**1) In explaining the first five steps in the process of how pain begins, Master Patanjali lists goes through five different negative emotions.  Give the traditional explanation of a negative emotion; explain the Sanskrit word for it, with some related English words; and then finally describe the ultimate negative emotion.** A negative emotion is traditionally defined as “A thought which disturbs the peace of mind of the person who has this thought.”  Traditionally also these are divided into six primary negative thoughts and 20 secondary negative thoughts, which form one large part of the source of all our pain.  The Sanskrit word for a negative thought is klesha ¬ez.  This word comes from the root √klish i¬z! , meaning “to harass or afflict.”  Related English words are calamity and holly (prickly and bothersome).  The ultimate negative emotion is to misunderstand where something or someone is coming from; for example, thinking that the husband or wife who is yelling at us is coming from anywhere except the seeds in our own mind. **2) “Selfness” is the second step in the process of how pain begins.  Describe how it works.** “Selfness” is the negative thought of ignorance as it first starts to grow from the first step in the process of pain: the seed of ignorance which all beings in this world carry with them at birth, within their own mind.  Within the womb, we go through our first experiences of life: the warmth and pressure of our mother’s body.  The experience of a subject and object—of “me” and “it”—thus begins.  This in itself is not a problem, and even completely perfect beings experience subjects and objects.  Even in the womb, however, and ever after in our life, we believe strongly and automatically that the objects around us (and also our own selves, as the subject), are coming from their own side, and not from us.  This causes all the pain we ever experience in life. **3) In discussing “selfness,” Master Patanjali mentions subjects and objects that “seem as if they are themselves.”  Give the Sanskrit word for “being itself” here; explain what it means; its roots; and related English words.** The Sanskrit word used here for “being itself” is simply atman   AaTmn! .  This word in some other traditions of Indian philosophy can refer to a Supreme Self, or creator being.  It can also simply mean “myself” or “itself.”  Here in the Yoga Sutra though it refers to something existing by itself, or in and of itself; for example, warmth that was warm in and of itself.  The point is that such a thing is impossible—this is proven by the fact that the temperature of a room which one person finds comfortably warm may be experienced as stifling hot by another: how hot that hot is depends not upon the hot itself, but upon the person experiencing it.  And thus the hot cannot be coming from itself, or from its own atman—which is something that could never even exist.  Rather, the hot comes from each different person.  The word atman probably derives from the negative a (as in amoral or agnostic) plus a root √tam, meaning “to cut off, or set apart.”  Atman thus means a discrete individual, indivisible, a person in and of themselves.  The English atom (tiny, indivisible part) would be a related word, as well as temple, which originally referred to a place that was cut off or set aside by a wall or fence for spiritual purposes. **4) The third and four steps in the process of how pain begins are “liking” and “disliking” things.  Is it wrong to like or dislike things?  Why or why not?** It’s not at all wrong to like or dislike things; in fact, the ability to like or dislike things is actually what drives us to reach spiritual goals for ourselves and others: we dislike seeing ourselves and other suffer, and we like to see all of us escape from pain, and reach ultimate happiness.  After all, paradise is . . . a paradise, full of bliss and good things, and not some place where us yogis sit around trying not to feel anything at all.  Even before we reach paradise, there is nothing wrong with enjoying nice things and avoiding unpleasant things, as long as we do it wisely.  And this means never hurting anyone to get what we want, or to avoid what we don’t want, since these actions are actually what keep us from the things we want, and keep us experiencing things and people that we don’t want. **5) Give the Sanskrit words here for the objects of “liking” and “disliking”; that is, things that feel good and things that feel bad.  Explain how the two words are made up, and mention several related English words.** The Sanskrit word for things that feel good, or pleasure, is sukha suo.  It comes from the prefix su, which means “good,” combined with the word kha, which means an opening.  Sukha is thus traditionally explained as a well-fitting or well-running hub of a wagon wheel.  The su comes from an older Indo-European root esu, also meaning “good.”  In Greek, this is shortened to eu, which is found in English words like euphemism (a “better” word for a bad thing); euthanasia (a “better” death); or Eurhythmics (those who make better music).  The kha is connected to a root meaning “swollen” in the sense of a blister with a hole inside it.  This is found in the English words cave, cavity, and church (a word which originally meant “swollen with power”).  The duh in duhkha comes a prefix dus, which means “bad.”  Duhkha Ê>o, the word for pain or suffering, thus originally meant an ill-fitting or ill-running wagon wheel.  In English this prefix changes to dys or dis, as in the words dysentery, dysfunctional, or disappointment. **6) Describe the negative emotion of “grasping,” the fifth step in the chain of all pain.**  “Grasping” at this point in the Yoga Sutra refers to ignorance as it accompanies the emotions of liking or disliking, in the moment that we encounter an object or person which we either like or dislike: you could say “ignorance in the moment,” as opposed to ignorance as the seed that we carry into this world, or as the very birth of new ignorance in this lifetime.  A real example of grasping would be when we go into a pastry shop and see our favorite donut there, the maple-covered kind.  We grasp to it not when we take it, or even when we really want it, but rather when we misunderstand where it has come from.  We may think that the donut is in the store now because it was baked by someone somewhere, and that we get it because we have money.  Neither of these is true.  The donut is there for us because—and only because—we have given something very similar to someone else in the past. **7) Using the example of the child, explain what Master Patanjali says we need to do in order to stop the chain of suffering.** Of course we need to attack the chain at its first and weakest link, which is ignorance.  At present we are like small children in a movie theater who look up at the screen and see a man hurting a puppy.  The child cries out at the man, and rushes up to the screen to stop him.  The child hits at the screen with their hand, and even hurts their hand, trying to stop the man.  We need only to understand that what we see is not as it seems.  This example is not to say that the man is not real, or that the dog is not being hurt; only that in order to stop it we must go to the root of the problem—the projection booth, or own mind.  The mind left to itself leads us rather into the trap of two choices, neither of which will work: Do I run up to the screen and be nice to the man, in the hopes that he will be reasonably persuaded to stop hurting the dog, or do I run up to the screen and hit the man, in the hopes that he will be afraid to hurt the dog further?  And so we must begin with understanding the process intellectually, and then ultimately continue up to deep states of meditation in which we see ultimate reality: the simple but ultimately profound absence of any real man on the screen. **