I. Samādhi Pāda · The five movements (1.5–1.11)
1.11 · Footprints in the Dew
Memory is not letting go of something once experienced.
Word by word
- anubhūta
- experienced
- viṣaya
- object
- asaṃpramoṣaḥ
- not slipping away; not stolen or added to
- smṛtiḥ
- memory
Where it fits
Memory closes the list and ties it together: Vyāsa says memories arise from all five movements (Woods p. 30). He ends that all these movements must be stilled, and that from their stilling comes absorption with or without an object (Woods p. 32). That raises the question 1.12 answers: by what means?
Reading
Memory closes the list of five, and its key word comes from a root meaning 'to steal'. Woods renders it 'not adding surreptitiously': memory keeps the experience without slipping in anything new. Vyāsa says memories arise from all five movements, memory included, and that in dreams what is remembered is imagined, while in waking it is not. Every movement carries pleasure, pain or confusion, he adds, which is why all five must be stilled. Memory is the soil the others grow back from.
Vyāsa
“Memory is of two kinds: what is remembered is either imagined or not imagined. In a dream, what is remembered is imagined. In waking life, it is not.”
Vyāsa's Yoga-bhāṣya, the oldest commentary. New translation from the Sanskrit, with reference to Woods (1914), p. 31.
Practice
Pick one memory that surfaced today without being called. Write it down as plainly as you can. Then underline anything you may have added since: a motive, a tone of voice, a meaning. Notice what remains. If the memory is a painful one, choose a lighter one, or stop and come back to the breath.
A question to sit with
What are you carrying from before?
Where commentators disagree
What does asaṃpramoṣa mean: 'not stealing' or 'not forgetting'?
- Vyāsa
- Explains how memory arises from the impressions left by experience and how it differs in dream and waking. He does not gloss the word asaṃpramoṣa itself. (Woods 1914, p. 31)
- Vācaspati Miśra
- Derives saṃpramoṣa from the root muṣ, 'to steal'. Memory keeps to its own object; taking in anything beyond it would be a 'stealing' from other experiences. Woods' 'not-adding-surreptitiously' follows this gloss. (Woods 1914, p. 32)
- Bhoja
- Memory is 'not letting go': not allowing an object once known to escape from the mind. (Tatya 1885, p. 9; Mitra 1883, wisdomlib on 1.11)
- Dominik Wujastyk
- Argues that 'stealing' comes from the grammarians' list of roots, followed by later commentators. In Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit asaṃpramoṣa simply means 'not forgetting' and is often paired with smṛti, so the sūtra means that memory is not forgetting what has been experienced. (Wujastyk 2018, pp. 29–32)