This morning my sit was full of lots of random thought waves. This was no doubt, in part, due to my having four meetings, a call, and a lunch scheduled. When I was finished, I went into the library, picked up the Christopher Isherwood/Swami Prabhavandananda version How to Know God and opened it randomly to see if it could help guide my thinking today. I opened to sutra I.40: “The mind of a yogi can concentrate upon any object of any size, from the atomic to the infinitely great.” My first thought was, “how nice.” My second thought was, “I need to look at another translation; that does not sound quite how I’ve read it elsewhere.”
I opened my trusted B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on the Yoga Sutra’s of Patanjali. The translation there is “Mastery of contemplation brings the power to extend from the finest particle to the greatest.”
These translations are not so different from each other. It was also most timely for me to read this classical sutra in connection with what I have been contemplating in the Pratyabijna Hrdyam.
I read the Isherwood translation as saying that as long as one concentrates as a yogi with full and loving attention, then all actions are in union (yoga). I understand the Iyengar translation to say that mastering yoga allows one to perceive in the most individual, differentiated being or object, the infinite universal. With that knowing, just as the Kashmir Shaivist teachings say, one is living liberated (jivanmukti).
However I read this thread of teaching, it is most relevant for how I live and what I must do today with the worldly commitments I have made. With the intention to stay present with yoga concentration and aims, I now head to my day of meetings.
The sanskrit is: “paramanu parammahattvantah asya vasikarah”
