Meditative Rose by Salvador Dali*
“By watching my mind for so many years now, I’ve befriended impermanence and change. Stability in anything except awareness has gone off the wish list, which has made my life more full of ease. This is the sanity and ease of not knowing: being comfortable—not always liking, but being comfortable—with change.” —Jill SatterfieldThe second sutra in the Yoga Sutras provides a basic definition of yoga. But various Sanskrit translators tend to translate this short definition quite differently. Let’s start by looking at just one translation.
1.2 Yoga cittavritti nirodha
1.2 Yoga is the cessation of the movements in the consciousness. —Iyengar
This really confuses many of us the first time we read it. What are the movements in the consciousness (cittavritti)? And why on earth would we want them to cease? This is the reason we like to share another, more unusual translation of the same sutra, one that translates “vritti” as “whirls” rather than movements or fluctuations.
1.2 Yoga is the restriction of the whirls of consciousness. —Georg Feuerstein
It turns out that the word “vritti” literally means “whirlpool.” So vrttis can be considered “whirlpools” of the mind. Have you ever noticed how our minds tend to whirl or cycle over and over with the same thoughts, especially when we are anxious, depressed, or mentally stressed out? For example, Nina Rook describes the anxiety she suffered from before she started practicing yoga this way, “As a working mother before that was commonplace in corporate life, there were uncertainties about parenting, childcare, work/life conflicts, and chipping away at the glass ceiling. I remember whole nights spent running the same loops of ‘what if’s.’”
When we’re worried or anxious, as Nina Rook was, we tend to get caught up in worries about the future: What if I miss my deadline? What if the plane crashes? What if I can’t fall asleep tonight? When we’re sad or depressed, we tend to get caught up in regrets about the past. If only my lover hadn’t left me. If only my parents had loved me more. If only I’d taken a different job.” Our vrttis can also include judgments about the present: “I’m such a loser.” “That person looks like jerk.” “This meditation session is a complete failure.” Yes, those little whirlpools are very powerful at sucking us in.
According to the Yoga Sutras, quieting the mind—restricting all those regrets, worries, and judgments—allows you to experience the reality of the present moment and be comfortable with change as it unfolds.
After Jill Satterfield noticed that her heart didn’t seem to be beating properly and was working too hard all the time, she learned that a virus had attached her mitral valve and burned it away, and there was also a hole in the wall between two of her heart’s chambers. Although she needed surgery to repair her heart, her doctors recommended that she wait until her symptoms worsened, saying she would know when the time was right. During that waiting period, her energy was low, her brain wasn’t clear, and her muscles were always sore. Because she didn’t feel normal or rested, she wasn’t able to take on much work, as she never knew if she would need to sit down, lie down, or would be relatively okay. And she had no idea how long the waiting period would last.
She says now that her long-time meditation allowed her to be “at ease” with all that uncertainty. Years of practice trained her mind to be able to focus on the present instead of being flung forward into an “unknown future of fear and anxiety. She calls this “spiritual sanity.”
“Freedom comes with the ability to be in the present and with not knowing or assuming or deciding what will come next, but riding the proverbial waves of natural moment-to-moment change.”
In the Yoga Sutras, quieting the mind through meditation is recommended as the antidote to the five afflictions, our reactions to life that are the source of our suffering.
2.3 The five afflictions (klesas) which disturb the equilibrium of consciousness are: ignorance or lack of wisdom, ego, pride of the ego or the sense of ‘I,’ attachment to pleasure, aversion to pain, fear of death and clinging to life.
2.11 The states of mind produced by these klesas are eliminated by meditation. —Edwin Bryant
So meditation is an effective practice for cultivating equanimity and reducing your personal suffering. It not only quiets your mind as you practice, but it also teaches you about how your mind works. As you meditate, you start to become aware of the vrttis—of the way your mind gets caught up in them. When you shine the light of day on them with your awareness, they start to lose some of their power over you and you can begin the process of separating yourself from them.
But not all the vrttis (whirls of consciousness) are negative thought patterns; Edwin Bryant defines a vritti as “any sequence of thought, ideas, mental imaging, or cognitive acts performed by the mind, intellect, or ego.” And in yoga philosophy, any cognitive act interferes with our ability to focus completely on the present and see the world as it is, truly. Patanjali states the aim of quieting the mind is:
1.3 When that is accomplished, the seer abides in his own true nature. —Edwin Bryant
Traditional yogis believe that our souls are divine and therefore our true nature is a state of peace and bliss. But the whirls of consciousness that disturb our minds prevent us from experiencing our true nature. To reach the state of stillness—known as samadhi—that allows us to experience the divine within us, we must reach the point where all the whirls of consciousness completely cease. T.K.V. Desikachar has a completely different and very straightforward translation of sutra 1.2, the sutra that defines yoga. In his definition, the moment of quieting the mind through meditation IS yoga.
1.2 Yoga is the ability to direct the mind exclusively toward an object and sustain that direction without any distractions. —Desikachar
But either way, whether the aim of your practice is to experience the divine bliss that is your true nature or simply to become more present and comfortable with uncertainty, quieting the mind is the path that will get you there.
“Entering into every moment with an open mind might not be totally possible for those of us not yet enlightened, but we can do our best to be lightened in our suffering load. Spiritual maturity then becomes holding less and less, and being open to much, much more.” —Jill Satterfield
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