FORGOTTEN HISTORY: Patanjali person - The Untold Story

Astika and Nastika Never Meant What You Were Taught They Mean

Sanskrit has a habit of surviving its translators. Astika and nastika are two words that have been carrying the wrong definition in English for long enough that the wrong definition now feels obvious. Unpack them and you find a classification system so precise it sorted the Charvaka materialists and the…

Times Life · 48m ago

Panini's Sanskrit Grammar and Why Tradition Called It Sacred

The Ashtadhyayi is not a textbook. It does not explain Sanskrit the way a teacher explains it to a student. It generates Sanskrit, every grammatical form the language is capable of producing, from a set of rules so compact they were designed to be memorised whole, recited aloud, and carried…

Times Life · Oct 26

Why the Rig Veda Made Vak a Goddess: The Power to Name Things

The oldest hymns in the Rig Veda do not begin with a creator who speaks. They begin with speech itself, already present, already sovereign. Before the gods took their positions in the sky, before the sun was assigned its arc, Vak was there, not as an instrument but as the…

Times Life · Oct 26

Tapas in the Yoga Sutra: Why Ancient India Considered Voluntary Discomfort Sacred and Necessary

What Patanjali Actually SaidIn the second chapter of the Yoga Sutras, the sadhana pada, Patanjali opens with three words: tapas, svadhyaya, ishvara pranidhana. Discipline, self-study, surrender. He calls this combination kriya yoga, the yoga of action. Tapas comes first. Not devotion, not study. The discomfort comes first. Sutra II.43 makes…

Times Life · Aug 17

Ishvara Pranidhana in Patanjali's Sutras: What Surrender Really Means When You Stop Confusing It With Giving Up

The word Patanjali actually usedPatanjali introduces Ishvara Pranidhana three times across the Yoga Sutras, in the Niyamas of Sadhana Pada, and twice more in the context of samadhi. The repetition is deliberate. Pranidhana comes from the Sanskrit root ni-dhana, meaning to place down, to deposit, to lay something at a…

Times Life · Aug 17

Svadhyaya: The Niyama of Self-Study That India's Yoga Tradition Never Properly Taught

The limb nobody talks aboutPatanjali lists svadhyaya as the fourth of the five niyamas in the Yoga Sutras, Book II. The niyamas are personal observances, the inner code of conduct that precedes any posture, any breath-work, any meditation. Saucha, santosha, tapas, svadhyaya, Ishvara pranidhana. Most people who have done a…

Times Life · Aug 17

Ahimsa Is Not Just About Others: What Patanjali's Yoga Sutras Say About Your Inner Speech

The yama you have already broken todayYou said something cruel this morning. Probably before 9 a.m. You looked in the mirror, or you made a small mistake at work, or you forgot something you were supposed to remember, and the sentence that formed in your mind was one you would…

Times Life · Aug 16

The Muladhara Chakra and Why Some People Cannot Feel Safe, No Matter Where They Are

The alarm that never turns offYou are not in danger. You know this. The rent is paid, the door is locked, the people around you mean you no harm. And yet something in your chest will not stand down. You scan the room without knowing you are scanning. You rehearse…

Times Life · Jul 18

What Ancient Indian Texts Say Happens to the Mind in Deep Meditation and Samadhi

The mind the texts begin with is not peacefulPatanjali opens the Yoga Sutras with a definition, not an instruction. Yogas chitta vritti nirodhah, yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind. The word chitta covers the entire field of mental activity: memory, ego, intellect, the restless surface that…

Times Life · Jul 3

Day after SC order, Patanjali issues another ‘bigger’ public apology

Patanjali Ayurved issues 'bigger' apology in newspapers for contempt action, promising to comply with Supreme Court orders.

The Hindu · Apr 24, 2024