4.20 · One Glance

Nor can it grasp both itself and its object at the same moment.

Word by word

eka-samaye

at one time

ca

and

ubhaya

both

anavadhāraṇam

not grasping

Where it fits

A second argument after 4.19: the mind cannot grasp both itself and its object in one moment. Vyāsa aims this at the momentarists (kṣaṇikavāda), Buddhist thinkers for whom a thing's being is itself its action. The natural reply, that the next moment of mind knows the previous one, is taken up in 4.21.

Reading

The mind cannot know an object and know itself in the same instant. Try to watch yourself looking, and the looking changes. Vyāsa aims this at the momentarists (Buddhist, as Vācaspati makes clear), for whom a thing's very being is at once the action and its agent, so a mind-moment could know itself. Patañjali's point, part of the second step, is that something else must know the mind: the seer of 4.18. One way to read this today: you don't have to act and watch yourself acting at the same time.

Vyāsa

“Nor can the mind make out both its own form and another's in a single moment. The momentarist holds that whatever comes to be is itself the action and itself what performs it.”

Vyāsa's Yoga-bhāṣya, the oldest commentary. New translation from the Sanskrit, with reference to Woods (1914), p. 330.

Practice

Read a paragraph while trying to watch yourself reading. Notice how the meaning slips. Then read it again with full attention, and only afterwards notice that you were reading. One at a time works better.

A question to sit with

Can you give this one thing your whole attention?

Key ideas

citta (the mind-field), puruṣa (the seer, the self)