yoga lesson three

We’ve arrived at lesson three, my friends.

In this series, we’re reading, chanting, and learning with Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra. Today we’re still in the first book—the Samādhi Pāda (book of absorption)—looking at the five kinds of mental fluctuations, each of which can move us toward peace or away from it.

You’ve made it to sūtra five. High-five. Let’s look:

1.5 vṛttayaḥ pañcatayyaḥ kliṣṭākliṣṭāḥ
The movements of the mind are of five kinds; they are painful (harmful) or not-painful (non-harmful).

1.6 pramāṇa viparyaya vikalpa nidrā smṛtayaḥ
These are: right knowledge, error, imagination, sleep, and memory.

A few notes

kliṣṭa / akliṣṭa

• kliṣṭa is related to kleśa—that which troubles, obscures, torments.

• akliṣṭa simply: not troubling, not binding. Supportive of clarity.

Patañjali is not shaming us for thinking. He’s saying: you will think; you will dream; you will remember; you will imagine; you will be right, and wrong. All of this can be either binding or freeing.

And those five categories? They’re roomy. Any mental event we can name will generally fit inside one (or a blend) of:

1. Pramāṇa – accurate seeing / right knowledge

2. Viparyaya – misperception / wrong knowledge

3. Vikalpa – imagination / conceptual spinning

4. Nidrā – sleep states

5. Smṛti – memory

We’ll get into each in coming lessons. For now, notice: none of these are condemned. Each is simply labeled as potentially kliṣṭa or akliṣṭa.

Who decides?

In my work with clients, when I ask “What is the state of your mind right now?” I often get: “Ummm, I don’t know.” Or, “Busy.” “Confused.” “Fine?” We’re not trained to know our own reins. We learn about mental illness; we don’t learn to befriend and steward the mind we actually live with.