5 PATHS OF YOGA AND MEDITATION
KARMA, BHAKTI, GYANA, RAJA AND HATHA YOGA
The popular idea and fallacy is that meditation is something you do, seated in a quiet place, emptying the mind of the torrent of thoughts. However, meditation is more than that - it is more being than doing. It is something that can be practised on and off the mat, in any place or situation.
Ultimately, as we open ourselves up more and more to wisdom, we realise that meditation is not practised, but in fact it becomes you. “Not my way, but thy way”. “Let go and let God”.
You then realise that all the paths of Yoga have meditation at their heart and simply approach the mountaintop from different directions. Different paths suit different people depending on their ability, depending on whether they want a quick or slow path, whether they want a well-known familiar path, or a path not used by too many people or a lot of people. Just like paths anywhere. And most paths have places where they meet or cross. Yoga is like that too, I think.
This is why the Bhagavad Gita offers different Yoga paths to suit everyone, because we are all different. An older person may not wish to do Yoga postures but may wish just to meditate on a holy image, and that’s alright because this is a way of Yoga. A busy mother can do Karma Yoga by looking after her children.
The Yoga of love or devotion (Bhakti Yoga) is a path that would be used by many and may be the most straightforward too because it is natural to love and be devoted. It can be devotion to God, to a guru or spiritual teacher, or saint or Jesus or Mary or Krishna or Buddha. Even if you don’t believe in any of these, it could be Nature, or your mother or a sick relative, or caring for children or giving to a beggar because God is in everyone and everything.
Most people in India do not practise Hatha Yoga but are mainly followers of Bhakti Yoga. You can see it on television where thousands go on pilgrimage. Yoga means “union” and to love is the most simple form of union.
I see a connection with other yogas. Bhakti Yoga can be used for meditation (Raja Yoga) say if you meditate on a holy image or being, or if you think constantly of someone you love. That way you lose yourself and get in touch with God. Bhakti Yoga can be used for Hatha Yoga too - the lotus posture is very holy, and salutation to the sun is a form of love or worship. You can have your hands in Namaste. One of the niyamas is the devotion to God. Also, in Karma Yoga you offer your work to God, so this is devotion too, and all these bring you into the state of meditation.
Karma Yoga is the Yoga of work, and it is about doing things in the moment, as best you can, without thinking of the end result. You then offer the result, whatever it may be, as a sacrifice to God. The old people used to say, “I will offer it up”. This shows how you offer things you do in your ordinary life to God so this is where Karma Yoga meets Bhakti Yoga.
Karma Yoga is known as meditation in action because it is said that when you do things in the moment, it is a way of meditating. You forget yourself and just give yourself over to what you are doing. You lose the sense of agency, of the doer, of the “I”. The doer, the doing and the done become One. So this is a bit of Raja Yoga. It works in Yoga practice, where you practise a posture and concentrate on it and stay in the moment, without jumping ahead or end-gaining. This is how Karma Yoga connects with Hatha Yoga. The performer of the asana, the performance and the state of asana become One. You can also, in the spirit of Bhakti, offer up your successes and setbacks at the inner altar. The act will be free of karma, like the lotus.
Raja Yoga is the classical Yoga of meditation, as treated in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. The Yoga Sutras state that you can meditate on a light, or a guru, or the mantra OM or many other things if they help to concentrate, and so there is a Bhakti Yoga element. Chapter 2, Verse 39 of the Yoga Sutras says you can concentrate “by fixing the mind upon any divine form or symbol that appeals to one as good”.
The yamas and niyamas also lead to Bhakti and Raja Yoga because they are about non-greed, non-stealing, non-injury, purity, truth, contentment, self- discipline and devotion to God and make you a more spiritual, less selfish person. Yamas are proscriptions and niyamas are prescriptions. This means that your personality becomes more balanced, clear and steady and the mind also. However, these yamas and niyamas are not about sin, but about removing blockages in the personality, like clouds obscuring the inner sun.
You see you cannot really meditate if you do not cleanse the personality with yama and niyama. The conditioning (samskaras) and ego (ahamkara) are rust on the mirror or clouds over the sun. This is why these are known as the roots and trunk of the tree of Yoga. The Buddhist masters stress virtuous and skilful means as the day-to-day existential support for meditation.
Some say that the yamas and niyamas are too difficult, and one should concentrate on the other limbs, such as asana, pranayama or meditation (dhyana). We should remember that limbs are all part of a whole, just as the limbs of our body. Swami Sivananda, the great yogi, was once asked “which should one practise first – yama and niyama, or meditation?” He replied “both”. You see “like attracts like”.
Bramacharya is too often limited in interpretation to celibacy and sexual restraint. It actually means to “move and have your being in Brahma”. This is the state of abidance (“abide in Me”), which is being still and centred: the state of asana and meditation alike, whether active or passive.
Karma Yoga is meditation in action and the two types complement each other. Hatha Yoga helps with meditation because all the yoga postures help you to sit in a steady comfortable position for meditation. Pranayama also helps with Raja Yoga as it steadies the mind because when the breath is still or steady, and the subtle energies are in harmony, then so too is the mind.
Gyana Yoga is about studying the yoga scriptures, the Gita and the Yoga Sutras and other holy books from other religions. It is also about studying yourself. What is the meaning of my life? Can I be more aware? Who am I? Does the ego really exist? How does it relate to my deeper Self? What is my conditioning? And so on.
These are the questions which meditation thrusts upon you, as the light settles on the darkness of ignorance (avidya) and the concomitant subtle energy melts inner blockages. We all know this anyway: the more you practise all types of Yoga the more you begin to think of things in a deeper way and ask questions. Raja Yoga and the Yoga Sutras help with these questions and so does Bhakti Yoga. Meditation gives you the chance to sit still and ask questions, but in a state of no-expectation not to demand answers.
Hatha Yoga helps you to sit still and keeps you in a positive state of mind. When you practise Bhakti Yoga you can ask the higher power or your heart centre to give you the Grace (kripa) to help you with your questions. In Chapter 2, Verse 44 of the Yoga Sutras it states “as the result of study one obtains the vision of that aspect of God which one has chosen to worship”.
Patanjali means by study not only the reading of the scriptures but also the practice of japa, repetition of mantra. Self -study is one of the niyamas of the Yoga Sutras but this is also Gyana Yoga. Chapter 2, Verse 45 also mentions the niyama “as the result of devotion to God one achieves Samadhi”, and Patanjali then says that niyama is also Bhakti Yoga.
So, the different paths up the mountain are all connected, and even if one path is right for you, sooner or later it leads you to another one. Everything is interwoven, warp and weft. This weaving of interconnectedness is the Universe and all it contains. It is Yoga.
Michael McCann
