Throughout The Wisdom of Yoga, readers who are knowledgeable about Buddhism will have noticed some remarkable similarities between the views and practices of rāja-yoga and those of Buddhism—and particularly the views of Theravada Buddhism, sometimes called the “teaching of the elders.” (The Theravada school of Buddhism derives its scriptural inspiration from the Pali Canon, which scholars generally agree contains the earliest surviving record of the Buddha’s teachings.)
Indeed, the similarities between the Yoga-Sūtra and the teachings of the Pali Canon are in some instances so striking that they may surprise, or even confuse, the Buddhist reader. There are obvious historical reasons why these two paths should so resemble each other. After all, Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha-to-be, became a yogi when he left his father’s palace to “go forth” in pursuit of liberation. When he renounced his life of ease, the young prince joined the great sramanic stream of practice and inquiry. He sought out and studied with the greatest yogis of his day—including approximately five years of study with the well-known yogis Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta. Under their tutelage, the young aspirant studied the most sophisticated yogic meditation techniques then known—earlier versions of the techniques which Patanjali would later describe as the various stages of dhāranā and dhyāna, and which Buddhist teaching describes as the jhanas (concentrations).
Siddhartha Gautama quickly mastered the most refined yogic knowledge of his time, and soon left his meditation teachers to practice in the forest with a group of five other yoga adepts interested in investigating even more advanced austerities. This phase of his practice led to the dramatic part of the story with which most of us are familiar: when the young Buddha-to-be was near death, he gave up his extreme practice of asceticism, and accepted a bowl of milk from the farm girl Sujata. Siddhartha then resolved to sit under the bodhi tree until he attained enlightenment. His practice under the bodhi tree did, indeed, lead him to a complete extinguishment of the “fetters” (kleshas, or afflictions)—an experience he would call “waking up.” In the process of “waking up,” the Buddha mastered entirely new aspects of meditative technique. After his enlightenment, he taught these techniques widely. His unique contributions to the meditative culture of his time were contained in the final two stages of his Eight Fold Path—Right Concentration, as described in the scripture called the Anapanasati Sutta, and Right Mindfulness, as described in the Satipatthana Sutta.
The Buddha’s teaching contributed enormously to the understanding of meditation in the sramanic stream at large—though not all yogis adopted the Buddha’s views. Nonetheless, the Buddha’s contributions to yoga were so profound that for more than a thousand years after he lived, his teachings flourished in India, side-by-side with other schools of yogic discipline, and other views about the goals of meditation practice.
In Patanjali’s time (probably about the second century of the Common Era), Indian culture was saturated with Buddhist views and practices. By about 400 CE, only two hundred years after Patanjali, in fact, many of the most accomplished yogis of the day studied at the great Buddhist university called Nalanda. In this era, yogis and Buddhists drank from a common stream of philosophy and practice. So it is not surprising that Patanjali’s Yoga-Sūtra relies, at times, on views and techniques developed by a Buddhist culture. Yogis and Buddhists appear to have argued about (and sometimes exchanged) views and practices liberally for almost a thousand years—from the time of the Buddha (563 BCE–483 BCE) until at least the middle of the first millennium of the Common Era.
The systems of rāja-yoga and Buddhism are similar in a number of important ways:
1. Both traditions were interested primarily in two aspects of the human dilemma: the problem of suffering, and the problem of seeing reality clearly. They developed a similar series of techniques for attenuating suffering and for seeing clearly. In both cases these techniques employed a three-pronged process: First, the cultivation of so-called skillful behavior—behaviors which attenuate suffering for self and other. In yoga these were called yama and niyama; in Buddhism they were called sila. Second, the cultivation of deep states of concentration. In yoga these were called dhāranā and dhyāna. In Buddhism, they were called samādhi (right effort, concentration, and mindfulness). And third, the use of highly concentrated mental states to investigate the ways in which the “self” is constructed, moment by moment. In both traditions, this direct investigation of the mind and body led to liberating insights. In yoga these insights arose as samyama, or “perfect discipline” (dhāranā, dhyāna, and samādhi) was applied to “individual mind moments”; in Buddhism, they arose from a series of insight, or wisdom, practices like vipassana.
2. Both traditions acknowledged that so-called “ordinary reality” is but an elaborate construction—and that this construction is replete with erroneous ideas. In particular, these constructions confuse perceiver, the act of perception, and the perceived. (This view, by the way, is similar to Western constructivist theories of perception, which acknowledge that the ordinary view of reality is merely a rough approximation—and that it is significantly distorted in many respects.) Yogis observed that these errors result in the Four Erroneous Beliefs (the belief in the permanence of objects, the belief in the ultimate reality of the body, the belief that suffering is really happiness, the belief that our bodies and minds are our True Self). Buddhists observed that these errors obscure the so-called Three Marks of Existence (anicca, the truth of impermanence; annata, the truth of no-Self; and duhkha, the truth of suffering).
3. Both Buddhists and yogis agree that when confused thinking is ended, through direct and systematic investigation of phenomena, our view of external reality is permanently altered, and confusion and suffering are ended. In yoga, this is called kaivalya (emancipation) and in Buddhism, nirvana (the “unbinding” of constructions). Of course, kaivalya and nirvana appear to “mean” very different things in the context of the views that surrounded them, but the actual experience of these states, as they are described by adepts, is very similar.
4. Both paths proceeded in remarkably similar ways to untie the knot of confused perception. Both Buddhists and yogis recognize the similarity (and in some cases identity) of a number of central pillars of “view” (or description of reality)—including nirodha (cessation), klesha (affliction), karma (action), samvega (vehemence), samādhi (concentration), prajnā (intuitive wisdom), and samskāra (subliminal activator). Each one of these central pillars of “view” will be investigated in this book, and in some cases where it is necessary to keep the yogic “view” distinct from the Buddhist “view” I will add a note to the reader.
5. Finally, both traditions share an emphasis on a direct, immediate investigation of reality. Both systems reject an emphasis on metaphysics, and hold themselves to be existential practice traditions—oriented toward solving the two central linked problems of distorted perception and suffering. They share an emphasis on self-study, self-reliance, and self-liberation. We might say that these paths share a profoundly similar flavor.
We have established some of the commonalities between rāja-yoga and Buddhism. However, though they are fewer than commonly believed, nevertheless there are several fundamental disagreements between Patanjali’s view and that of the Buddha. The two most important differences are these:
1. Patanjali finds an abiding “pure awareness” that remains when all conditioned aspects of the psycho-mental structure have been deconstructed with practice. (Yogic thinkers have described this as a Self, which, of course, the mind finds nearly impossible to avoid personifying on some level.) The Buddha, on the other hand, believed that the body was manomaya, imbued with mind, and that all aspects of consciousness arise and pass away with the objects of consciousness. So, when ordinary mind is deconstructed, there is no abiding pure awareness of any kind. The Buddha could find no lasting Self that knows things—only things that, in the aggregate, feel like a Self who knows.
2. The Buddha saw all mental states to be linked with vedana or sensation (feeling), and believed that a true insight into the profound impermanence of these states could not be developed without a direct investigation of this linkage. This view appears nowhere in Patanjali’s Yoga-Sūtra. This absence of an explicit technique linking bodily sensations to mental states in the Yoga-Sūtra is perhaps the most important practical difference between the traditions. Although this is indeed a big difference in their rhetoric—and the linkage is really not explicitly described by Patanjali in anything like the detail of the Buddha’s teaching on Dependent Origination—nonetheless this linkage seems to be taken almost as a given in Patanjali, and is hinted at on numerous occasions, for example Yoga-Sūtra 2.10–2.11.
In spite of these important differences, the similarities are extensive. The Eight-Limbed Path offered by Patanjali is remarkably similar to the Buddha’s earlier Eight Fold Path. But if the similarities between rāja-yoga and Buddhism are so profound, why is this fact not more widely appreciated? Indeed, why have generations of yoga scholars and practitioners alike seen them as so profoundly distinct?
Perhaps the major source of this problem issues from the vast commentarial literature on the Yoga-Sūtra. Patanjali’s treatise was written in such a terse, aphoristic style that its readers have always had to rely on commentary to flesh out its meaning. One assumes that Patanjali himself offered this commentary to his students. But Patanjali did not leave us with any written record of his own commentary. If he did leave us with such a commentary, it appears to have been lost. Only the spare 196 sūtras themselves remain. So in the absence of an original commentary, thousands of other scholars and adepts (perhaps less well-qualified than Patanjali) have leapt into the gap.
For two thousand years, a wide variety of commentators have conflated Patanjali’s yoga with views that are quite different from those held by Patanjali and his colleagues. These include, most important, Sāmkhya philosophy—with which yoga is erroneously believed to be identical—but also Vedānta, Advaita Vedānta, and even Tantra.
A case in point (and perhaps the most important case) is the earliest extant commentary on the Yoga-Sūtra, called the Yoga-Bhāshya (“Discussion on Yoga”). This commentary was probably composed by a sage named Vyasa in the fifth century CE. It quickly became an influential interpretation of the Yoga-Sūtra. Georg Feuerstein, America’s most influential yoga scholar, points out in his Shambhala Encyclopedia of Yoga (p. 343; Shambhala, 1997) that “Vyasa’s work is the basis for all subsequent exegetical efforts in Classical Yoga.” Feuerstein goes on to say that Vyasa’s commentary is based not on pure classical yoga views, but on those of the Sāmkhya teacher Vindhyasvasin—views and practices which differed considerably from Patanjali.
A quick review of the current state of the commentarial literature will reveal the puzzling fact that almost all commentaries used by contemporary readers are profoundly influenced by non-classical views. How to Know God, for example, an influential contemporary translation and commentary by Christopher Isherwood and Swami Prabhavananda, though beautiful and poetic, does not give a truly yogic view of the Yoga-Sūtra, but rather a Vedantist view. (The Vedantic view that the individual soul, or atman, is One with the ground of being, the Absolute, or Brahman, appears nowhere at all in the Yoga-Sūtra.) Patanjali was not a Vedantist. Indeed, almost all influential commentaries are written from a Vedāntist, Advaita-Vedāntist, Sāmkhya, or even Tantric view. And all of these views differ considerably from the view of classical yoga—rāja-yoga. As a result, readers are simply unfamiliar with the authentic views that underlie the Yoga-Sūtra —and that share so much in common with Buddhist views.
In constructing my own commentary on the Yoga-Sūtra, I have pared it down to its most elementary bones. My commentary focuses principally on the second chapter of the Yoga-Sūtra, (and the beginning of the third) in which Patanjali articulates his Eight-Limbed Path. This kind of treatment is meant for a mainstream Western audience, and purely as an introduction to Patanjali’s brilliant treatise. More advanced yogis will want to investigate a translation and commentary that fleshes out the path more fully than a strictly mainstream audience could easily tolerate.
Nonetheless, though my commentary is “mainstreamed,” I have tried to maintain an authentic and intellectually precise rendering of Patanjali—written from the view of rāja-yoga practice. This has not been easy, for there are few translations and commentaries that support this view. There is, however, one exemplary translation and commentary written from the classical point of view. This is Chip Hartranft’s work, The Yoga-Sūtra of Patanjali, published by Shambhala Press. I have used his translation throughout, and am indebted to Chip and to Shambhala Press for their generosity in allowing me to use their work.
In addition, I have relied on the only serious comparative study of Buddhism and rāja-yoga done by a Western scholar trained both as a psychologist and a meditator—the study done by Harvard psychologist Daniel Brown, and published along with Ken Wilber’s work in Transformations of Consciousness (Shambhala, 1986). This study, entitled “The Stages of Meditation in Cross Cultural Perspective,” gives a careful account of the classical yoga view. I’ve also relied on the helpful A Re-Appraisal of Patanjali’s Yoga-Sūtras in the Light of the Buddha’s Teaching, by S. N. Tandon, and published by the Vipassana Research Institute (Dhammagiri, 1995). Tandon’s study gives us a careful analysis of the distinctions between the Buddhist view and that of classical yoga. I’ve relied, as well, on the valuable contribution made by Professor Joshi in his book, Discerning the Buddha: A Study of Buddhism and of the Brahmanical Hindu Attitude to It (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1983). Joshi clearly identifies the common development of rāja-yoga and Buddhism in the sramanic stream of practice.
Just because rāja-yoga and Buddhism share similar views and practices is not, of course, a reason to conflate and confuse them. I do think it useful to remain aware of the important areas of disagreement, and to remain precise in noting the distinctions between the two traditions.
The reader will have noticed my occasional use of quotes from Buddhist sources, American teachers of Buddhism, and the words of the Buddha himself (through scripture). And also, my occasional use of ideas and practices that have been more fully investigated by the Buddhist meditation tradition than by the yoga meditation tradition itself.
Why use Buddhist sources in a book on yoga? Alas, the path laid out so clearly in the Yoga-Sūtra is a path of meditation, and yet, many of the most refined meditation practices described by Patanjali are not taught in today’s yoga tradition as it has come to us in the West. One assumes that they were taught in Patanjali’s time. When they are taught today, however, at least in America, they are more often taught by Buddhist teachers.
The practice of metta—loving kindness meditation—is a case in point. Even though maitrī, or “friendliness” (toward all Beings) is mentioned in the Yoga-Sūtra (see chapter ten), and clearly seen by Patanjali as an important aid in practice, most of us involved in the yoga tradition in America have learned the formal practices of metta meditation from Buddhist teachers. As a result, many practitioners (probably on both sides of the aisle, if there is an aisle) believe them to be exclusively Buddhist.
Another case in point is the whole spectrum of “insight” practices. Though these are clearly present in Patanjali’s treatment of meditation practice (samyama on mind moments—see chapter fourteen), insight practice is rarely taught in the yoga traditions in America. Once again, American yogis have learned these insight practices from Buddhist teachers.
In summing up, I would say that I use Buddhist sources to describe common views and practices when distinct yogic sources are not available, or are less compelling. The Buddhist tradition emphasized scholarship and preservation of the teachings in a way never true of the yoga tradition—which has always been more fragmented, less cohesive, and less interested in preservation of texts and scholarship.
Finally, I would say that these overlapping areas of view and practice that we have examined only serve to point out, once again, that classical yoga and Buddhism are sister traditions. They have traded ideas and practices back and forth for two thousand years, and continue to do so. For most of us, this is not a problem. I would go even further. I believe that these two great traditions will experience a rapprochement in the West, which will integrate them in a new fashion. We are already seeing evidence of this: postures (āsana) and breathing practices (prānāyāma) have found their way into many Buddhist meditation retreats. Meditation practices from Buddhism have found their way into many yoga studios. The process has begun. I wish not to confuse the issue, but also I do not wish to resist a healthy rapprochement.