#64. Life And Death Are Inseparable | Yoga Sutras Of Patanjali

Life and death are inseparable. If we want to know life, we have to know death as well. Our constant denial of the existence of death and avoidance of the subject is rooted in fear of misery. In deep awareness and clarity, one is able to see that life and death are one, and misery is something totally different from both. Meditating upon life and death brings perspective and opens up doors to what is relevant in life - love, compassion, friendliness, joy, peace.

Transcript

Namaste.

Welcome to this meditation session with me,

Dhyansay,

Your path to inner peace,

Wisdom and awareness.

Life and death are inseparable,

Yet we separate between life and death.

We talk about life and death.

We don't want to hear anything.

We don't want to know anything about death.

We want to know everything about life.

We have an obsession about life and about death.

What do we have?

The unknown,

The fear.

We don't want to see anything that has to do with death.

We only want to know more and more about life as if life and death are separable,

As if life and death are two different things.

If you pay attention towards this phenomena of what we call as this individual consciousness,

You will realize that life is just the beginning of this realization,

That there is this individual consciousness.

And death is just that moment when that individual consciousness merges into the universal consciousness.

Afterwards,

What happens after that moment,

Nobody knows.

But we have made presumptions in our mind that what happens after that moment,

After we have lost our individuality,

Then throughout our life we try to avoid it.

We try to not know it.

We try to assume that it is something that is bad,

It is something that one should be fearful of.

And throughout life we are trying to avoid that.

If we once again go deeper and pay attention to what are we trying to avoid,

It is not death that we are trying to avoid,

Because we just don't know what it is.

What we are trying to avoid is suffering.

We are trying to avoid misery.

We are trying to avoid the fear.

To understand death becomes important,

Because it sets everything into the right perspective for you,

For what you want out of your life.

If you ask yourself or anybody else,

What would you do if you were to not live after a month?

If you were to let go of this individuality after a month,

What will you do?

Chances are that most of us will immediately be shocked,

Be in panic,

And after that panic,

After that shock has settled in,

We would change courses of our life.

We would align ourselves to that one month.

Why are we living otherwise differently?

We are living as if death is never going to happen.

We are living as if death is something far away,

Something very miserable,

And we are constantly trying to avoid that misery,

And we are living in ignorance,

In denial of this existential fact of death.

And the moment by some reason,

By some situation,

We come across death,

Suddenly the perspective dawns upon,

Suddenly the wisdom dawns upon how to be in life,

Suddenly what is more important in life becomes more relevant,

It comes to the surface.

Suddenly love,

Family,

Relationships,

And what you really want,

What really matters,

Your happiness,

Your inner peace,

All those rise on the surface.

When you put the perspective of death aside,

When you take the idea of death aside,

Then comes the ego,

Then you want this,

You want that,

There are ambitions,

There is a chase of power,

There is a chase of fame,

There is a chase of money,

And all sorts of things,

Whatever you want in life,

Suddenly with death,

The perspective towards life is different than without death.

It is time to get back things into perspective,

Not to create a panic in one's own life,

Not to create the stress in one's own life,

But rather to put things in its right place,

To reorient life's energies towards what matters,

And for that,

Death is a reminder that impermanence of life,

Of this individual consciousness,

Is a reminder that puts everything back into perspective.

In yoga,

In meditation,

When the awareness becomes pure,

When the consciousness becomes pure,

It is inevitable that you come across what death is,

And how do you orient,

Align your life,

In line with these existential facts,

In with these existential realities of life and death,

And you have to at some point of time ponder upon them,

Contemplate over them,

Meditate over them.

In this context,

Let us see what Patanjali has to say.

Patanjali says,

Karma are of two kinds,

Quickly manifesting and slowly manifesting,

By samyama on them or on the portents of death,

The knowledge of time of death is obtained.

Here,

Patanjali is saying that by doing samyama on specific things,

You arrive to the knowledge of death,

You arrive to the time of death.

Why it is important?

It is important to set things into perspective.

It is not just a curiosity to know about death,

To know about the time of death.

First of all,

It happens naturally as your awareness,

As your consciousness grows,

As you become fully aware of your own life,

You know where it is supposed to end.

And secondly,

With that knowledge,

Drops all other things which do not matter to you in your life.

So,

Here Patanjali is saying,

By doing samyama on two things,

You get that sense of death,

You get that knowledge of death.

And what are these two things?

One is karma.

Karma,

He is again splitting into two parts.

He is saying there are two types of karmas.

One karma is slowly manifesting,

Meaning that has been manifesting over lifetimes.

This continuity of what we call as life,

This brief period of 70,

80,

90,

100 years,

This brief period is not enough.

There are karmas that we have been collecting from past lives.

This is what Patanjali is saying as slowly manifesting.

That karmas that we have been carrying all throughout our lives and are manifesting slowly,

Some of it in this life,

Some of it in next life,

Some of it has been manifesting in previous lives.

So this is one type of karma that Patanjali is referring to.

And the second type of karma which is the prarabdha,

Which is the karma that you collect in this life.

Meaning in this brief period of 60,

70,

80,

90,

100 years,

The karma that you collect,

The new karma that you are collecting and putting them together,

The prarabdha,

The new karma that you are collecting in this life and the sanchita,

The karmas that you have been collecting from your previous lives together,

If you do samayama of them,

If you become 100% aware of them,

If you bring the energy of your concentration to these karmas,

They point to where the death is in the timeline of your life,

When the death is going to happen and so on.

The idea here is to have this awareness that can focus on karmas,

On all these unaware actions that you are doing in your life.

Once again,

It is important to understand what karma is.

Karma is that action that is done in unawareness.

The way we move in our life,

It may not be possible to do everything fully consciously.

If you see there is so much emphasis on becoming conscious,

Doing everything mindfully,

Doing everything consciously,

Be mindful when you are eating,

Be mindful when you are walking,

Be mindful when you are talking,

All this talk,

Where is this coming from?

This talk is coming from this fact that if you are unaware,

If you are not mindful of your actions,

They result in karma.

They result not as your action in a situation,

They are actually reactions.

They are not consciously decided,

They are unconsciously decided and therefore they are reactions in situations.

And those reactions are karmas,

They produce karmas,

And these karmas get collected over lifetimes.

In our life,

What are we doing?

We are living those past karmas and along the way we are creating new karmas.

And this is the continuity that keeps on going until we break this cycle of karma.

And this cycle of karma is only broken when we bring awareness to each and every act,

When we become conscious of each and every act.

When that happens,

Then the cycle of karma is broken and the liberation from this cycle of birth and death also happens.

So here Patanjali is saying that by bringing samayama,

By bringing full awareness to your past karmas and to the karmas that you are collecting in this life,

You somehow know you have the arithmetic in you to point out about your death,

Your time of death and so on.

We don't need to go into that knowledge,

Into that exploration on the time of death.

What we are concerned about is how we are going to live.

And for that,

To have the perspective of death is important.

To have the awareness of death is important.

To have the consciousness of all our actions is important.

Then he goes on saying,

Maitri Adishu Balani,

By samayama on friendliness and other such qualities,

The power to transmit them is obtained.

So he quickly jumps from the death,

After establishing the awareness of death in yogis,

In meditators,

He says,

Then when you come to this life,

When you come to this brief period,

You should also be reminded of these qualities.

You should also bring your awareness,

Your full awareness,

Your full energies in qualities of life like friendliness,

Love,

Compassion and so on.

And you should understand them.

You should live them,

Especially in times of today,

If you see how we are to each other.

We are moving away from friendliness to a sense of everyone being an enemy of each other,

Because somehow everyone may create misery for each other.

So we are living in this sense of being fearful from each other,

And it is even more important to learn from this sutra of Patanjali and move back towards friendliness,

To move back towards this sense of friendliness for everyone,

To have this sense of friendliness in life and all other qualities like love and compassion.

And lastly,

He says,

Balaishuhasthi Bala Adini By Samyama on the strength of elephant and other such animals,

Their strength is obtained.

Here he just wants to emphasize that wherever you put your awareness,

You put your awareness on the strength of elephant,

You gather the strength of elephant.

You put your awareness on any other quality of life,

You put your awareness on any other quality,

Any other aspect in life,

Wherever your awareness goes,

Wherever your attention goes,

Wherever your meditation goes,

That you become,

That you acquire this much ability you have in your life.

So choose where your awareness should go,

Where your energies should go,

And carefully assess and choose this path where your energies are going in your life,

And change this if this is not serving you.

In today's meditation,

Let us reflect on this awareness,

Where this awareness is pointing at.

Let us reflect on bringing awareness to our own life,

To the beginning,

To the end,

And all along the way,

The friendliness,

The love,

The compassion.

For that,

Please close your eyes and take a posture that is comfortable,

Allowing the breath to become normal,

To settle,

To come to rest.

With each breath,

Body settling,

Resting with its own weight,

Mind settling,

Resting in a sense of calm,

Allowing the awareness to free up,

Allowing the awareness to be in your inner space,

For the next minutes.

Along with every breath,

Feel with your inhalation,

New life,

Energy is coming in,

And with exhalation,

Every moment death is happening to the old.

So at every moment,

Life and death both are happening at the same time.

Thank you.

Your awareness on this fact that life and death both are happening in every moment,

The death of the old,

Of the unaware,

And the birth,

The life,

Of the new,

Of the aware.

Thank you.

In every inhalation,

The emphasis on the new,

On the awareness,

And with exhalation,

Letting go of the old,

Of the unawareness in you.

Thank you.

With every moment of silence,

Stillness,

Awareness increasing,

And letting go of all the unawareness,

With every exhalation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

In this new,

In this awareness,

There is friendliness,

Love,

Compassion,

For yourself,

For everyone else.

And in your exhalations,

Letting go of all unawareness,

All fear,

All negativity.

Thank you.

Let go of all effort.

And simply stay silent and aware.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And very gently and slowly,

You may open your eyes with me,

Maintaining the sense of awareness,

Centeredness,

Silence,

And this newness,

Friendliness,

Awareness.

Take this to your daily life.

Thank you very much.

Namaste.

Reviews

🙏

I love this. Patience and generosity, friendliness. Fantastic.

Wonderful

Very helpful explanation of Karma and the importance of mindful awareness in my life. Thank you!