Welcome

Please feel free to read this blog and join in. I hope you will write something inspirational, inspiring, spiritual, controversial, amusing, engaging or just plain run of the mill. But please don't be brusque, churlish or licentious.

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Samadhi cont'd

The state of samadhi, in my experience, is not easy to achieve. At first it comes and goes very quickly. You may have experienced this feeling while watching the sun set or maybe ocean waves rolling onto shore. There is a short period of time, maybe only a few seconds, of pure bliss and a feeling of being one with whatever you are experiencing at that moment. If you could extend that feeling into a longer period of time while simultaneously carring on a conversation, for example, you would be in Samadhi.

The process of developing Samadhi is thought to have originated with Patanjali, a sage from India some two thousand years ago. Patanjali is known as the "father of yoga" and wrote the Yoga Sutras which contains the Eightfold Path of Yoga also know as The Eight Limbs of Yoga. This ancient writing consists of eight do's and don'ts for living a pure, righteous and blissful life.

When Patanjali developed the Yoga Sutras there was little mention of the type of asanas or poses that were to be used in order to reach Samadhi. The word sutra means to link things together as in sewing. Hence, the word suture, for sewing a wound together or the demarcation lines between two bones in a skull for example. The Yoga Sutras linked short and to-the-point thoughts by describing how one related to the other. It is this relationship that all things have that forms the basis of yoga. The word yoga means union, primarily union of the mind with the boldy and the spirit.

I'll briefly go over the eight limbs of yoga in my next post.

1 comment:

Mibeloved said...

This is not to be critical but only educational and for clarification about the complexity that is yoga:

For clarification purposes on the sanskrit, in wikipedia yoga is explained beginning with this

=========

Yoga (Sanskrit, Pāli: योग yóga) is a physical, mental, and spiritual discipline, originating in ancient India,[1][2] whose goal is the attainment of a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquility.[3] The word is associated with meditative practices in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.[4][5][6]







=====================================================

In sanskrit there is what is called root words and there are a set number of these. From these words come all sorts of other words, which are considered to be either variant from or similar to the root word




Yoga as a sanskrit word is traceable to a root word which is yuj, which means to yoke or join. Initially it was used mostly for yoking animals or joining a bull to a harness or plow.




Another case is like the root work Kr which means to do

from that we have kriya, karma, vikarma,krita and many other words but some of these words like vikarma for instance might mean the opposite of the derivative word (karma) which would be contrary to the root kr.




yoga really is the yoking something, joining something, linking something to something else.




Later in the history india, the word union came to be used but again it is like to the root word more than to the word yoga

when yoga means union that is not the same as yoga as a system of psychological disciplines, like explained in Wikipedia




patanjali did not say that yoga means union but it is a fact that many other teachers say that yoga means that..

I have not seen patanjali use the word in that way , nor has Krishna used the word in that way in the Gita, if one pays attention to the sanskrit sentences.