Yoga and Meditation

I’ve often been asked, “What’s the difference between meditation and yoga? Are they the same thing?

Let’s discuss how yoga is meditation. If you read the main text of classical yoga, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, you find the very first and simplest definition of yoga in the first Pada, or chapter. Yoga is “the cessation of the movements of the consciousness.” Yoga is the meditative state you achieve when the mind becomes still.

There are some fortunate beings in the world who, by sitting down and being quiet, can come immediately to a deep meditative state—known in the texts as samadhi—in which the consciousness is absorbed in the self and there is no subject-object distinction in the mind. In this sense, yoga and meditation are one and the same. The rest of the first chapter is about what the yogi experiences in meditative absorption.  

Most of us are not born with an innate ability to meditate. Our mind is constantly moving, like a balloon in the wind. We must learn techniques and cultivate a long and arduous practice to sit still and then still the mind. In this sense, yoga is the means to meditation. As yoga master B.K.S. Iyengar writes in Light on Life, “Meditation is the Olympic final for yoga. You cannot turn up half fit. All the preceding stages of yoga have served to train you up to tip-top condition.”

The second chapter of the Yoga Sutras is directed toward us, the normal people. It tells us how we can get there. We must practice kriya yoga, the yoga of action. Kriya yoga has three components:1)  tapas, zeal for practice or self-discipline; 2) svadhyaya, self-study, or study of scriptures; and Isvara-pranidhana, surrender to God. I want to discuss self-study and surrender to God first, and then come back to zeal for practice.

Svadhyaya the study of the self and the study of scriptures involves self-examination in thought, speech, action, and patterns of action or habits. Yoga is a means of transformation, and we cannot transform ourselves without understanding how we operate in the natural world. This aspect of kriya yoga requires that we take a look at our stuff, what they call “taking an inventory” in today’s 12-step Programs.  One means of self-study would be writing a journal. Study of scripture means reading from the writings of masters who came before us, and learning what they have to teach us.

Isvara Pranidhana, surrender to God is actually the most direct way to achieve a yogic state, according to Edwin Bryant’s reading of the Bhagavad Gita, another classical yogic text. In the Yoga Sutras, surrendering ourselves to God means that we practice our actions in the world with detachment. We do for God without promise of receiving any fruits of our actions. We do because it is right to do, not with a mind for what we can potentially get from doing.

Tapas, the zeal to practice, is defined in the Second chapter of the Sutras through the eight limbs of yoga. Astha means eight in Sanskrit; Anga means limbs. (So the classical definition of “ashtanga yoga” comes from this list.)

Taking Iyengar’s point, here we see that meditation comes after the other 6 limbs have been practiced.  How can we still the mind if we cannot even still the body? Believe it or not, sitting still and erect on the floor is one of the most difficult things for a human being to do. Some teachers of meditation techniques will tell you that it’s fine to sit in a chair or “any comfortable position,” but the traditional way of achieving spiritual bliss is by taking a seated posture or asana and maintaining an erect spine. Every yoga teacher knows that the standing postures are actually easier than the seated ones. That is why B.K.S. Iyengar and his family will teach standing asanas first. Only after the legs have been strengthened and stretched will the suppleness come that allows one to sit correctly on a floor cushion. We practice asana to achieve strength, flexibility, steadiness, and balance. Our concentration improves.

We practice pranayama and learn how to control the breath because the consciousness and the breath are so intimately related. When the breath is unsteady, the mind is surely flapping in the wind. If we are constantly titillated by external stimuli coming from the world around us, including the t.v., computer, i-pod, and smart phone, how can we achieve a deep state of meditation? We cannot. We must withdraw our senses from the external world and internalize them. Then our mind becomes focused and we can concentrate. Prolonged concentration is the definition of mediation in the yoga sutras; and prolonged, one-pointed meditation is samadhi, that deep state of oneness.

Hence, if you want to learn mediation, a great place to start is yoga.