Jim Ryan, a professor of Sanskrit and Indian Philosophy at CIIS for the last 26 years, has a charming little giggle that bursts out whenever he speaks of the Divine Mother--which happens quite often even though he is lecturing us on the fairly patriarchal Yoga Sutra of Patanjali.

A little giggling is essential, as the Sutra can be quite challenging to study. This is especially the case when one's Sanskrit skills leave much to be desired, and one is not a Brahmin boy sitting devotedly at the foot of a master who can expertly expound upon the poetic little threads of yogic instruction. We have to take the translators' words for it, and confound it if they don't all use different words! And what's in a word? Well, everything and nothing, according to Ryan!

Take for example, Sutra 1.2, the most famously quoted of the lot.

"Yogah cittavritti nirodhah." This sutra is usually translated as "yoga is the cessation of the thought-waves of the mind." It is also often translated as "yoga is the suppression of the thought-waves of the mind." Cessation, suppression--totally different things, by the way! In the former, thoughts have completely stopped...which sounds an awful lot like death. In the latter, thoughts are being suppressed, insinuating man can possibly suppress Prakrti (the Universe), which is in Ryan's view a pretty arrogant suggestion.  Ryan, in agreement with scholar Ian Whicher (also one of our esteemed teachers for this course), suggests defining it closer to the concept of pratyahara, a withdrawal.  So instead of struggling to "think of nothing" we instead concentrate on being selective with those thoughts that do come, and cultivating them. So who is right? Everyone and no one, of course! I am beginning to sense a theme...