Patanjali’s yoga sutras are wonderful to behold as such, as sutras without any commentary. This is how Bryant presents them in an appendix of some thirty pages, in which each sutra is rendered in the original Devanagari, transliterated, and translated.[1] There are five short of two-hundred of them divided into four chapters. Most sutras are of a sentence length. The first one is the title of the work: “Now, the teachings of yoga are presented.”[2] The second sutra introduces and summarizes the subject: “Yoga is the stilling of the changing states of the mind.”[3] Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. And worth keeping in mind at all times.

Footnotes

1. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Translated with Commentary by Edwin Bryant, New York: North Point Press, 2009, pp. 477-506.

2. Op. cit., p. 477.

3. Loc. cit.