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Patanjali and the Yoga Sutras
We do not know when Patanjali lived. We do not know where. We do not know whether he was one person. For the author of the foundational text of classical yoga, the biographical record is close to empty, and what fills the gap is mostly legend, including a charming story that he descended from the…
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The Bhagavad Gita and the Three Paths of Yoga
Two armies are drawn up facing each other, and one man asks his driver to take him into the gap between them so he can see who he is about to fight. He looks. And in the ranks opposite he finds his cousins, his teachers, the grandfather who raised him, men he has eaten with…
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The Upanishads and the Birth of Yogic Philosophy
A boy named Nachiketa is given away by his father to Death. The father, Vajashravasa, has been performing a great sacrifice, giving away his possessions as the ritual requires. But the cattle he is offering are old and barren, animals that have already given everything they had. The boy notices. He asks his father, more…
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The Vedas and the Earliest Roots of Yoga
For roughly three thousand years, the oldest sacred texts in India were not written down. They were held in people. Families of reciters memorised the Rigveda syllable by syllable, tone by tone, and passed it to their children using a set of verification techniques that border on the obsessive. In one method, jata-patha, the reciter…
