What is Yoga Philosophy?

A reflection after 100-hr Yoga Philosophy training with Dr. Shyam Ranganathan

Before starting yoga teacher training, I answered “what does Yoga mean to you and what is the role of a yoga teacher?” here. Nearly 4-years on, I revisit the question after completing Dr. Shyam Ranganathan’s 100-hr Yoga Philosophy programme. While the title of this essay should be “what is Yoga?”, the misconceptions associated with the word yoga in English are so extensive that I’m forced to add “philosophy” to differentiate from the physical practice so well known whose foundations are so little understood. Some of the elements of my earlier writing were correct, others not, and some of the questions I previously asked I am now able to answer.

You can understand a topic in terms of what dissenting theories disagree about. (Ranganathan 2024 p. 42)

What is Yoga ?

Yoga Starts with a Choice

Sometimes it’s easier to understand what things are by reference to where they came from, what they reacted to, or what they are not. Here we can turn to Sāṅkhya philosophy, which has both similarities and major differences to Yoga philosophy.

Sāṅkhya, like Yoga, suggests that there are two distinct phenomena — nature (prakṛti) and persons (puruṣa). However, sāṅkhya positions persons as mere ‘seers’ or witnesses with no free will — things are the way they are because of natural causes. This isn’t arbitrary but it’s not under the control of the seer either. Situated in this genealogy of ideas, it’s easy to see why people would have been dissatisfied with this as a philosophy — where is the space for freedom, for responsibility? This is where Yoga diverges, as persons have consciousness, intelligence and volition.

Yoga starts with that choice — either everything is the way it is and you accept that, or you have a choice and recognise that you affect the way things are. This doesn’t mean that there is a direct connection between your actions and their outcomes — there are plenty of factors beyond your control that can intervene. But you do have a choice and the way you experience the world is a function of how you relate to the responsibility of choice.

So how do we go about this?

3-part Yoga Practice

तपःस्वाध्यायेश्वरप्रणिधानानि क्रियायोगः tapaḥsvādhyāyeśvarapraṇidhānāni kriyāyogaḥ (Yoga Sūtra 2.1)

Action in Yoga consists of (1) penance [austerity, heat], (2) study [of self, of texts], and (3) surrendering to the Lord.

If surrendering to a Lord doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, fear not! It’s not that kind of surrender and it’s not that kind of Lord!

Not only does this 3-part practice take centre stage as the first sūtra in book 2, it also features as the first three of the five moral observances or niyama in Yoga Sūtra (YS) 2.32.

1. tapas means “generating heat”, or doing what is uncomfortable. Wikipedia describes it as “a personal endeavour of discipline, undertaken to achieve a goal”. One association can be with the postural practice that most yoga practitioners are familiar with. It could also mean swimming in a river in wintertime, going for a nighttime walk with no torch, or going into a nail salon if that’s a place you feel you don’t belong. Comfort zones are places, people, actions, and habits you’ve known. Pushing beyond these is not comfortable, ‘generates heat’, and means that your past is not defining your future — this can also be called ‘unconservatism’.
2. svādhyāya is studying texts, self-study, self-discipline and self-governance. While texts referred to the vedas, it could also be other texts that help you better understand yourself, the world around you and your relationship and responsibility in it.
3. Iśvarapraṇidhāna, devotion to the Lord. But what does the Lord mean? For a long time, Lord or God were unhelpful concepts for me because they implied subservience, blind faith, or a lack of responsibility (do what you want, just ask for forgiveness before you die). It also put me off reading the Bhagavad Gita for a long time. However, Iśvara is described as a special kind of person puruṣa, who is “untouched by afflictions, actions, effects of actions and stores (of latent tendency-impressions) YS1.24. I am also a person or puruṣa but I am touched by afflictions, actions, and effects of actions. The essence of the Lord is within me and it is through Yoga practice that I can work towards it as an ideal. I found the word Sovereignty a useful way of overcoming the barrier that the word Lord presented to me. This isn’t a convenient sleight of hand; YS2.23 states that persons should be ‘their own spiritual masters” while 2.44 begins with “a bond with one’s chosen deity” making it clear that one has a choice. From a yoga account, you can’t claim that the Lord compelled you to do something as you are responsible in the first place for choosing that Lord.

So the good news is that ‘your sovereignty’ might be an effective way to overcome any problems you’ve got with words like “God” or “the Lord” (while allowing you to continue using those if you want). What that actually means is something you’ve got to figure out for yourself.

Svāmī Brian says it like it is. Images: The Life of Brian — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHbzSif78qQ

Which translation is right?

Choosing your favourite translation is not a systematic way to understand a text written in another language. The problem with many translations is that rather than considering all the possibilities and meanings, they pick the one they like the most, or that other people like the most. Patañjali provides a definition of yoga in YS 1.2:

योगश्चित्तवृत्तिनिरोधः yogaścittavṛttinirodhaḥ

Since you are reading in English and it was written in Sanskrit, we rely on translations for our understanding. A sūtra is a concise verse, seeking to distil and convey knowledge. Much like receiving a large zipped file by email, the recipient must unzip the sūtra to view it. To illustrate this, here are a few translations of YS 1.2:

1. “Yoga is the cessation of the modifications, or fluctuations, of the mind”…. modifications of the mind? Simply put, it’s the mind chatter that draws our attention away from the present moment
2. Yoga is the calming of the fluctuations of the mind in order to find unity within.
3. Yoga is the restriction of the fluctuations of consciousness.
4. Yoga is the suppression of the changing states of the mind
5. Yoga is the stoppage of the mind from making modifications.

Which one is correct? Can they all be? Yes and no. What I’ve most appreciated with Dr. Ranganathan’s translation of the Yoga Sūtra is that he provides a decent range of the possible translations of the words. For example, meanings of the word vṛtti include moral conduct, and kind or respectful behaviour. These options have been entirely lost from all the above translations, leaving them with a meaning resonant to the slogan “Keep calm and carry on”. Yet when we allow moral conduct into our reading, suddenly the ethical foundation that yoga provides is apparent. Without it, the problem is— as my sister so rightly put it - “with all this sitting around breathing or being mindful, when do we actually deal with shit?”. The ethical foundation of yoga philosophy risks being entirely erased if unzipping the file you forgot to open all the folders.

What isn’t yoga

• Any practice without the yamas and niyamas. None of the numerous sexual abuse scandals by so-called gurus would have happened if people practising physical yoga implemented yamas and niyamas first, as the Yoga Sūtra teaches.
• When it’s consequentialist eg. “I practice yoga so I can be flexible”. Personally I found it impossible to relate to images in yoga books of almost naked Indian guys with a foot tied around their neck. I’ve got so much further since I gave up trying to get somewhere. I’ve heard feet don’t make very good scarves anyway.
• When you’re judging other people for the way they live their lives — being all high and mighty looking down on others is being a dick. Being a dick isn’t yoga.

What google image thinks yoga is: slim affluent western women making shapes in leggings on mats.

What I got right in 2022

Here are a few extracts from my previous writing that I think were correct…..

• “We are not passive recipients but active participants in the reality of now.”
• “Having first found yoga and later discovered meditation, I now see increasingly little distinction between the two”
• “Yoga teachers must respect their students who have the right to ignore their instructions!” BUT with a caveat: if a teacher is giving instruction on ahiṃsā non-harm which creates a space for all people’s practice, while you may have the freedom to ignore this instruction, you do not have the ethical right to do so, since ahiṃsā is “to be followed throughout the world, irrespective of station at birth, country or place, time or custom” (YS2.31)

& what I got wrong

… and some I’ve now corrected:

• “ Yoga is a way of consciously evolving your understanding of the changing self.” Yoga is a way of evolving your relationship with the world around you, taking increasing responsibility for the self.
• “I want to learn the basic grammar rules of yoga, which I believe relate to anatomy and philosophy.” The basic grammar rules of yoga are an ethical philosophy which guide how to lead a right life.
• “A yoga teacher is a caring guide who supports students in their own journey of learning and listening to their own bodies.” A yoga teacher is someone who, through their devoted practice, approximates the ideals of their chosen values, while respecting yama and niyama. Any ‘teaching’ is merely a sharing of practice which can help others take on the responsibility of working it out for themselves.
• “Anybody — yes, any body — can do yoga. Start where you are. Start with the breath.” Anybody — yes, any body — can do yoga. Start with ahiṃsā, non-violence, non-harming. Ahiṃsā doesn’t mean hiding from or avoiding harm, but actively interrupting it to create safe space for your practice. In so doing, you are creating the space for others to practice too.

What people who know more than I do about yoga philosophy disagree about

There is a fundamental difference between Ranganathan’s translation of the Yoga Sūtra and other translations which are heavily based upon its commentaries. Other commentary-based translations believe that Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra is effectively a work of sāṅkhya philosophy and that persons have no agency. By contrast, Ranganathan’s translation situates puruṣa as having volition, in direct contrast to sāṅkhya philosophy. He argues that Vyasa — the editor or commentator— is heavily influenced by Sāṅkhya, that the commentary and the sūtra themselves say very different things, that the reasoning of the Yoga Sūtra text is not logically aligned with the commentary upon it.

This disagreement can be seen as disciplinary. For example, Simpson critiques Ranganathan’s translation of cetanā which includes “volition” on the basis that “To convince a lexicographer, Ranganathan would need to show examples of similar usage in Sanskrit texts from the time of Patañjali, but he provides none.” I can’t imagine Ranganathan is too bothered about convincing a lexicographer about anything since he is a philosopher. Whereas a lexicographer seeks evidence of particular usages of a word, a philosopher seeks to render the logic inherent in an argument explicit and importantly, draws a sharp distinction between logic and truth. The arguments against Ranganathan’s translation rely on evidence drawn from commentaries. Ranganathan’s translation argues for including the full possible range of meanings to be included as a systematic method of translating a text in a language whose cultural context differs from one’s own. Simpson argues Ranganathan’s method has no basis in traditional sources. Ranganathan argues that the point of yoga is to make clear the full range of choices — which includes tradition — and take responsibility for that choice. He chooses a logically reasoned argument.

The debate has significant implications: Simpson says that the disagreement boils down to “whether Patañjali promotes renunciation or, as Ranganathan puts it, “social change that is activistic”. This parallels whether the self has agency or not — if we don’t have agency it might make sense to completely withdraw from everything. When we have agency, we have a choice. When we have no agency, we have no choice. Does the Yoga Sūtra provide guidance on how to lead a life in society or promote the ideal of asceticism?

Simpson concludes that Ranganathan’s “use of decolonial language is especially egregious, since its practical effect is to colonise Patañjali, potentially misleading well-intentioned students about what he teaches.” Being a well-intentioned student myself, clearly I may have been misled. However, what I have learnt through this course is the basics of how to do philosophy, together with an account of the Yoga Sūtra which, through its method, allows a variety of accounts of the Yoga Sūtra. Ultimately, if one account allows the existence of others while another account does not, the latter must be labeled ‘colonial’.

• Patañjali and Ranganathan, S. (2008) Patañjali’s Yoga sūtra. New Delhi, India: Penguin Books India (Penguin classics).
• Ranganathan, S. (2024) Yoga — anticolonial philosophy: an action-focused guide to practice. London: Singing Dragon.
• Simpson, D. (2024) ‘Yoga culture wars: Through the looking glass with Shyam Ranganathan’, Ancient Futures blog. December 11. Available at https://ancientfutures.substack.com/p/yoga-culture-wars