Place: Iyengar Institute-Simply Yoga, in New York (USA)
Year: July 2011
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Satyanarayana Dasa
Subject of this seminar: Samadhi and Sadhana Pada - Klesas
Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras are the classical work of the Yoga School of thought, one of the Six Darśanas studied in the Bhakti Tirtha course. They focus on how to attain direct experience and realization of the puruṣa, or the individual self. As the classical treatise on the Vedic understanding of the mind and consciousness and on techniques of meditation and self-realization, it has exerted immense influence over the religious practices of Hinduism in India and, more recently, in the West. For Vaiṣṇavas, the Yoga Sūtras are especially helpful in understanding the first two chapters of Bhakti-rasāmṛita-sindhu.
We tend to blame others for our problems. But if we analyze, we find that we are the cause of our own problems. We think that everyone else is the cause of my problem but me. It is very comfortable for my ego to think that others create my problem. Not me. It is very painful to think that I am the cause of my own problem. Our intellect becomes blind to our own mistakes because of pride. Pride doesn’t allow us to see our own defects. It magnifies others defects and covers our own faults.