________________
SANKHYA-YOGA
295 positive virtues, comprises purity (sauca), contentment (samtosa), fortitude (tapas), study (svādhyāya) and devotion to God (Isvara-pranidhāna). These are so to speak the ten commandments of the Yoga, and their general tendency is ascetic. Of the first group, non-injury is the most important and is stated to be the end and beginning of yama.2 The remaining four virtues must not only be rooted in it, but also help to perfect it so that it may finally come to be practised irrespective of time, place and circumstance.
(2) After this ascetic preparation begins the yogic training proper. This is a form of discipline which is very old in India and was known both to the orthodox and heterodox circles. It finds a prominent place in the Upanişads as well as in doctrines like Buddhism. The references to it in the Mahabhārata also indicate its great vogue. But there were important differences in the way in which it was understood in the various schools. It was for instance practised by some with a view to acquire occult or supernatural powers and by others for the attainment of mokşa. Among the latter, some took it as the means of becoming one with the Absolute; others, like the followers of the present doctrine, as that of merely shaking oft the yoke of matter. Yoga as treated of by Patañjali, is very much rationalized; and, though he refers to the acquisition of certain supernatural powers, he dismisses them as really hindrances3 to self-realization. This yogic training may be divided into two stages-the first comprising the next three of the eight-fold helpāsana ('posture'), prāņāyāma ('control of breath') and pratyāhāra ("withdrawal of senses from their objects')—which aim at restraining the mind from the physical side; and the second comprising the remaining three of dhāraṇā, dhyāna and samādhi, which are different forms of concentration and aim directly at control
This is explained as cultivating a spirit of absolute self-surrender to God in whatever one does, suggesting the influence of the Gitá ideal of disinterested action. Here it appears as part of the preliminary discipline; but in YS. i. 23 such devotion to God is represented as a means, alternative to yogic practice, of attaining samadhi and, through it, kaivalya. For a possible explanation of this contradiction, see Prof. Dasgupta: The Study of Patanjali (Calcutta Uni. Pr.), pp. 166-7. 2 Cf. YSB. ii. 30-1.
3 iii. 27.
