--- In [email protected], "sparaig" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], Vaj <vajranatha@> wrote: > > > > It is mentioned in Vyasa's comment to YS 3:5 9( jayat). > > That's what Cardemeister was quoting. > > > > In v. 8 commentary he says that the "trinity" (trayam) of > > samyama must be absent for seedless (pure) samadhi to > > occur. > > Sure. The sidhis occur on the relative side of the divide. > Sedless is on the other side. However, just because the > sidhis are an obstacle to seedless samadhi, doesn't mean > that seedless samadhi can't occur during sutra practice. The > manifestation of the sidhi doesn't occur at that point because > NOTHING manifests.
The translations "conquer" (Vyasa) and "obstacle" (Patanjali) suggest that samyama must be overcome before "pure" samadhi can occur--i.e., that samyama is a bug rather than a feature. But MMY, in my understanding, teaches exactly the opposite: samadhi is prerequisite to samyama. Obviously samyama is not the same as "pure" samadhi; 3:8 is a DEscription, not a PREscription. To say "the 'trinity' (trayam) of samyama must be absent for seedless (pure) samadhi to occur" is correct as far as it goes, but it misses the point entirely, at least in MMY's teaching. The purpose of the practice of samyama, according to MMY, is to stabilize the coexistence of samadhi with mental activity. Alistair Shearer writes, "By samyama the value of fully expanded awareness [samadhi] is, as it were, coaxed into the very fabric of the thinking mind, so that proficiency in the technique leaves the mind saturated with silence, *no matter how active it may be on the surface* [emphasis added]. Samyama results in 'the state in which activity and silence are equally balanced in the mind' (3:12 [in Shearer's translation]). When that balance is permanent, there is enlightenment." To base an argument about what Patanjali means on a translation of Vyasa's Sanskrit, especially with regard to specific English words, doesn't really make much sense. If the translation "conquer" is subtly wrong, Patanjali's discourse on samyama-- and on Yoga itself--is turned upside down, inside out, and backward. Patanjali doesn't explain the procedure for the practice of samyama; rather, he explains the mechanics of consciousness by which it occurs, and what it's designed to accomplish. The only way for those not steeped in ancient Sanskrit to really understand those mechanics, it seems to me (and perhaps even for those who are), is to follow the procedural instructions for the practice of samyama given by a master, and see via your own personal experience whether those instructions *work* to produce siddhis (and ultimately enlightenment). Then you can work *backward* from those instructions and that experience to Patanjali's Sanskrit and evaluate the various English translations of Patanjali (and Vyasa). But you can't do it the other way around, starting with translations of Vyasa to determine what Patanjali is saying, and from that determination derive the proper instructions. There are too many layers of potential misunderstanding, and a single mistranslation of a term (e.g., "conquer") can lead you down the wrong trail entirely.
