Namaste and a very warm welcome to all of you in this daily live meditation session with me,
Dhyansa.
My salutations to Patanjali,
My salutations to the knowledge of yoga and this opportunity for us to go through this knowledge of yoga presented to us by Patanjali to bring us out of our miseries in life.
Yesterday we reflected on this fact that all miseries that we are experiencing are a result of ignorance,
Of lack of awareness.
I would like you to once again take this moment to recognize,
To realize,
To reflect that without any exception all miseries that you are experiencing,
That you are creating for yourself,
You are creating for others,
All miseries,
Physical,
Psychological or any other kind that you are going through is because of lack of awareness,
Is because of ignorance.
That is why Patanjali on the sadhana path,
The path of discipline of yoga,
He established this fact upfront where he shows that the ignorance is the cause of all miseries and he encourages,
Implores the meditator to first of all check this in oneself and put this in the right place and become more aware.
Let us go through few sutras for today before we sit in silence,
Sit in meditation.
Patanjali says,
Avidya kshetram uttaresan pra supta tanuvich vichin udarnam.
What that means is,
Ignorance is the productive field of all them that follow,
Whether they are dormant,
Attenuated,
Overpowered or expanded.
Here Patanjali is talking in continuation to what he was saying yesterday about that there are five different causes of misery,
Of pain and these five causes are ignorance,
Egoism,
Attachment,
Repulsion and clinging to life.
And here he is emphasizing and saying that all these are born in the field of unawareness.
So he is very very clearly stating here that the root cause of all miseries,
Be it appearing to arise out of ego,
Be it appearing to arise out of attachments,
Repulsions,
Clinging to life,
These are somewhere in the middle between the pain and the cause,
But the root cause is ignorance,
Is lack of awareness.
When we understand ignorance,
We always think in terms of lack of knowledge.
Patanjali here is not referring to knowledge.
There has to be a differentiation between knowledge and awareness.
One can go without lack of knowledge.
One can be in happiness,
In bliss,
In peace,
In having no miseries,
Without having to have all the knowledge of life.
So the knowledge is not a must,
But the awareness is something that is a must and the lack of awareness is what gives rise to everything else.
If you want knowledge,
There are still ways again arising out of awareness leading to knowledge but you may go to that path,
You may not go to that path.
You may have the knowledge that is enough for your lifestyle.
You may not need to know the entire cosmos,
But you have to know yourself.
That much awareness is needed,
That much reflection is needed because unless you know yourself,
Unless you know the source of everything,
Life is then very much dependent on concepts and on external factors governing you in this direction or that direction and you never really know,
You never really understand what is causing these miseries and how to overcome these miseries.
And in this sutra,
He is bringing four different states of these miseries.
He says,
Even if the miseries are dormant,
Even if they are not yet on the surface,
If you are sensitive enough,
You can sense that the misery is coming because you see ignorance.
So wherever you see ignorance,
Wherever you see lack of awareness,
You know even if the misery is not on the surface,
Sooner or later it will arise.
Sooner or later it will become alive from being dormant.
So it has to be addressed right then and there whenever you come across ignorance.
Attenated,
Overpowered,
Expanded,
These are just different states of miseries.
When you go through misery,
You know how much power it has over you when you are having an expanded sense of misery.
The whole world looks like miserable and you think that life,
The entire life is only misery.
So many philosophers,
So many thinkers have concluded that life is misery.
They are wrong.
They have not seen life in awareness.
They have seen life in thought.
They have seen life in their own logic which flows along with the thought and thought is not born out of awareness.
Awareness has its own light to show you the world.
It does not need the thought.
Thought may show you some things but thought may also mislead you into thinking that the entire world is full of misery and that is what it is and that is how it should be and that is what one has to constantly fight with,
Constantly solve problems of life.
That is not what life is meant for and if you want to experience that,
If you want to have that first-hand validation of this,
Be more aware.
Be more self-aware.
Be more aware of everything that is going around you and see and reflect what is really the cause of misery.
Another sutra on ignorance.
Patanjali says,
Anithya aschuddhukha anatmasu nithya suci sukhatma khyathir vidya.
What that means is anithya,
Impermanence,
Suci,
Impure,
Dukha,
Sadness and the sense of no self.
What he is saying in this sutra,
Patanjali is saying,
Ignorance is taking that which is non-eternal,
Impure,
Painful and non-self for the eternal,
For the pure,
For the happy and for the atman,
The self.
Here what Patanjali is referring to as avidya,
What he is saying is that there are two types of knowledge.
One is vidya and the other one is avidya.
The right knowledge and the wrong knowledge.
In awareness there is right knowledge.
From the awareness arises right knowledge.
In the lack of awareness,
In the substitute of awareness arises avidya.
Because mind has to form some logic,
Mind has to form some grounds for it to be alive,
For it to exist.
So in the absence of knowledge,
In the absence of awareness,
In the absence of right knowledge,
It forms its own knowledge and this is what Patanjali is referring to as avidya,
Which is wrong knowledge.
So which is giving you a sense of everything as if it is right.
He is saying that the non-eternal for the eternal,
Things that are eternal in life,
Life itself is eternal.
Life itself has no beginning,
No end.
You yourself have no beginning,
No end.
Consciousness has no beginning,
No end.
But we take it as non-eternal.
We take it as something that is a beginning,
That is an end.
That is why we have this fear of life,
Fear of death.
Because we think that life is so short,
It is non-eternal and the only way to understand this beyond just the conceptual logic of it is to be aware,
To die within and to validate in one's own experience that yes,
We are consciousness,
Yes,
We are eternal.
Then he says impure for the pure.
Things that are impure,
We consider them as pure or the other way around.
We are basically mixing up what is pure in life,
What is impure in life.
And this is what you see everywhere around you.
If you pay attention everywhere that is supposed to be impure,
That is supposed to be put aside as impure,
Is taken as pure,
Is taken as something that you should follow,
Something that you should work towards.
And then he says ignorance is taking the painful for the happy.
Meaning in order to look for happiness,
Somehow we are finding happiness also in pain.
Where there is clear pain,
We are still constantly moving in the direction thinking that that is the pursuit of happiness.
Again I don't want to mention any of the events that we are going through in today's times,
But if you pay attention,
You see we are moving constantly one step further and one step faster towards pain.
We are not moving towards happiness.
And that is a clear sign of that the source of this is avidya,
The logic that convinces the mind that that is the direction and makes it continue to go there is the wrong knowledge.
It has to be put aside,
There has to be a check put in its place and ignorance has to be replaced by awareness.
And the last atman,
The non-self to the self.
We identify ourselves as the body,
We identify ourselves as the mind,
We identify ourselves only as the physical.
And this is clear ignorance,
This is clear avidya.
To limit ourselves to say I am only the body,
I am only the mind is avidya because that is a close logic that makes you not realize your true nature.
So if you are stuck in avidya,
If you are stuck in the wrong knowledge,
You will never be able to know your true nature.
You have to first of all see,
Acknowledge that all these concepts that I am just the body,
I am just the mind and the limitations of it are coming because of the wrong knowledge that we have and in order to come to the truth,
In order to know oneself,
One has to move from ignorance to awareness where true knowledge happens where you realize your true self,
Your true nature,
Your consciousness,
Your impermanence,
Your eternal,
Your permanence,
Your eternal nature of your being.
All these once again what Patanjali is saying appear conceptual but once you bring this into your practice,
Once you bring this into your awareness,
Once you bring this into your meditation,
They become your own truth,
They become your own realization with validations by your own experience.
With that let us move into silence,
Let us move into meditation for the next few minutes.
Please close your eyes,
Make sure that your posture is upright,
Your breath is flowing naturally and with every breath you are allowing your body to rest,
Your mind to settle and your awareness to turn inwards.
With every breath awareness turning more and more.
More and more inwards in your inner space,
In a silence arising in the moment.
The awareness is like light,
Not the physical as you see it but like light.
As you are aware of your inner space,
Feel this light,
Feel your inner space illuminated with this light.
In your inner space,
Focus on the light.
Let the darkness disappear in the background.
This light is non-local,
It is not physical.
So have this sense,
Have this feeling of your inner space,
Of your inner light.
With every breath,
Let us move into silence.
With every breath,
Your inner light illuminating inner space in all directions,
In every corner.
Let the darkness disappear in the moment.
Let the darkness disappear in the moment.
As the light gets brighter,
Silence,
Peace arises naturally.
And there is only your inner light.
To remain aware of this inner light.
Let the darkness disappear in the moment.
This inner light shining bright in your inner space radiating outwards into the world without any boundaries.
While you remain an observer of your own inner light.
Let the darkness disappear in the moment.
Away from the senses,
Away from the thoughts,
In your inner space.
Not in your mind,
Not in your body,
In your inner space.
Rest in this inner space.
Rest in this light.
Rest in this inner space.
With every breath,
Allowing yourself to settle deeper and the light to become clearer,
Brighter,
And expanding throughout this space.
Let the darkness disappear in the moment.
No more effort.
Please stay silent and aware in these moments.
Let the darkness disappear in the moment.
Let the darkness disappear in the moment.
Aware of nothing in particular,
Simply awareness.
Stay like this.
Still centered and silent.
If you wish to meditate longer,
Maintain this state as long as you like.
For a very gently and slowly,
You may open your eyes while remaining aware of your inner light shining outwards into your world.
I will see you tomorrow at 7 am Central European Time.
Namaste.
