4.23 · Two Lights

Coloured by both seer and seen, the mind can take in everything.

Word by word

draṣṭṛ

the seer

dṛśya

the seen

uparaktam

coloured by

cittam

the mind

sarva-artham

able to take in every object

Where it fits

Vyāsa: 'And so this is accepted.' Coloured by seer and seen, the mind seems to take in everything. He says the likeness misleads some into calling the mind conscious, and others into saying all is mind. Those who see rightly, he says, tell apart knower, knowing and known, the terms of 1.41.

Reading

The third step continues. The mind is coloured from two sides: by the seer, which makes it seem aware, and by the seen, which gives it content. Like a crystal, Vyāsa says, it takes in everything. Some, misled by this, call the mind itself conscious; others say the whole world is only mind. 'They deserve compassion,' he says, and Vācaspati, who names both as Buddhist schools, takes this as a reason to teach them. This is one side of a long debate with the Buddhist idealist schools, who argued the opposite case.

Vyāsa

“So this one mind, coloured by both the seer and the seen, appears as both object and subject. It takes on a form both conscious and unconscious. … Though unconscious, it seems conscious, and, like a crystal, it is said to take in everything.”

Vyāsa's Yoga-bhāṣya, the oldest commentary. New translation from the Sanskrit, with reference to Woods (1914), p. 334.

Practice

Look at a window at dusk, when you can see both the view outside and your own room reflected in the glass. Shift your focus between them. Then notice how a single thought holds both a 'me' and a 'that'.

A question to sit with

What is colouring your mind from each side?

Key ideas

citta (the mind-field), puruṣa (the seer, the self), samāpatti (coalescence), prakṛti (nature, the seen)