Key idea of the Yoga Sūtras
avidyā · ignorance
Mis-seeing: taking what is passing, impure, painful and not-self for their opposites.
Avidyā is the first and root affliction. It is not a lack of information. It is taking the impermanent, impure, painful and not-self to be permanent, pure, pleasant and self (2.5). Ignorance is the field in which the other four afflictions grow, whether they are dormant, thin, interrupted or fully active (2.4). It is also the cause of the joining of seer and seen (2.24), and so, through that joining, of the suffering still to come (2.16–2.17). This places the whole problem in a mistake of seeing, which is why the remedy is a way of seeing: unwavering discernment (2.26). Without ignorance there is no joining, and that release is the seer's liberation (2.25). For practice, the four errors of 2.5 make a useful mirror: where am I treating something passing as lasting, or something that is not me as myself?
Vyāsa
“Precisely so, undifferentiated-consciousness is not a source-of-valid-ideas nor the negation of a source-of-valid-ideas, but another kind of thinking the reverse of knowledge.”
Vyāsa's Yoga-bhāṣya in J. H. Woods' translation (1914), p. 112.
How it has been read
Woods translates avidyā as 'undifferentiated-consciousness'. Vyāsa compares the word to a-mitra, 'foe', which is not the mere absence of a friend but its opposite (on 2.5): avidyā is a positive mis-knowing, not a gap.
A common misreading
Avidyā is often heard as lack of education. The text means a specific, active mistake about what is lasting, pure, pleasant and self (2.5), which learning alone does not remove.
Where the text defines it
- 2.3 The afflictions are ignorance, I-am-ness, attachment, aversion and clinging to life.
- 2.4 Ignorance is the field of the others, whether they are dormant, thin, interrupted or fully active.
- 2.5 Ignorance is taking the impermanent, impure, painful and not-self to be permanent, pure, pleasant and self.
- 2.24 Its cause is ignorance.
- 2.25 Without ignorance there is no joining. This release is the seer's liberation.