1.9 · The Resting Arrow

Imagination is knowledge that follows from words, with no real object behind it.

Word by word

śabda

word, sound

jñāna

knowledge

anupātī

following upon

vastu

a real thing, an object

śūnyaḥ

empty of

vikalpaḥ

imagination, verbal construction

Where it fits

The third movement sits between the first two: Vyāsa says it is neither valid knowing nor error (Woods p. 26). It matters later in the pāda. At 1.42 the first kind of coalescence is still mixed with this word-built knowing, and at 1.43 it falls away.

Reading

The third movement is the hardest to name in English: translators give imagination, conceptualisation or verbal construction. Vikalpa is knowing built from words alone. It is neither valid knowledge nor plain error, Vyāsa says, yet we use it constantly in speech. His examples come from grammar. We say 'the arrow stands still' as if standing still were something the arrow does, when it only means the arrow no longer moves. Much of our thinking runs on such useful abstractions mistaken for things.

Vyāsa

“Imagination does not count as valid knowing, nor does it count as error. … We say, 'The arrow stands still, will stand still, has stood still.' Yet when motion stops, only the bare sense of the verb is understood.”

Vyāsa's Yoga-bhāṣya, the oldest commentary. New translation from the Sanskrit, with reference to Woods (1914), p. 26–27.

Practice

Notice one large abstract word that ran your day: 'success', 'the economy', 'my future', 'failure'. Ask what real, touchable thing it points to right now. Write down what you find, even if the answer is 'nothing yet'.

A question to sit with

Which word are you treating as a thing?

Key ideas

vṛtti (movement of the mind)