Key idea of the Yoga Sūtras
vṛtti · movement of the mind
Any single activity of the mind: knowing, error, imagination, sleep or memory.
A vṛtti is any single movement of the mind. Patañjali sorts them into five kinds: valid knowing, error, imagination, sleep and memory (1.6), and defines each in turn (1.7–1.11). The list is surprising. It includes true knowledge and even dreamless sleep, so stilling the movements is not the same as stopping bad thoughts. Each kind may be afflicting or not (1.5): bound up with the afflictions, or leaning toward discernment. While the movements run, the seer seems to take their form (1.4); when they are stilled, it rests in itself (1.3). Vyāsa adds that movements leave latent impressions and impressions give rise to movements, a wheel that keeps turning (on 1.5). The afflictions too have active movements, which are overcome by meditation (2.11). All movements are known to the self, because the self does not change (4.18). For practice, the first work is to recognise which kind of movement is happening, and whether it afflicts.
Vyāsa
“The hindered (kliṣṭa) are those which are caused by the hindrances … and are the field for growth of the accumulation of the latent-deposits of karma; the unhindered have discriminative discernment as their object and thus obstruct the task (adhikāra) of the aspects (guṇa).”
Vyāsa's Yoga-bhāṣya in J. H. Woods' translation (1914), p. 17.
How it has been read
Translators render vṛtti as fluctuation, modification, turning or movement. Vyāsa defends counting sleep as a movement: on waking we recall having slept well or badly, which we could not do without some experience in sleep, so sleep too must be stilled in concentration (on 1.10).
A common misreading
Vṛttis are often taken to mean only distracting or negative thoughts. The five include valid knowledge and memory (1.6), and all of them are to be stilled (1.2).
Where the text defines it
- 1.2 Yoga is the stilling of the movements of the mind.
- 1.4 Otherwise, the seer takes on the form of the mind's movements.
- 1.5 The movements are of five kinds, some afflicting and some not.
- 1.6 Valid knowing, error, imagination, sleep and memory.
- 2.11 Their active forms are overcome by meditation.
- 4.18 The movements of the mind are always known to their master, the self, because the self does not change.