Place: Iyengar Institute-Simply Yoga, in New York (USA)
Year: July 2011
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Satyanarayana Dasa
Subject of this seminar: Samadhi and Sadhana Pada - Klesas
Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras are the classical work of the Yoga School of thought, one of the Six Darśanas studied in the Bhakti Tirtha course. They focus on how to attain direct experience and realization of the puruṣa, or the individual self. As the classical treatise on the Vedic understanding of the mind and consciousness and on techniques of meditation and self-realization, it has exerted immense influence over the religious practices of Hinduism in India and, more recently, in the West. For Vaiṣṇavas, the Yoga Sūtras are especially helpful in understanding the first two chapters of Bhakti-rasāmṛita-sindhu.
You have to have a clear definition of your goal – what do I want? What am I heading for? You have to have a very clear definition of what is Bhakti. If you are not clear, then you can remain in a hazy field for a long time. That is the significance of Nyaya. It gives clear definitions, which is very important. Otherwise you may think that this is the definition of Bhakti and I am doing Bhakti, but what you may be doing may not fit the definition.
