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.
Right now we are busy with our body-mind complex, so we are not free for God. Our mind is full of material attachments and desires. Consequently, there is no room for God. If we invite God into our house, and all of the chairs are occupied, where will he sit? When we make ourself free from our attachments, our suffering and happiness, then our mind will become clear and God can enter.
