The term yoga suffers quite a bit from “meaning expansion”. This is also true for other similar concepts from the East – Tao, Zen, karma, and nirvāna. The original meaning of these words seems to have been somewhat lost. Conceptions are shifting.
In our time of opulence, busyness and threat, we usually associate yoga with physical and mental health, with balance, relaxation, energy, and a little more stillness in the mind. Today’s man wants to be ‘comfortable in his body, resilient, less prone to irritation. He already finds it so hard to get to himself and hardly sees the what and how of everything, or what really matters.
One of the oldest meanings of yoga is ‘taming’, ‘restraining’, and related to driving a span of horses from the chariot. In the Kaṭhopaniṣad (I.3.3-4) 2, this became one of the metaphors for controlling the ‘personal’ self.
Know the Self (ātman) as the master of the chariot, the body as only the chariot, know also intelligence as the charioteer; know the minds (or the thinking faculty) as the reins. The senses, they say, are the horses; the sensory objects which they perceive, the roads over which they go; the ātman, the senses and the mind combined, the intelligent call the enjoyer.
Yoga is the archetype of the art of mastery. He who knows how to restrain himself – who knows his ways – has the key to freedom. Every human being settles into his existence, however powerless at times, and clings to it. At the same time, there is the desire to transcend this existence, to get beyond the confines of oneself. The self in itself falls short. The blindness of the I-feeling – the actual culprit, which is not mentioned in the above metaphor – makes one forget the fact, but the ‘self’ of body and mind is only a tool. It is not our true identity, and certainly not a haven of lasting fulfilment. Yoga, therefore, in addition to restraining the self, aims at connection. The connection does not just involve bringing the body, mind and senses into line.
Alignment is necessary to build a bridge to a greater reality, to the union of self (body and mind) and Self (ātman). The yogi longs for a fundamentally different state of being, free and joyful, beyond the ephemeral existence and the “void” of coming and going.
In the ancient epic narratives, such as the Mahābhārata, when yoga was practised as much on the battlefield as in the mind, it carried the heroic but fallen warrior beyond the turmoil of earthly existence to immortality. Skilled and connected (yoga-yukta) to his chariot – now as a kind of energetic vehicle – he coursed toward “the heavens beyond the sun”. The battlefield is the same kind of metaphor as the carriage. It stands, we read in the Śrīmad Bhagavadgītā (BG), for a battle that is waged elsewhere, in the heart. The heart then does not count as a place of sentimentality; it is the abode of the true Self. It represents the essence of who you are and, the BG says, it is where God or Śrī Kṛṣṇa resides. In the heart, the small self is overcome. Something dies and thus gives access to something else. Thus yoga takes on its meaning of elevation, upheaval, and transformation.
No one lives for himself, at least not in freedom. True fulfilment is not merely individual, it does not limit itself by isolation and exception. It sees the same self in all things.
‘That which is infinite is the source of happiness. There is no happiness in the finite (or anything small). Only in the Infinite is happiness. But one must try to understand what the infinite is.’ (Chāndogyopaniṣad – Chapter 7, Verse 23) 3
But this happiness does not exclude, even the worldly realm, that which is sometimes labelled ‘small’ in spiritual circles. Freedom is connectedness, where the small rests in the great and one’s own self carries all other creatures with it. The BG asks the man not to place himself outside the world, but rather to be present in it acting, detached, disinterested. ‘Yoga is the skill of action,’ Śrī Kṛṣṇa teaches Arjuna (II.50) 4.
One who prudently practices the science of work without attachment can get rid of both good and bad reactions in this life itself. Therefore, strive for Yog, which is the art of working skillfully (in proper consciousness).
The ‘gītā-yogi’ does not live in a remote cave high in the mountains. The world is the mirror of his inner battlefield, his training ground, his ‘field of realization’. He acts and is involved, and yet he is free, without desire. Though yoga has many meanings. Perhaps it is where they converge – in their integration – that the light of yoga shines brightest.
2. आत्मानँ रथितं विद्धि शरीरँ रथमेव तु । बुद्धिं तु सारथिं विद्धि मनः प्रग्रहमेव च ॥ इन्द्रियाणि हयानाहुर्विषयाँ स्तेषु गोचरान् । आत्मेन्द्रियमनोयुक्तं भोक्तेत्याहुर्मनीषिणः ॥ ātmānam̐ rathitaṃ viddhi śarīram̐ rathameva tu, buddhiṃ tu sārathiṃ viddhi manaḥ pragrahameva ca. indriyāṇi hayānāhurviṣayām̐ steṣu gocarān, ātmendriyamanoyuktaṃ bhoktetyāhurmanīṣiṇaḥ (Kaṭhopaniṣad – Chapter 1, Valli 3, Verse 3-4)
3. यो वै भूमा तत्सुखं नाल्पे सुखमस्ति भूमैव सुखं भूमा त्वेव विजिज्ञासितव्य इति भूमानं भगवो विजिज्ञास इति ॥ yo vai bhūmā tatsukhaṃ nālpe sukhamasti bhūmaiva sukhaṃ bhūmā tveva vijijñāsitavya iti bhūmānaṃ bhagavo vijijñāsa iti (Chāndogyopaniṣad – Chapter 7, Verse 23)
4. बुद्धियुक्तो जहातीह उभे सुकृतदुष्कृते । तस्माद्योगाय युज्यस्व योगः कर्मसु कौशलम् ॥ buddhi-yukto jahātīha ubhe sukṛta-duṣkṛte, tasmād yogaya yujyasva yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam (Śrīmad Bhagavadgītā – Chapter 2, Verse 50)
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