrata said...
Hay Citai,
=ear Hagat Hi, just curious about intermixing on &dvaita / Shankar 4 tradition with
7oga philosophy in Swami !eda(s tradition. *istorically Sankhya B 7oga system
belongs to dualist nature. Arom any pure Sankhya B 7oga unaltered tradition
would deny Shankar(s #ayavada )hilosophy as much as any !aishnava tradition
would do. SankhyaB 7oga tradition would use same arguments, citations P
conclusions against Shankara(s are much like the same as any other Con%
Shankar(s tradition / including various !aishnava tradition 4 would use. 8ven pure
Shankhya B 7oga tradition historically refer Shankara as )rachchanno $udhdhist. I
am curious to know your thought of intermixing of Shankara(s advaita doctrine
into Swami !eda(s lineage or vice versa.
On other note have to had a chance to go through )atanjal 7ogasutra explanation
by Shankhya 7ogacharyya Swami *ariharananda &ranya. *e was one of the
authority in Sakhya 7oga School. "his book is one of the text book followed in
#aster degree program in different Indian ,niversity including 'alcutta
,niversity.
Hay Citai
Subrata
"uesday, 21 September, 230@
&nonymous said...
&ny reply Hagat Hi for my Query posted above5 <ould like to know your view.
$"<, can you do an analysis between 7ogic =hyan / including dharana,dhyan,
drubanusmriti, Samadhi / both sabikalpa P nirkalpa 4 with FilaSmaran what we
audiya(s do. In 7ogasutra the highest state has been referred as Cirbikalpa,
whereas our oal is to enter Cityalia which is Swabikalpa Samdhi. So how
highest state as explained by )atanjali can be reconciled with $hakti oal.
$ecause as per the )atanjali at the level of Cirbikalpa the chitta annihilated / loya
of chitta 4 whereas we need chitta to take part in premseva. &s $ramhaSutra states
all "attwa has to be reconciled, how do we view this two opposite stages of
Samadhi.
Hay Citai
Subrata
<ednesday, 3? October, 230@
Hagadananda =as said...
http+BBjagadanandadas.blogspot.comB233:B30Bmadhusudana%sarasati%advaita%vada%
and.html
"hursday, 03 October, 230@
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