---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <soundofstillness@...> wrote :
From my minimalist way of understanding, Shyam Ranganathan is suggesting, as he did in his translation and commentary of the Yoga sSutra that Purusha = Person indeed does have "Agency" according to the great philosopher Maharishi Patanjali. "The Sankhya Karika appears to state that it is nature that brings about freedom, while Patañjali’s view seems to be that it is persons that are the explanation of freedom (I write about this in my introduction to my translation). The relevant points of comparison are the Sankhya Karika 17, 44–45, 62–64, where the person is described as irrelevant to the process of liberation, and Yoga Sutra I.21, IV.18, and IV.29 where persons and their self improvement are treated as instrumental to liberation . . ." http://indianphilosophyblog.org/2014/03/07/moral-standing-and-yoga/ "irrelevant to the process of liberation" sayest the Sankhya Karika "persons and their self improvement are treated as instrumental to liberation" sayest the Yoga Sutra Letting go for a moment (or two) everything you've read, thought and talked about, concentrated on, contemplated . . . and based on your Person(al) experience of tens of thousands of hours of meditation, what sez you? Do Purusha(s) = You have agency regarding their/Your realization, enlightenment and liberation? NO Or as the Sankhya Karika and Vedanta suggest, from my understanding, Purusha, Person, Pure Awareness, is but the observer with no capacity to act at all. And what did Maharishi have to say? Ask one of former teachers here.
