Key idea of the Yoga Sūtras
aṣṭāṅga · the eight limbs
The eight limbs of yoga, from ethical restraints to absorption.
Aṣṭāṅga, the eight limbs, is Patañjali's outline of the path: restraints (yama), observances (niyama), posture, breath control, withdrawal of the senses, concentration, meditation and absorption (2.29). The limbs are introduced as the means to discernment: practising them, impurity wears away and the light of knowledge shines, up to discernment (2.28). The five restraints are non-violence, truthfulness, not stealing, chastity and non-possessiveness (2.30). When they are not limited by kind of being, place, time or circumstance, they are the great vow (2.31). The five observances are purity, contentment, discipline, study and devotion to Īśvara (2.32). When harmful thoughts trouble the mind, the method is to cultivate their opposite (2.33–2.34), and each restraint and observance bears its own fruit (2.35–2.45). The first five limbs are outer. The last three, held together on one object, are saṃyama, inner compared with the rest (3.4, 3.7), yet still outer compared with seedless absorption (3.8).
Vyāsa
“The aids to yoga are the eight which are about to be enumerated. As the result of following them up there is a dwindling or cessation of the five-sectioned [ii. 3] misconception. Upon the dwindling of this follows the manifestation of focused thinking.”
Vyāsa's Yoga-bhāṣya in J. H. Woods' translation (1914), p. 172.
How it has been read
Vyāsa's sentence on 2.29 can be parsed two ways: Woods reads it as saying the limbs are to be followed in succession (Woods p. 177); Rama Prasad as 'we shall now describe their nature and practice in order' (Rama Prasad 1912, p. 155). Vyāsa calls non-violence the root of the other restraints and observances (on 2.30). Vācaspati Miśra adds that practice, non-attachment, faith and energy also count among the aids (on 2.29).
A common misreading
Aṣṭāṅga is now also the name of a modern posture-based style. In the text the eight limbs are an ethical, bodily and meditative whole, and posture is one limb of eight (2.29).
Where the text defines it
- 2.28 By practising the limbs of yoga, impurity wears away and the light of knowledge shines, up to discernment.
- 2.29 Restraints, observances, posture, breath control, withdrawal of the senses, concentration, meditation and absorption are the eight limbs.
- 2.30 The restraints are non-violence, truthfulness, not stealing, chastity and non-possessiveness.
- 2.31 When they are not limited by kind of being, place, time or circumstance, they are universal: the great vow.
- 2.32 The observances are purity, contentment, discipline, study and devotion to Īśvara.
- 3.7 These three are inner limbs, compared with those before.