Philosopher · Antiquity
Patanjali
fl. c. 200 BC–400 AD · Classical Yoga (one of the six orthodox schools), on the dualist metaphysics of Samkhya
The compiler of the “Yoga Sutras,” the text behind every modern yoga; the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's 1989 letter on Christian meditation and the Benedictine Jean Déchanet's “Christian Yoga” are the Church's two responses to his method.
Of the author almost nothing is known; the “Yoga Sutras,” 195 aphorisms compiled perhaps around the fourth century, define yoga as the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind, so that the seer (purusha), pure consciousness, rests in its own nature instead of identifying with the changing mind, which belongs to matter (prakriti). Suffering comes from the afflictions (kleshas), above all ignorance of the difference between seer and seen; the remedy is the eightfold path of moral restraints (nonviolence, truth, not stealing, continence, non-possession), observances, posture, breath control, withdrawal of the senses, concentration, meditation and absorption (samadhi), with devotion to the Lord (ishvara) as one aid among others. The Lord is a special purusha untouched by karma, the teacher of the ancients, not a creator; matter functions for the sake of the seer's experience and release; objects exist independently of any mind, against the Buddhists; and liberation (kaivalya) is the seer's isolation in itself, not union with God. The great vows bind in every birth, place and time without exception.
Why he matters: Millions of Catholics practice something called yoga, and the CDF's “Orationis Formas” (1989) and Déchanet's experiment of the 1950s are the Church's attempts to say what of his method a Christian may use and what metaphysics must be left behind; his restraints are a near-complete natural law, and his account of attention and distraction is the most precise in antiquity. He is also the clearest case of a spiritual discipline without a personal God at its end.
Where to be careful
The purusha isolated from matter is a dualism the Council of Vienne excludes, the goal is not the vision of God but the self resting in itself, the Lord is a model and aid rather than Creator and end, and the body is to be escaped rather than raised; “Orationis Formas” warns that methods aimed at an impersonal absorption cannot be simply baptized. Common ground: the universal moral restraints, the discipline of attention and breath in prayer, chastity and poverty as means, and the recognition that the mind must be stilled before it can see.
Reading
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The Yoga Sutras of PatanjaliEdwin F. Bryant · The text with the classical commentaries digested; the edition to read for what the sutras meant before modern yoga.
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Christian YogaJ.-M. Déchanet · A Benedictine's account of using the postures and breath for Christian prayer, with his reasons and his limits.
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Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation (Orationis Formas)Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith · The Church's judgment on Eastern methods: what may be borrowed, and why Christian prayer is dialogue with a personal God.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.