<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/10CLkdVRfF-gLESe_Ln53heq12XAc4kfQ/preview" width="100%" height="80" allow="autoplay"></iframe> hi welcome back to the yoga sutra and we're going to start the second chapter of the sutra and we'll be doing that for 10 days the four chapters are called pada and pada you know means foot really it came into the english word foot and gas pedal and things like that and so you can think of a table with four legs and the yoga sutra has four supports four legs four chapters and we'll be going through the chapters one by one we're on the second chapter now and i like to call them cornerstones pada can also mean the cornerstone of a house so if you think of the four corners of the foundation of a house. Each corner is called a pada. So this sutra has four padas, and the whole structure of the sutra is built around four padas. And, you know, if it's a real sutra, then those four padas should reflect four parts of our life. You know, it's not just a book with four chapters. It's a book with four cornerstones of practice that we can use for our whole life. And if we get those four cornerstones right, then we can build the house of our practice. And so let's go through the four cornerstones roughly, the four chapters roughly, and we'll understand why they are cornerstones. and what they mainly what they do for your spiritual life and how they connect to your physical yoga because i think most of us came to the yoga sutra to our physical yoga asanas to our physical practice so how do we enhance that physical practice how do we fulfill the goal of the physical practice and make it spiritual and inner also so there are four chapters. The first chapter was called Samadhi Bada. Say Samadhi Bada. Okay. And Samadhi, as you know, means deep meditation. You can say Nyomjuk in Tibetan. And Sama means like equal. And then D, it can mean mind, but that's a long I, like Arapat Samadhi. and this D is a short D and it really comes from Dha, which means to set down something, put down something. So Samadha or Samadhi means to put yourself down in an equal state, halfway between what two things? Busy mind and sleepy mind. I like to call it busy mind and sleepy mind. So really the definition of meditation or the word meditation, means to put yourself down halfway between busy mind and sleepy mind and I don't know yesterday I was working in the garden and uh just it just was a magical day and I felt my mind I actually felt my mind halfway between sleepy and and busy you know it was in that perfect place between uh with no sleepiness and no busyness. It was a contentment, right? So that's samadhi. Samadhi pada, the main subject of the first cornerstone, first chapter, is the five stages that everyone goes through. And it doesn't matter what country you come from or what religion you follow or it doesn't matter what philosophy you believe in. The idea is that all human, all life in the universe goes through five stages of development. It's kind of like, you know, first you're in the ocean and then you crawl out on the beach and then you become a monkey and then you become a human. It's like that. These are stages of evolution for all living beings. And you know them very well. Most of you know them very well. and we went through them in the first chapter. The first one is called Soglam. And that means, by the way, that doesn't mean, it's hard to get to Soglam. It doesn't mean that everyone starts at Soglam. Soglam is the first level of a person who has come pretty far in their evolution so far. So they're already a human being. They're already thinking. And then if they go higher, they will start to collect experiences that will help them to see deeper reality. And that main experience at Tsoglam is that you feel some kind of recognition of the trouble of this life. You know, so a lot of people get there when they're 10 years old. A lot of people not till 20. Some people never get there. But they understand that everybody in this world is suffering. And everyone is, I like to say, it feels like we're all in a plane that's going down. We all know the plane is going down. Some of us will die earlier. Some of us will die later. Some will die with less pain. Some will die with more pain. But all of us are, the plane is going down for everybody. So when you really understand that, you're at the first of the five levels of evolution. If you appreciate it for every living being, every animal, every bird, every human, then we say you're on a bodhisattva track or you're on a track where you have a concern for everyone in the whole universe, which is infinite, okay? And that's a long story, okay? Second path, jorlam, path of preparation. So that's called the path of accumulation. And you are collecting experiences and you're collecting enough good karma to see deeper reality directly. And that's called accumulation. Second level of evolution is called jorlam. And that means preparation. And that's specifically where someone has taught you how things don't come from their own side. how things are coming from you. If someone has taught you the pen in your life, then you have reached the second level of human evolution, okay, of inner evolution. And so, you know, many, many people never ever hear that. Many people never reach that level of evolution where someone explains to them that things are coming from seeds in their mind and not from the objects themselves. So that takes, it's actually very rare to reach the second level, to have someone sit down and explain to you how the world is coming from how you treat other people. It's a big part, it's a big step in human evolution. Third step, very rare, when you see this absence directly, that things are not coming from their own side. nothing ever did nothing ever will nothing ever could and when you see that directly and it has to be in a deep deep state of meditation then you reach the third path fourth level when you use that understanding to obliterate all your negative emotions forever and I like you know I grew up in a family with four boys and one of the most important things in our family was trying to get each other upset the four guys and uh you know i don't know it's some kind of art form where you try to piss off the other brothers and uh i don't know uh and i just whenever i think of the fourth level i think of someone that no one could upset them and that's what the fourth level is no matter how hard your brother tried and how many clever things he did you know he couldn't upset you I remember one day he stood there and ripped one my favorite shirt he ripped it up and uh you know if you'd reached level four then you're like oh okay that's all right and you don't get upset you know uh then level five is is when you finally reach that point uh where no one could ever upset you and nothing could make you jealous, nothing could make you want to hurt somebody, then that's what we call nirvana or blowing out your negative emotions. So that's the content of chapter one, the samadhi pada. By the way, the names of the four chapters or the four cornerstones are a little bit artificial. I'm not sure if they were added later. They're not, they seem a little bit off a little, but it's just a tradition to call them that. Many of the manuscripts don't have those four names. Okay, the second chapter, which is what we're gonna work on here in these 10 days is called the chapter on the way, Sadhana Pada. And sadhana means to reach something. We're gonna talk about it more, But for me, the sadhana pada, the second chapter, the big theme is what we call the four higher truths. It's an understanding that by itself, our life is pain. Everything in our life is suffering. Even when things start going well, they're headed towards a collapse. And then just the nature of your body is that will fall apart. And all things which are brought together, a marriage, a house, a job, a body, they will fall apart. Because they were brought together, they will fall apart. So if you finally see that, you're at the first reality, first truth. Second is to understand the causes for that. Thirdly, to understand that you can stop that condition. And then fourthly, that there's a way to stop it. So we'll be covering those four ideas. Number one, that basically there's a book by some African guy I was required to read in in high school. It's called Things Fall Apart. And things fall apart. That's first truth. Secondly, there's a reason for that. Thirdly, you can stop that problem. And fourthly, there's a path. There's a way to stop those things. So that's the content of the second chapter. And very importantly, the second cornerstone or the second chapter of the Yoga Sutra, it starts to address the Ashtanga. So I don't know about you, I didn't know what was Ashtanga. I just started hearing it. People said, "I'm going to an Ashtanga class." And I'd say, "Well, what's an Ashtanga class?" It sounded strange to me. And they said, "You know, it's a certain yoga teacher in India. He lived in Mysore, India, which is close to my monastery. And I used to go to Mysore. And he lives there and he teaches a special kind of yoga. And I actually went there to see it. And basically, if somebody asked me what's a Shtanga yoga, I'd say it's just really hard. It's really, really hard. I'm not sure. I did it for three years. I did it in my three-year retreat every day for three years. And it's just really hard. And I didn't know what Ashtanga meant for many years. And it means the eight, people say eight limbs, but limbs is, the word is a little bit incorrect. It just means the eight components. It's not like a central tree with limbs or something like that. This Anga just means parts. It has eight parts. that method has eight different parts. This kind of yoga or practice of yoga, inner and outer yoga, has eight different components. The first five of those components are mostly physical, things that you do with your body. And then the last three are mostly mental, things that you do in your meditation. So chapter two is going to treat the more physical angas, the components of yoga, which are more physical, what we call kriya yoga or physical yoga, the first five. Number five is sort of a crossover. And then the last three are called the team. I like to think of them as the team. And these are three mental practices. They are kinds of meditation, kinds of focus that work together as a team, which is called Sanyama. And it means work hard together. Sanyama means to work hard together. And that's the content of the third chapter. So these three mental practices of yoga, they will team together. I like to call them the team. And they'll work hard in the third chapter to bring us to our higher goals. And that's mainly the point of the third chapter. The third chapter also discusses the four bodies or the four parts of a person who has reached perfection. So there are some physical parts, there are some mental parts, and there are some ultimate reality parts. And those are the parts of a being who has reached perfection. And that's another topic of the third chapter. The fourth chapter is an odd chapter. It's much shorter. It kind of jumps around. I personally think it was sort of a question and answer at the end of the class, which is kind of what we're gonna do today. We'll have an hour of class and then we'll go to question and answer for 15 minutes. So by the way, any questions are fine. You can ask me when I'm gonna finish the croissant or other important questions, you know, doesn't matter. Any question you have is fine. We'll be doing that in about 45 minutes from now, okay? And I kind of feel like the fourth chapter, the fourth pada is sort of treating difficult questions that might come up. Like what happens inside the mind as you go through these different stages? what are the different kinds of reality? And there are questions that get into the karmic storehouse. Where do you keep your seeds? How are the seeds stored? How do they stay there? How do they come out? So there are interesting questions about how karma is stored. And these are all, you know, if you've been studying ACI courses or DCI courses, you know these are all popular issues that came up in ancient times. So the Yoga Sutra really is like a very beautiful summary of the big ideas that were hot in the second century or the third century, okay? And if you know the literature well, if you study a lot, you can almost put a year on this book. There are people in India who say it's 10 million years old or 20 million years old. If you know the literature of India, you can date it almost exactly. I think, I don't know, 250, 300 AD, something like that. The issues were hot at that time. It's kind of like seeing a newspaper from a certain year. You can guess what president or you can guess what year it is from the issues that are in the newspaper. Nobody has to tell you what the date is. So they were very popular issues and they're important issues. So the Yoga Sutra is kind of like a snapshot of important ideas from about almost 2000 years ago. Not quite, I think. Okay. The name of the second chapter is Sadhana Pada. Say Sadhana. - Sadhana. - Pada. - Sadhana. - Sadhana, I like the word. Sadhana comes from sad and ana, okay? And sad comes from a root, sid. So Sanskrit is built from roots. My Sanskrit teacher, who was Professor Samuel Atkins from Princeton, he was the chairman of the ancient languages department for 35 years or something. He would say, there's 800 roots of Sanskrit. if you learn them, then you know Sanskrit because everything is built from those 800 roots. So I memorized them. I memorized the 800 roots on the bus to New York. And then you can build any word in Sanskrit from that. And you can guess the meaning of words without knowing them. So anyway, if you know the roots, so anyway, Sidd comes from Sidd. And you know Siddhartha, which is the name of the prince who became the Buddha. And Siddhartha means to reach the goal. So Siddhartha means to reach. Saints are called Siddhas or Sadhus. Sometimes the people who have reached their goal. Artha means meaning. And Siddhartha means reach the goal. His name, that's the name of the prince. It's interesting that it comes into English. as a sod okay the indo-european root which is uh kind of the ancient foundation of english is s-o-d-h which means to to travel or to reach a place and it's found in the english words episode or method or odometer okay and uh so you can find sid sid is a difficult route to find in english there okay uh there's another what was that other word uh exodus the od in exodus x means out ode means to travel uh so it comes from sod which comes from sid which comes from here it's uh sadhana okay so sad means to reach or to go and then ana means the thing that helps you do it okay a na in Sanskrit is a suffix that means helps you to do it. So sadhana means it's a method which allows you to reach something. And then oftentimes in Tibetan they call it drup tap. They translated it that way. It means a method for reaching something. Drup means reach and tap means method. So drup tap is the Tibetan translation of sadhana. And it means a way or a method of reaching something. So what are you reaching? And I think it's a beautiful thing. We're gonna study the Hatha Yoga Pradipike, I hope Connie, for four years after we finished the Yoga Sutra. And it's a stunning book of real, it's much more practical, how to do retreats, how to do physical poses, how to eat, how to sleep. it's a it's a practical book of yoga that was written about 500 years ago we'll spend four years on that if you want to but uh that book starts out by saying that uh there are of course people who practiced yoga and who reached the goal you know of yoga they stopped their death They reach total happiness. And it talks about those people. And it's a cute, one of the opening verses, it says, what do they do? What do those guys do after they reach it? And they said, they're wandering around. The egg of brachma, which means the world. They're wandering around the world anonymously, helping people. And it's such a beautiful idea of people wandering around the world and helping people secretly, anonymously, and oftentimes in a form like as a Blue Angels pilot or something. Like they're already enlightened a long time ago, and they're just pretending to be like us. I love the idea. And if the Yoga Sutra is true, then there should be people like that. If the Diamond Cutter Sutra or the Heart Sutra is true, then there should be people like that and they are wandering around. So Sadhana, the name of the second chapter of the Yoga Sutra, means can you reach them? Can you reach them? And that has two levels. can you reach sadhana, can you reach them? First means, can you make contact with them? Which is always, in the beginning, it's always a, it's kind of a comical thing. You say, I think Connie, you're a Buddha. And she's like, nah, nah, maybe John, not me. And they always deny it. And then you have to question them and then you have to get to know them. and finally they can't hide it anymore. And you say, oh, you're one of those guys wandering around the egg of Brahma, already enlightened, right? And then, you know, you kind of, they have to tell you who they really are. And that's the first level of sadhana. That means you reach them, you make contact, you confirm that they are already an enlightened being. And then the second level of reaching is what? Oh, they teach you how to be them. They teach you how to be like them. So those are the two meanings of the name of the chapter that we are studying these 10 days. Okay, so that's a cool chapter. Sadhana, how to reach them, which means how to make contact and then sufficient contact that they teach you to be them. And then you reach them in a deeper sense. So you could call the second chapter or the second cornerstone of the Yoga Sutra, you could call it reaching them, how to reach them. So that's sadhana pada and that's the two me. And that's really what the chapter is meant to do, which is kind of beautiful. Now we're going to be, as we mentioned, we're going to be focusing on the ashtanga. Ashta means eight. Anga means a limb or a branch or a component. And I like Ashta because it came into English as Akto. It came into German as Akt. English comes from German. German comes from Latin. Latin comes from Greek. Greek comes from Sanskrit. Russian came from Greek about the time the Latin came out. So Russian's closer to Sanskrit, but if you're from Russia, probably Sanskrit should be much easier for you. Anyway, Ashta becomes Akhta. That becomes Akhto, Akht in German. And then that's why English aid has GH. It was meant to be egged. And so that means A, Ashta. And then and anga means a branch. What's that headstand is called Sarvanga Asana. The, it's supposedly an asana where you use all your limbs. Okay, Sarva means all of them, asanas, asana, okay. So then I used to hear, you know, I used to go to India a lot and many, many years I went to India many times. I was in the airport in Mumbai on one of my last trips and there were two old hippies there, old lady and an old guy. They look, they're old, you know, I don't know, 70-something. And we were waiting for the plane a long time, right? And finally the lady said to the guy, I think we're too old for this now. We're too old for India now. Let's call it a day. We don't have to come back again. I remember, I mean, I used to go many, many, many times, and people would say, Kriya Yoga, we're doing Kriya Yoga. And then I'd get confused, you know, I'd say, well, what's Kriya Yoga? And then everybody had a different idea of what's Kriya Yoga. Sedona, in this place, they teach Kriya Yoga somewhere. And it's different. Everybody has a different Kriya Yoga, you know. And I was confused, and I didn't know what it meant. but if you study the second chapter it's very clear and it makes sense and if you study the ancient literature kriya is quite clear and it means physical activities okay so yoga practices which are more physically oriented as opposed to meditation then those are called that's technically what's kriya yoga nowadays kriya yoga means something different to every yoga teacher everywhere but but traditionally kriya yoga is treated in the second chapter we're going to talk about it in the second chapter and it refers to the first five of the eight components of of yoga ashtaanga okay ashtanga okay and and by the way the the yoga This school nowadays called Ashtanga is not really more Ashtanga than anybody else. It's just a teacher wanted to honor that name. And that's a nice idea. That's a nice name for a school. But any good yoga school is doing Ashtanga. It doesn't necessarily mean a difficult yoga practice or physical practice. So Kriya Yoga does mean physical, and it comes obviously from which root? Kerr. Kerr. K-I-R. Okay, Kerr. Okay, vocalic R. Not R-I. Not Krishna. Krishna. Okay. If you want to upset Geshe Michaels, say Kerr. there is a k r i in sanskrit and it's spelled k r i and there's a k i r and that's spelled k i r and that's kriya it's not and krishna is not krishna it's krishna k i r okay and it's a big difference and it's a different Jeep. I went and bought a Jeep for only $6,000. And I said, well, that doesn't sound cheap to me. So it just means people, I don't know why, but it's, I don't know, it's irritating to me. Anyway, I should not get irritated. All right. So Kriya is a real KRI and not like Krishna. Krishna is not a KRI, it's K-I-R. Okay, so kriya comes from the same root, which is ker, K-I-R, which means to do something. Okay, and we get the English words create, and cereal comes from that because it was made, it was a crop, it was created. Create comes from that. So those Cs, which are really Ks in English, create or serial, used to be K. And they mean created, made, Kriya. Karma comes from that. So anyway, Kriya means physical, physical practices. And we'll talk about that. Those are the first five. And they're more externally oriented. And there are four classes of the secret teachings, traditional secret teachings, called Tantra. or yantra or mantra or vajrayana diamond way and there is a class called kriya and that's an interesting distinction there are four classes of the higher teachings and they also will repeat uh people like jatsang kapa will repeat that it's called Kriya because it's externally oriented. And the four levels of the secret teachings are designed to attract people of different personalities. So if you're a person who's more externally oriented, you would practice Kriya or Charya Yoga Tantra, these two lower levels of Tantra. and then you would be more attracted to ringing bells or physical, you know, physical things, bells, hats, drums, things like that. And then if you were, if you worked, I don't know, if you worked past that, I always remember I went to a, it was a holiday of a certain angel called Angela Diamond. We went to a restaurant. It was a holiday. I don't know if you were there, Ali, in New York. The restaurant's called Caravan of Dreams. It's in a basement. It's still there, I think. It's a vegetarian place, a very good vegetarian place. And we went in there on this holiday of this angel. And we went to celebrate. And we were having a nice vegetarian dinner. And the waitress was an older Jewish woman, maybe 70, 75 or something, you know, looked just like those older New York Jewish ladies. And she was talking like that and, you know, coffee, you need a coffee. And, you know, kind of chubby and gray hair. And so we ate a nice dinner. And then she came out and we said, can we have the bill? And she looked at us like that and she said, bill? I said, yeah, you know, can we have a check? And she said, you think I would give a check to people on this holiday practicing this angel's practice? Or you think I would give them a check? are you kidding and she just turned around and walked into the kitchen and we went to find her and we couldn't find her you know where's that fat lady and they're like what there's no fat lady we're like who do we pay the bill there's no bill and uh so that's called someone who's gone beyond korea they're not there's no uh sign of what they're up to they're not ringing bells or doing physical things at all. It's all inner. It's all quiet and it's all private. And, you know, so Kriya is the way you start. And then you go, in the Ishtanga also, the first five levels are very physical. And then you work up to more inner. And maybe there's no sign that you are doing anything special. You look like an old Jewish waitress. I wonder where she is now. She's wandering around the egg of Brahma. Okay. Then Master Patanjali in the second chapter, in the beginning, he talks about what's the purpose of meditation. If we're going to study meditation, which is the name, kind of the name of the first chapter, Samadhi Pada, if we're going to study meditation what's the purpose and what's what does it mean to reach nirvana okay and then he says tanu klesha tanu tanu means tenuous tenuous tendon stretched ten ten means to ton or ten in latin means to stretch something and tanu here klesha tanu kutva would mean uh the purpose of meditation is to diminish your kleshas okay the purpose of meditation is to diminish your kleshas to the point where they disappear so kleshas means uh negative emotions hatred jealousy you know irritation i i i always see hatred in the list and I say, did you have hatred today, John? And you're like, not really. But did you get irritated? Oh, yeah. Ellie had a fire alarm go off this morning. What was the other thing? Oh, the electricity went out in her whole house. And then the fire alarm went off even without the electricity. So go figure. And so you do have irritation. So I wouldn't say the definition of klesha or negative emotion is often, you know, hatred or desire. And I still, I didn't have desire. You know, I wanted to eat the whole croissant. I put it under the table so I wouldn't be able to look at it. And, but I didn't have desire, you know, I just kind of wanted it. And so he defines in the second chapter in the opening verses, which are also called paddha, by the way, verses are called paddhas. And in the opening lines, he says the purpose of meditation is to attenuate, is to string out your negativities until they disappear. Okay. Like, I don't know, syrup, when you have a bottle of syrup, you know, and then you turn the bottle, but it keeps dripping and then it stops. That's ten, ten, tanu. Okay. So tanu means attenuate. Stretch it out. until it stops okay so that's the purpose of meditation uh how to do that permanently okay uh he says can only be done by seeing okay uh in in the in the second chapter he says if you want to get your negativities to dwindle out like syrup coming out of a bottle uh you're gonna have to see you're going to have to see. So then we get into the idea of what is seeing. What does it mean to see? And how's that going to make me less irritated when the fire alarm goes on? Okay. And so then he starts getting into the four higher truths, which we call, they have been miscalled what? Noble Truth, which is a bad translation of Arya. Okay, so I don't know. I grew up, I studied my first Buddhism at Princeton, and we had to read these bad translations. We didn't know they were bad translations at the time, but they would say Noble Truth. I'd say, why Noble? And this, I don't know. So anyway, that's a bad translation of Arya. And he uses the idea of the Arya truth here. And what it means is higher. Okay, so Arya means, for example, the, okay, for $50, jambu. What's a jambu? Jambu. It's sort of a drop, drop, drop. $25 each. $25 each, yeah. We live in a world, according to the ancient Indians, called Jambudvipa. Dvipa for $100. But you have to explain it. Divided. It's the part two. Stop. You're making me have my head hurt. Dvi means divide. Pa means the waters. Dvipa is an island because it divides the waters. So we live on the dhvipa called Jambu. Now tell me why Jambu. Fruit is plovid. Yeah, there's a big tree on, there's a big tree which towers over the continent. And then when the fruit drops off, it drops in the water and goes Jambu, Jambu, Jambu. So our world in ancient India is called Jambu, Dvipa. The island of Jambu, Potu. Kerplop? Kerplop, right? We're on Kerplop Island, which means continent. Why am I talking about them? Oh, yeah. In the ancient Sanskrit, that tree is an example of Arya because it towers over the continent. Okay, so Arya means higher in position. It just means higher. It can mean noble in character but here it's a higher meaning someone who's reached a higher evolution so i like to say the difference between an amoeba and a human is similar to the difference between a human and an aria okay so an aria is someone who has seen ultimate reality directly and the whole boom, the whole Yoga Sutra is about how to become Ayur, how to see ultimate reality in deep meditation, okay? So therefore they are higher. And during that experience of seeing ultimate reality, they see certain ideas. Afterwards, they see certain ideas in a direct way. So those are called the four Ayur truths, but there are four groups of ideas. the point here in the second chapter is that just that progression, understand that your life is painful and that you're not going anywhere, you know, that we're all falling down in an airplane. And it's ironic that we would, this week, there's a country where people are shooting missiles each other, hundreds of missiles at each other, when they're all going to die anyway without the missiles. You know, people in one area who are all going to die are shooting missiles at people in another area who are all going to die so they can all die faster. And I mean, come on, you know, it's crazy. We're all dying anyway. You know, so that's the first truth. And here truth doesn't mean truism. It doesn't mean a statement which is true. Truth in English means a statement which is true. And it doesn't mean that. In the Sanskrit here, it means a fact. And it doesn't mean a fact as a sentence. It means a fact as that thing. So if you take a knife and you cut your arm, that's the truth of suffering. Okay? The truth of suffering is not something that Buddha spoke. The truth of suffering is when you take a knife and cut your arm. That's the noble, the higher truth of suffering. It's the actual thing. It's not the idea. You see what I mean? So those are four truths. You are in pain. There's a reason for it, which are seeds that you've planted in your mind. And therefore, you could stop it. And then if you want to stop it, you stop the seeds. Those are the four realities. They're not four truths. Okay, got it? Okay, and those are treated by Master Patanjali in the second chapter. Okay, if we have time, we'll go through the actual verses, but that's a long story. All right. Then he says, Master Patanjali says, let me get the actual, Avedya kshetram uttresham prasubta tanu vichinna dharanam. Avedya kshetram, okay? Avedya means to not understanding your world. Kshetra is actually the word for a Buddha paradise, but also it means a field where you grow a crop. And what's the agricultural class in India was called Kshetras also. So it means the place, misunderstanding your world is a fertile field for Klesha. Misunderstanding your world is where you grow all your irritation, upset, angry, bitter, right? Those are the stages of anger right off balance uh upset irritated angry then resentment afterwards so you got these they go like this right and uh they are the kashatra where you grow all of them is avidya Okay, so we're going to talk a lot about Abhidya. And I translated this 25 years ago, something like that. And I don't think I would say ignorance nowadays. I would say misunderstanding. What's the difference? What's the difference between not knowing and misknowing? You think you know? Well, there's a famous example in the Abhidharma. Okay, famous, famous example. It says, don't think avidya means not knowing in the sense that you introduce somebody to somebody and they don't know them. That's avidya. Okay. Avidya means I bring a new person here from Montana. And I say, do you know this guy? And you say, you know, I never had the pleasure of meeting him. That's avidya. I don't know him. And the real meaning of Avidya is, I think he's Mr. Smith, but he's Mr. Jones. So that's misunderstanding. So there's a difference between ignorance and misunderstanding. And Avidya is traditionally translated as ignorance. But that means not knowing. A-gna. A-s-nya. Okay? Okay, ignorance comes from us, yeah, right? A not knowing. I don't know him. I never had the pleasure of meeting him. But that's different from thinking he's somebody else. Misknowing is different from not knowing. Which one causes us trouble? Misknowing. You think you know, but you don't know. You think your husband's yelling at you because he's tired or he didn't have enough, he hasn't had dinner yet. Those are the two main reasons, right? But actually, he's angry because you got angry at your kids last week. So to think he's angry because he didn't get his dinner yet is already misknowing. It's not not knowing. It's misknowing. It's misthinking. Okay, got it? And that's the kushetra, according to Patanjali. That's the fertile field for all kleshas, for all anger, for all desire, for all jealousy. You have to miss no things. And that's the field, the fertile field. Okay. So he's talking about that. We can talk about avidya. We should. Okay. A means not. Okay. Initial a, short a in Sanskrit, at the beginning of a word means not. Okay, and then vid means? - See. - To see, like video. - Yeah. - Okay, and wisdom comes from that, and wit comes from that, okay? So these are all words that, a vid means don't know, a vid means don't know. Now, Christina, if you said avid. Avid, not avid, yeah, but if you made a long a, which traditionally, it has a different length, okay. Ah, avid, ah, avid, okay. Avid, negative. Avid, okay. Avid. They say a different length to the two beats to the vowel. Okay. What's that mean? Very much. Yeah, very much. Okay. Ananda is the very happy disciple. Very happy. Ananda means the very happy disciple. If you call him Ananda, you're saying he's Mr. Unhappy. Okay. I don't know. It's really funny. So, which one we have here? yeah short yeah misknowing misknowing okay got it okay uh so does a come in english yeah we use it as a negative it's called uh what's it called the privative yeah it's called the privative a like apolitical atheist uh agnostic apathetic no no passion okay so we use it in english sometimes it changes to i like ignorance in like an ignorance okay all right okay cool we also see vid in veda right book of knowledge all right all right and by the way you're going to get a lot of sanskrit in this class because look we're studying one of the greatest classics of the sanskrit language okay and i'm not just trying to impress you with my sanskrit according to according to this literature uh when you do yoga sanskrit is singing in your chakras okay when you do i don't know uttanasana you're trying to increase the sanskrit singing in your chakras okay the prana is supposed to wake up the Sanskrit singing inside of your chakras. And then when it wakes it up, you start to spontaneously speak Sanskrit. And you may have experienced when you were in a specially frightening situation or a moment of passion, you start yelling things or words come out of your mouth that you never heard of. really, it's partly the Sanskrit is waking up inside your chakras. So it's important to plant some seeds during this Yoga Sutra class that you get some Sanskrit, because supposedly this is the language that your inner body is singing. And I believe, you know, traditionally they say that there's two other big language groups that are not do not come from sanskrit which is chinese and and the arab the um semitic languages hebrew and arabic but if you really study and i think you can find uh the same roots you know it's interesting so uh anyway that's the mother language the mother tongue and i think it's important to learn some and you're not going to get through this yoga sutra class without learning some Sanskrit okay I'm sorry uh and it's not just to impress you it's partly to impress you but uh it's not just to impress you there's I'm trying to wake up something inside your inner body okay all right uh next we talk about four mistakes that you make uh due to your ignorance and I'm going to go to the I'm going to go to the root text. Okay. It says, Okay. Pancha klesha means the five negative emotions. And there's sort of, you should appreciate in this second chapter, there's a flow of five negativities in the human spirit. Okay, there's a flow. And they are in a lot of the literature that you've studied. You can see the same thing. Okay, so avidya, in this case, in the flow, avidya considered in the flow is misunderstanding things, the seed for it that comes from your past life. The seed for it that comes from your past life. In the second chapter, Avidya means the seed for misunderstanding your husband that you came into this world with. And all creatures, all living creatures came into this world with it. Ants have it, roaches have it, birds have it, fish have it, humans have it. they have a inborn misunderstanding. Even fish misunderstand other fish. It's not just wives and husbands. Okay, even ants misunderstand other ants. Everybody has a vidya. In this flow, it means from your past life. It comes from the factory. It's installed in the factory before you got here. Then the second one is called asmitah. Say asmitah. - Asmitah. Asmi means, I am. It's a very interesting word. Asmi means I am. It's conjugated, asmi, I am. And then ta means nas, like shunyata. So asmitah is an interesting word. It means I am-ness. And it's an important word in Sanskrit. Say asmi. Ta. Asmitah. okay in this flow of five negative feelings you start with avidya as a seed from your past life then even in the womb you have asmita you are misunderstanding where the the worms the movement the uh chilies your mother keeps eating there's a whole section of abhi dharma it says pregnant moms, careful eating hot stuff. It's inconvenient for the baby. So even in the womb, supposedly, you have asmitah. It means I feel bad. I feel, you know, I feel bad. And you misunderstand I. Okay, so avidya leads to asmitah. Then raga dvesha. Say raga. Dvesha. Raga, you know, it means attachment. you know like the reason a sitar song is called raga is that it's supposed to it's supposed to bring passion into your heart orange comes from that rage comes from that okay raga okay it means passion dvesha means i hate you i don't like you dvish like dvipa split dual okay so you bring a seat from your past life to misunderstand things then you walk into the kitchen your asmitah wakes up uh you either love the husband for the wrong reasons or you hate the husband for the wrong reasons and then uh he says Abhinivesha, say Abhinivesha. And then you are holding on to that experience. It's post or during anger, grasping to the thing coming from its own side. So three forms of misunderstanding in his list. Okay, one you bring from your past life. Second, you are born with. And the third, you are experiencing it throughout your life on specific occasions, when your husband yells. So it's in the moment. Misunderstanding in the moment has a separate name in the Yoga Siddha, Abhinavashya. Misunderstanding that you carried from your past life is called Avidya. And then misunderstanding in general from the point of the womb is called Asmita. three levels of misunderstanding one you brought from your past life as a seed one woke up in the womb and you carried it for 80 years and then Abhi Divesha it kicked in every time someone upset you or every time you really wanted something and you couldn't get it you know like that the minute you try to get to the college on time there's a traffic jam okay and then you get Raga and Divesha okay so that's pretty much my trails flow, right? It's the same thing we've heard many times. Misunderstanding your husband causes your anger, okay? Then that plants the seed for next life, you go through it again. It's a cycle, okay? All right, last thing, and I know I have two minutes, Tim, and you guys are getting the questions ready, I'm sure. There's a very, very famous idea, Say anetya, ashuchi, dukkha, anatmasu. Netya, shuchi, sukha, atma, khyatir, avidya. Four kinds of misunderstanding, okay? You think the anetyas are netya, you think the ashuchis are shuchi, you think the dukkhas are sukhas, and you think the anatmas are atma, okay? So these are very, very famous for misunderstandings, for flavors of misunderstanding. And Master Patanjali quotes them here. And again, these are very, very typical second century. These are like those issues that came up. Very, very famous. You think that things which are not going to last will last. They're called Chinjilokshi. Say Chinjilokshi. $100 for chingilok. Tim, the four chingiloks. The four asked backwards. I'm not counting words. He doesn't count. It means totally wrong. It means not mistaken. It means diametrically opposed. You know, 180 degrees of wrong. Okay, you think things are going to last forever. They don't even last for a millisecond. That's the first one. Second one, you think things are clean, which are not clean. The classic example in the scripture is the body of a supermodel with all its guts and blood and piss and shit and vomit. No, really. The third one is dukkha and sukha. You think a vacation is a nice thing, but then you get there and it becomes dukkha, it becomes suffering. And then the fourth one is the most famous one. Those things which are anatma, which have no nature from their own side. You take them to be atma, to have a nature from their own side. So these are the last topic that we're going to cover today. Those are the four chingiloks. It means not a little bit, not mistaken, but in English, in American English, we say ass backwards. It's kind of a bad word, but it means 100% wrong. I had a chingilog. I had a famous chingilog. The chief financial officer of our diamond company was talking in very hushed tones to the main investor. and I walked by and I thought they were, I heard my name mentioned and I thought maybe they're going to fire me that day, which is, you know, a constant fear in New York. And, and then they came to me and they said, we're going to give you a bonus, a $70,000 bonus, you know? And I'm like, oh, that's a chingy look. Okay. All right. Questions. By the way, those are the whole, That gives you a taste of the second chapter. Okay, we started, we're going to have 10 classes. We just finished 10% of the second chapter. It's heavy, it's packed, and we're not going to avoid, I'm not going to make it easy for you. Okay, Tim, questions? Thank you so much, Geshe-la, for giving us this teaching. Any of the panelists can unmute and go ahead and ask Geshella a question if you would like at this time. I have one just in case somebody else is not ready. But if you are a panelist, you can unmute and ask directly. Good morning. I have a question. All right, Noura, go ahead. Good morning, Geshella. Thank you so much for the teachings. We are going afterwards to be teaching this chapter. So what is your advice for us in the modern teaching for this chapter? Do you hear me? Oh, when you're teaching it? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Would I have advice for teaching the Yoga Sutra? You know, I was thinking about it on the way here in the car, right? And I was thinking, I kind of have a problem when I teach that I think sometimes I don't relate enough to your real life. So I would say when you are teaching it, keep bringing up real problems into people's lives. I think the husband in the kitchen, I'm thinking to write a husband in the kitchen sutra. And I think if you keep bringing up real things in a person's life, I think when you're teaching these, the book, the sutra, is very much a list of principles. And it doesn't really talk about arguments in the kitchen or anything real. It's just theory. The whole book is theory. Very much theory. The Yoga Sutra is like, that's another reason you can date it. It's obviously late Abhidharma or something like that, accountant. So I would say if you ask me a tip for teaching it, I think try to bring it into people's real lives, okay? And I'll tell you something interesting. the physical poses of asana are only mentioned in two of the over 200 verses. Less than 1% of the book is about yoga exercises. And even then it's a very general statement. There's nothing, there's not a single yoga exercise described in this book, in the whole book. In the mother book of yoga, there's not a single pose that's mentioned. and I think there's a reason. So I think when you teach it, try to bring it into people's real life, you know, and then obviously you're going to have to connect it to physical practice. I'll say one thing, okay? And I think it's, I got to say it. So I was studying in the monastery. You're not allowed to study yoga. until you're a Geshe. You have to finish 25 years of study before you're allowed to do physical yoga. It's so secret in my monastery that I didn't know anybody was doing it until the day they started teaching me. It's highly secret. And no one taught it to me until I was a Geshe. you know and uh and then they started teaching me yoga poses and the person who taught me was my logic teacher and i'm like i thought you were a nerd who just taught syllogisms and he says no i'm also the monastery secret yoga teacher i'm like okay and he started teaching me asanas And then I went back a year later for some work and he said, isn't this amazing? Isn't this secret? And I said, you know what? It's not so secret. And he said, what do you mean it's not so secret? and I said the exact same poses are being done by people in in yoga studios exactly the same so I have to say the poses you do at a New York yoga studio and the secret poses you get after you finish your geshe in Sarah monastery they're exactly the same poses and he's and he I said he said well how many yoga centers are there you know how many people are doing it is it five is at six? I said, well, I guess it's about two million people now. And I watched his face because I was interested what his reaction would be. And I watched his face and he started to cry. This tear came out of his eyes. And I was like, I was so disappointed in him. I thought, oh, I thought he was a good lama, you know, and he's so upset that two million people are doing yoga, his secret yoga, you know, and then I said, you know, you don't have to cry, you know, and he said, he looked at me like, I'm not crying because I'm upset. I'm crying because I'm happy you know two million people doing physical yoga it's a miracle we're in the we're almost to the buddha paradise you know he said if two million people are doing these poses this world is about to become enlightened you know we're just on the edge of the whole world becoming enlightened and he started to cry openly and I was so touched you know I thought wow that's cool okay another question i have a question i love you so much thank you for teaching and i wanted to ask since we're teaching a lot a lady niguma and it's a such a powerful yoga because we are working with the subtle body. I had a question. We were discussing some concept of the fourth movement when after gathering, you distribute the prana. Is it that we are distributing the purified prana or the elements? And are we distributing over 72,000 channels or we are just gathering the energy inside the central channel? That was the question. Okay, good. When you gather, the dyuba, dyuba means you are seeking to force the sort of unruly. That's the meaning of marut. The unruly wins, marut. You are seeking to take the unruly prana and the misbehaved prana, and you are seeking to draw it into the central channel. And when you draw a prana into the central channel, you feel powerful emotions. If you feel like you want to cry or you feel deep love for somebody or you feel concerned for the world, you want to help this whole world. Those are all signs that prana is moving into your central channel. And part of the reason of the purpose of yoga is to draw prana into the central channel. But in Lady Niguma Yoga, it's especially related to the strengthening of the lower abdomen, what the Chinese call dantian. They have a word for it, and it's a tightening of just below the navel. And that tightening or trying to bring up the prana into the central channel is called gathering. And it's typically some kind of abdominal work, what they call abs, right? The abs is not. And then later you're supposed to stretch your foot or stretch your tendons of your body, especially your limbs, the two legs and the two arms. And then that would, jambu means that you can't walk around with prana jammed into your central channel. You would be, you'd have a breakdown. So you try to redistribute it, diversify it, get it out into your body and then that's healthy for your body. So you shake it out or you do some final stretches and like a final seated spinal twist, supta, laying down spinal twist. That would be typically to redistribute the prana out to the limbs. And so you don't walk around with, you know, this CO2 cartridge, you know, with prana jammed into your central channel. So it's important before you get up and walk around that you redistribute it. Cool? I like that. So you gotta be good at, you gotta get good at packing it and then re unpacking it. And that ability is yoga. At will to pack your prana and then release your prana is yoga, yeah. Okay, last question. There's a question from China. Hi, this is a question from China. Okay, well, today we talked about the Kriya Yoga and how it's the first five limbs of the Ashtanga. But we've been debating in other courses that we've had and things like that. Like if the first five limbs are strictly outer practices or like at what point do they start to become inner practices? For example, like, you know, in the Yamas, if we're doing Nahintza, it can start as a physical practice. But then if you have the, you know, inner thoughts of love and compassion, like where does it start to become the inner practice? So I just thought I'd take advantage to see if you wanted to speak a little bit on that. - And I think I was in China and I went to an office, a business office, and it's a tradition for a visiting teacher to do some calligraphy and they'll hang it up and it'll be there forever. So that's kind of pressure on me. And I did, I was taught calligraphy many years ago. uh tibetan calligraphy so i did the you know lungsem jupa chippa uh in uh it's called ume and you kind of go like this and it's it's really fun and it looks very beautiful and uh so i thought that was the most important thing i could put on the wall it's still there i see it every time we're gonna so lungsem jupa chupa means uh the the mind rides on the prana the your thoughts ride on your chi okay so it's like a horse rider on a horse your prana is like a horse and your thoughts are like the horse rider. And there's an unbreakable connection between your inner winds and your thoughts. You can never separate the two. They will always be connected forever. So, and don't forget, you know, when you've got a horse and a rider, two things can happen. The rider can tell the horse, where to go or the horse can get pushy and go somewhere and the rider can't stop it okay so either one can happen right the rider can tell the horse where to go or the horse can just go somewhere and the rider has to move go along they don't have a choice okay so we use both facts in And in the Ashtanga, in the eight parts of yogic practice, we use the fact of that connection to our advantage. So if you're feeling upset, you could do some yoga exercises, like a headstand, and you could bring the prana down, and then the mind wouldn't be so upset, right? Or if you're feeling nervous before a job interview, right, you could meditate and affect the acid in your stomach through the rider would affect the horse, you see. So technically, all of the Ashtanga involve both inner and outer. So I think you could even have a debate in the Yoga Sutra debate ground. You could say all the practices, all the eight components of yoga are inner, and all eight are also outer. You could make, you know, in a typical debate ground, that would be a nice beginning to start with. You would walk into the debate ground and say, all of the Ashtanga are inner, and all of the Ashtanga are outer. Now prove me wrong, you know. And that's how you start a debate in the monastery. you make a grand controversial statement, and then you let people go wild. And that's good for an hour, an hour and a half. So I would say you guys should debate it. And I think it's a good debate. And I think you could defend the idea that all eight are inner. And as soon as you were done with it, you could prove that all eight are outer. That would be fun. Okay, we got to stop there. We'll see, right, Tim? We'll see you guys tomorrow. And don't forget to do your homework. And I invite them to John Campbell's Sanskrit class in 15 minutes. Oh, John Campbell's going to teach a Sanskrit class in 15 minutes. And don't forget to go. Okay. All right. See you tomorrow. Thank you. Thanks, Sarah.