Key idea of the Yoga Sūtras
saṃyama · holding together
Concentration, meditation and absorption held together on one object.
Saṃyama is Patañjali's name for the last three limbs practised as one. Concentration is binding the mind to one place (3.1). Meditation is the unbroken flow of the idea held there (3.2). Absorption is that same meditation when only the object shines, as if empty of its own form (3.3). The three on a single object are saṃyama (3.4). Mastering it, the light of wisdom dawns (3.5), and it is applied in stages (3.6). Compared with the first five limbs these three are inner (3.7); compared with seedless absorption even they are outer (3.8). From 3.16 on, almost every sūtra of Book III takes the form 'by saṃyama on this, that follows'. Its objects range from the transformations of the mind to the sun, the moon and the heart (3.16–3.34), and finally to the distinction between mind and self (3.35, 3.52).
Vyāsa
“These same three, fixed-attention and contemplation and concentration, in one are constraint. … When having a single object the three means are called constraint. So the technical term [now laid down] in this system for these three is constraint.”
Vyāsa's Yoga-bhāṣya in J. H. Woods' translation (1914), p. 205.
How it has been read
Woods renders saṃyama 'constraint', and dhāraṇā, dhyāna and samādhi 'fixed-attention', 'contemplation' and 'concentration', so older English studies can confuse. Readers differ on whether the three are stages in sequence or one act seen three ways.
A common misreading
Saṃyama is sometimes presented as a technique for gaining powers. Patañjali treats the powers as obstacles to absorption (3.37), and saṃyama's last objects are the self and the moment that lead to discernment (3.35, 3.52).
Where the text defines it
- 3.1 Concentration is binding the mind to one place.
- 3.2 Meditation is the unbroken flow of the idea held there.
- 3.3 Absorption is that same meditation when only the object shines, as if empty of its own form.
- 3.4 The three on a single object are saṃyama.
- 3.5 Mastering it, the light of wisdom dawns.
- 3.16 Saṃyama on the three transformations gives knowledge of past and future.