English
As soon as the yogin can detach himself from his lower self of passions and desires, he uplifts himself to a higher universe, where the distinction of meum and teum, mine and thine, ceases and the interest of the individual loses its personal limitations and becomes enlarged and universal- ized and identified with the interests of all living beings. Looked at from this point of view, yoga is sometimes defined in the Gita as the outlook of equality (samatva)'. In the Gita the word yoga has not attained any definite technical sense, as it did in Patafijali’s Yoga-sitra, and, in con- sequence, there is not one definition of yoga, but many. Thus yoga is used in the sense of karma-yoga, or the duty of performance of actions, in v. 1, and it is distinguished from the samkhya path, or the path of knowledge, in 11. 39. The word karma-yoga is men- tioned in 111. 3 as the path of the yogis, and it is referred to in Il. 7, V.2 and x11. 24. The word buddhi-yoga is also used at least three times, in 11. 49, X. 10 and xvill. 57, and the bhakti-yoga _ | also is used at least once, in xIv. 26. The one meaning of yoga that _ | suits all these different contexts seems to be “association.” It has | already been said that this primary meaning of the word is the || central idea of yoga in the Gita. One of the main teachings of 1 samatvam yoga ucyate, 11. 48. 29-2 452 The Philosophy of the Bhagavad-giia [cH. the Gita is that duties should be performed, and it is this obli- gatoriness of the performance of duties that in the Gita is under- stood by karma-yoga. But, if such duties are performed from motives of self-interest or gain or pleasure, the performance could not lead to any higher end. It is advised, therefore, that they should be performed without any motive of gain or pleasure. So the proper way in which a man should perform his duties, and at the same time keep himself clean and untarnished by the good and bad results, the pleasures and sorrows, the praise and blame proceeding out of his own deeds, is to make himself de- tached from all desires for the fruits of actions. To keep oneself detached from the desires for the fruits of actions is therefore the real art (kausala) of performing one’s duties; for it is only in this way that a man can make himself fit for the higher union with God or his own higher self. Here, then, we have a definition of yoga as the art of performing one’s duties (yogah karmasu kausalam —iI. 50). The art of performing one’s duties, e.g. the art of keeping oneself unattached, cannot however be called yoga on its own account; it is probably so-called only because it is the indis- pensable step towards the attainment of the real yoga, or union with God. It is clear, therefore, that the word yoga has a gradual evolution to a higher and higher meaning, based no doubt on the primary root-meaning of “‘association.” It is important to note in this connection that the process of pranayama, regarded as indispensable in Patajfijali’s Yoga, is not considered so necessary either for karma-yoga, buddhi-yoga, or for the higher kind of yoga, e.g. communion with God. It has already been mentioned that the reference to pranayama is found only in connection with some kinds of spbstitution-meditations which have nothing to do with the main concept of yoga in the Gita. The expression samadhi is used thrice in the noun form in the Gi#d, in II. 44, 53 and 54, and three times in the verb form, in VI. 7, XII. 9 and xvii. 11; but the verb forms are not used in the technical sense of Patafijali, but in the simple root-meaning of sam +a@+4/ dha, “to give” or “to place” (arpana or sthapana). In two cases (11. 44 and 53) where the word samadhi is used as a noun it has been interpreted by both Sankara and Sridhara as meaning the object in which the mind, is placed or to which it is directed for communion, viz. God!. the author of the Gita is well aware of 1 In 11. 44, however, Sankara considers this object of mind to be antahkarana i ( | XIV] Gita and Yoga 453 | the moral conflict in man and thinks that it is only by our efforts to come into touch with our higher self that the littleness of | passions and desires for fruits of actions and the preference of )our smaller self-interests can be transcended. For, once man is in touch with his highest, he is in touch with God. He has then a broader and higher vision of man and his place in nature, and so he identifies himself with God and finds-that he has no special_ Cinterest_of his own to serve. The low and the high, the sinful and the virtuous, are the same in his eyes; he perceives God in all things and all things in God, and it is this state of com- munion that is the real yoga of the Gita; and it is because in this state all inequalities of race, creed, position, virtue and vice, high and low vanish, that this superior realization of universal equality is also called yoga. Not only is this union with God called yoga, but God Himself is called Yogesvara, or the Lord of communion. As a result of this union, the yogin enjoys supreme bliss and ecstatic joy, and is free from the least touch of sorrow or pain; and this absolute freedom from pain or the state of bliss, being itself a result of yoga, is also called yoga. From the above survey it is clear that the yoga of the Gita is quite different from the yoga of Patafijali, and it does not seem at all probable that the Gita was aware of Patajijali’s yoga or the technical terms used by him}. ~~ The treatment of yoga in the Gitd is also entirely different from its treatment in almost all the Upanisads. The Katha Upanisad speaks of sense-control as being yoga; but sense-control in the Gita is only a preliminary to yoga and not itself yoga. Most of the yoga processes described in the other Upanisads either speak of yoga with six accessories (sad-anga yoga) or of yoga with eight accessories (astaiga-yoga), more or less after the manner of Patafijali. They introduce elaborate details not only of breath- control or pranayama, but also of the nervous system of the body, ida, pingala and susumna, the nerve plexus, miladhara and other similar objects, after the manner of the later works on the Sat- or buddhi. But Sridhara considers this object to be God, and in 11. 53 Sankara and Sridhara are unanimous that the object, or the support of the union or communion of the mind, is God. 1 pasya me yogam aisvaram, 1X. 5, etam vibhiitim yogam ca, x. 7. In the above two passages the word yoga seems to have a different meaning, as it is used there in the sense of miraculous powers ; but even there the commentators Sankara and Sridhara take it to mean “association”’ (yukti) and interpret aisvaram yogam as “association of miraculous powers.” 454 The Philosophy of the Bhagavad-gita CR: cakra system. Thus the Amrta-nada enumerates after the manner of Patafijali the six accessories of yoga as restraint (pratyahara), concentration (dhyana), breath-control (pranayama), fixation (dha- rana), reasoning (tarka) and meditative absorption (samadh1), and describes the final object of yoga as ultimate loneliness of the self (kaivalya). The Amrta-bindu believes in an all-pervading Brahman as the only reality, and thinks that, since mind is the cause of all bondage and liberation, the best course for a yogin to adopt is to deprive the mind of all its objects and thus to stop the activity of the mind, and thereby to destroy it, and bring about Brahma- hood. Brahman is described here as being absolutely indeter- minate, uninferable, infinite and beginningless. The Ksurtka merely describes pranayama, dhyana, dharana and samadhi in association with the nerves, susumnd, pingala, etc. and the nerve plexuses. The Tejo-bindu is a Vedantic Upanisad of the ultra- monistic type, and what it calls yoga is only the way of realizing the nature of Brahman as one and as pure consciousness and the falsity of everything else. It speaks of this yoga as being of fifteen accessories (pafca-dasanga yoga). These are yama (sense-control through the knowledge that all is Brahman), ntyama (repetition of the same kinds of thoughts and the avoidance of dissimilar ones), tyaga (giving up of the world-appearance through the realization of Brahman), silence, a solitary place, the proper posture, steadiness of mind, making the body straight and erect, perceiving the world as Brahman (drk-sthiti), cessation of all states and breath-control (prana-samyamana), perceiving all objects of the mind as Brahman (pratyahara), fixing the mind always on Brahman (dharan@), self-meditation and the realization of oneself as Brahman. This is, however, a scheme of yoga quite different from that of Patafijali, as well as from that of the Gita. The Trisikha- brahmana speaks of a yoga with eight accessories (astariga-yoga), where the eight accessories, though the same in name as the eight accessories of Patafijali, are in reality different therefrom. Thus yama here means want of attachment (vairagya), ntyama means attachment to the ultimate reality (anuraktih pare tattve), Gsana means indifference to all things, prama-samyamana means the reali- zation of the falsity of the world, pratyahara means the inwardness of the mind, dharand means the motionlessness of the mind, dhyana means thinking of oneself as pure consciousness, and samadhi means forgetfulness of dhyanas. Yet it again includes XIV] Sadmkhya and Yoga in the Gita 455 within its yama and niyama almost all the virtues referred to by Patafijali. It also speaks of a number of postures after the hatha- yoga fashion, and of the movement of prana in the nerve plexuses, the ways of purifying the nerves and the processes of breath-control. . The object of yoga is here also the destruction of mind and the attainment of kaivalya.