What are the impediments of Yoga? How to abandon them?

 

One should seek to acquire this Knowledge by abandoning those five impediments of Yoga which are known to the wise, viz., desire, wrath, cupidity, fear and sleep.

 

Wrath is conquered with tranquillity of disposition. Desire is conquered by giving up all purposes. By reflecting with the aid of the understanding upon topics worthy of reflection, one endued with patience succeeds in abandoning sleep.

 

By steady endurance one should restrain one’s organs of generation and the stomach (from unworthy or sinful indulgence). One should protect one’s hands and feet by using one’s eyes. One should protect one’s eyes and ears by the aid of one’s mind, one’s mind and speech by one’s acts. One should avoid fear by heedfulness, and pride by waiting upon the wise. Subduing procrastination, one should, by these means, subdue these impediments of Yoga.

 

One should pay one’s adorations to fire and the Teachers (Enlightened Souls), and one should bow one’s head to the deities. One should avoid all kinds of inauspicious discourse, and speech that is fraught with malice, and words that are painful to other minds.

 

Meditation, study, gift, truth, modesty, simplicity, forgiveness, purity of body, purity of conduct, subjugation of the senses, these enhance one’s energy, which when enhanced destroys one’s sins. By behaving equally towards all creatures and by living in contentment upon what is acquired easily and without effort, one attains to the fruition of all one’s objects and succeeds in obtaining Self knowledge.

Eight limbs of Meditation

 

1.         Yama (The five "abstentions"): non-violence, non-lying, non-covetousness, non-sensuality, and non-possessiveness.

2.         Niyama (The five "observances"): purity, contentment, austerity, study, and surrender to god.

3.         Asana: Literally means "seat", and in Patanjali's Sutras refers to the seated position used for meditation.

4.         Pranayama ("Suspending Breath"): Prana, breath, "ayama", to restrain or stop. Also interpreted as control of the life force.

5.         Pratyahara ("Abstraction"): Withdrawal of the sense organs from external objects.

6.         Dharana ("Concentration"): Fixing the attention on a single object.

7.         Dhyana ("Meditation"): Intense contemplation of the nature of the object of meditation.

8.         Samadhi ("Liberation"): merging consciousness with the object of meditation.