II. Sādhana Pāda · The afflictions (2.3–2.9)
2.5 · The Four Mistakes
Ignorance is taking the impermanent, impure, painful and not-self to be permanent, pure, pleasant and self.
Word by word
- anitya
- impermanent
- aśuci
- impure
- duḥkha
- painful
- anātmasu
- in what is not the self
- nitya
- permanent
- śuci
- pure
- sukha
- pleasant
- ātma
- self
- khyātiḥ
- seeing as, taking to be
- avidyā
- ignorance
Where it fits
Because ignorance is the field of the others (2.4), it is defined first and most exactly. Vyāsa stresses that it is not a mere absence of knowledge but a knowing of its own, the reverse of true knowledge (Woods p. 112). Its last mistake, taking the not-self for the self, becomes I-am-ness in 2.6.
Reading
Patañjali defines ignorance precisely, as four mistakes of seeing: taking what changes as permanent, the impure as pure, what brings pain as pleasure, and what is not the self as the self. It is not a lack of information. It is a misreading of what is right in front of us, and it is the field (2.4) in which every other affliction grows.
Vyāsa
“'This girl, lovely as the new moon's crescent … her eyes as long as blue lotus petals …': what does the one have to do with the other? This is how the mistaken idea arises that the impure is pure.”
Vyāsa's Yoga-bhāṣya, the oldest commentary. New translation from the Sanskrit, with reference to Woods (1914), p. 111.
Practice
Choose one thing you're attached to. Ask it four questions. Will it last? Is it as clean as it seems? Is there pain folded inside the pleasure? Is it really me?
A question to sit with
What are you taking to be permanent?
Key ideas
avidyā (ignorance), puruṣa (the seer, the self), duḥkha (suffering)