Patanjali Yoga Sutra: Day 02

DAY 02: HONOURING THE PRACTICE

• Mind can never be you. Mind can never go to where you are. Mind can never reach that depth.
• When we realize that something is just 'mind stuff', we feel free. The more aware we are the more free we become.

Abhyasa (Practice)

• This effort to be still/steady is practice.
• Practice is being steady, the stability, in the moment we call 'now'. How to get this - it takes time, require practice and then it becomes firm.
• Mind need more time for its growth than body takes time to grow.
• Every practice requires time, significant time and that too without gap. Connection should not be broken. Constant practice is essential. e.g any instrument or any sports.
• Another requirement for practice is doing things with honoring and respect. We should do it with gratitude and respect.
• We tend to lose the honor, respect with time. If you are not satisfied with your kriya or meditation some day, find that you have lost attentiveness and attention. You are not honoring it, you are not honoring your self.
• Honor is total attentiveness to the present moment with a tinge of gratefulness.
• Respecting / honoring every moment - that is practice.
• Any practice is a practice when it is done over a time without gap with respect, is practice.
• If you don’t have respect for master your meditation will not work. Because it is that respect which will make you be in that moment.

Vairagya (Detachment)

• Mind goes to our senses. e.g. Sight, sense of touch, or something that we have heard.
• Craving for any of the senses or even for heavenly things are obstructions on the path.
• Vairagya: vairagya is believing that how ever good/great anything I am not interested in any of the act of senses. This is very essential for good meditation. We require this dispassion for mediation.
• If mind is obsessed with desires, it can not meditate.
• Having a thought that I don't want a desire is also a desire.
• Expectation in mediation in also an obstruction in the meditation.
• When you don't crave for happiness that is when you are happy. Craving for happiness brings misery.
• If you don't care for happiness, you are liberated and when you don't even care for liberation, you attain love (param-vairagya).
• Vairagya is putting a stop on the craving for happiness. This doesn't mean we have to miserable or should not enjoy but retrieve the mind from cravings. Only then one can meditate and still the mind from 5 modulations. That's when Yoga happens.
• Drop all the desires and craving for happiness. Become free from feverishness and craving for happiness that is gripping the mind.
• Remembering of that fact that 'one day you are going to die' helps in dropping craving that comes to our mind. So if mind is bombarded with cravings, just remember this fact of death.
• All the object of senses have limitation but our mind is not ready for limitations and wants unlimited joy - which senses can't give.
• Without blaming object of senses rather honoring them and skillfully coming out of them is the vairagya. Blaming or running away from the world or object of senses is not going to help.
• Once you know the nature of your self, there is total pleasure; all fears disappear.
• Not blaming or getting scared or running away from the world rather being centered even when you are in the world is vairagya.
• Sattva, Rajas and Tamas gunas keep coming  in our life in a cycle. The one who is centered moves through them without being averse to them. 
• Whatever you are averse to, you will stay with it and whatever you crave for you keep craving for. Without craving or aversion, moving through the gunas is the real skill - that is Yoga.
• Yoga is a skill - a skill to manage mind, a skill to deal with emotions, a skill to be with people, a skill to be centered, a skill to be in love and a skill that doesn't let this love turn in into hatred.