Patanjali's Yoga Sutras As A Treasure Map, by Ben Lehman

This blog is written by Ben Lehman, participant in Balanced Rock's 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training.

We experience the world though the filter of our own perceptions, and as a participant in the WildYoga training I am no exception. As someone enamored with exploring new territories and endlessly curious about what may lie around the proverbial river bend, introduction to the Yoga Sutras struck me as an adventure involving texts as ancient, mysterious, and influential as anything Indiana Jones would have braved a pit of snakes to uncover. Approaching my world as if on a perpetual adventure gave these succinct but meaning-rich verses an air of exotic excitement and as each syllable of Sanskrit resonated from my lips –samskara, purusha, citta, Samadhi, samyama, santosa- the sense of going on a treasure hunt steadily built.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.” – William Blake

Patanjali (and the unnamed Yogis, yogic scholars, and practitioners who came before him) may have felt, as I can imagine, that nothing could be a greater joy/gift/state of existence than to perceive or somehow gain awareness of everything, or as Alan Watts puts it, the whole blinkin’ cosmos. The shrewd yogic understanding is that each of us, underneath our superficial physical and mental layers, actually consist of or are in a sense apertures through which the entire cosmos views itself. From this philosophical point of view, yoga represents a means by which people can “cleanse the doors of perception,” or in other words “clean out the static from the attic” and come closer to perceiving things are they really are/reality as it really is... thus achieving the greatest treasure available to consciousness (as opposed to a treasure available merely to one’s physical existence/body, since the understanding is that our physical manifestation is simply a crude shell of matter and insignificant in comparison with our true self as part of universal consciousness, purusha. The sutras are Patanjali’s written distillation of a great oral tradition that outlines both the basic philosophy of the functioning of the mind as well as the disciplines and the practices which can result in control of the mind and subsequently awareness of the true self, ultimate bliss/peace/oneness with the universe. So, if we imagine the tenets of philosophical belief as landmarks in a mental geography and the attendant practices and disciplines as a sort of dotted line along which those seeking the ultimate treasure may proceed towards enlightening self-knowledge, we arrive at an image not unlike a treasure map. For each yogi(ni) the “X” may be found at a different spot depending on his/her beginning point and the degree to which the practices, disciplines, and underlying philosophies are adhered to in each individual’s life.

Although the author has done a great service in presenting so much material in so short a document, the real work is that of the yogis who encounter its teachings. As a mapmaker of old may have put countless hours into the craft, placing each town and trade route and dangerous region down accurately on the parchment, the real work remains to be done by those who seek the treasure.
I feel grateful and privileged to be on that path.