10 Definitions of Yoga in the Bhagavad Gita

It is often said that we don’t find yoga, but that yoga finds us.

That something in our life, in the universe, responds to our readiness to benefit from what yoga has to offer us and then presents us with an invitation. Our willingness to accept that invitation is entirely up to us. How receptive we are to such an invitation usually reflects what kind of perceptions we have of yoga.

What is yoga? What will it do for me?

People’s views of this can be as varied as fingerprints!

The recent explosion of yoga’s popularity around the globe has portrayed yoga in so many various shades and colors that finding the most authentic yoga may pose (no pun intended) a challenge. So what gives yoga its authenticity? Is there such a thing as the original yoga, and the original yoga teacher?

In studying the ancient Sanskrit texts in which the word yoga first appeared, one observes that its usage was quite broad. Contrary to what some may think, the definition of yoga was not restricted to the bodily postures most of the western world associates it with, but rather, it encompassed a wide range of ways to connect with one’s highest potential. It also expanded beyond that into descriptions of what such evolved states of being felt like.

Thus, those who first used the word yoga regarded it as a highly complex term. Their definition of yoga was expansive and included not only the process of yoga but the outcome as well. 

In ancient yoga texts, the various means whereby one practiced yoga directly merged with the aims of those very practices. It’s as if yoga were asking us not to worry about time, or about what yoga can do for us, or where it can take us, but to simply be in the present moment with our yoga practice.

 In the Bhagavad Gita, a main yoga text, the first time the word yoga appears it is as a solution Krishna offers Arjuna for overcoming his inability to participate in his life. Arjuna had fallen into despondence and Krishna presents yoga to him as an alternative way of being. Yoga appeared to Arjuna via his friend and chariot driver, Krishna, when Arjuna was feeling most stuck in his life.

So what does Krishna say is yoga?

Well, Krishna uses the word yoga over 100 times in the Bhagavad Gita, so he has plenty to say about it! In its original Sanskrit text, the word yoga appears in the Bhagavad Gita seventy-eight times as a noun and thirty-six times in its verbal form as yukta.

When we take all of the ways in which Krishna defines yoga in the Bhagavad Gita, it appears as if everyone around us is practicing yoga!

For yoga in the Gita is a rich, complex and colorful experience engaging so much of life and human existence.

The Bhagavad Gita’s yoga is something nearly every human participates in, to one degree or another, in one form or another. They just don’t know it.

For in addition to asana and pranayama, yoga according to the Bhagavad Gita is:

1. Clear, discerning, totally voluntary, dynamic participation in one’s life.

2. Everlasting, primal, revealing, the archetypal light and fueled by love.

3. Sacrifice that elevates us, motivates us, informs us, actively engages us and does so in a manner that is harmonious to all other living beings.

4. Selfless, cleansing, freeing, balancing, inspiring, and joyfully performed actions based on a vision in which one experiences peaceful interconnectedness with all life around them.

5. Nourished in the company of other yoga practitioners, by offerings of love, and the understandings they give rise to.

6. Heightened sensitivity and awareness of all life around us and within us, and an outpour of love in reciprocation with life’s wonder and beauty.

7. Fearless, illuminating, and a journey that does not end with death.

8. Vision that excludes nothing from its practice.

8. Intimate connection with the whole universe, with eternal realms even beyond the manifested universe, and with our own being’s endless capacity to love.

10. Pure, determined force that moves us toward the mysterious and secret, and connects us with the wonderfulness of existence, of being and of all life.

These are the characterizations Krishna gives yoga in The Bhagavad Gita, and the very sequence in which he presents them, in the original, Sanskrit language. How does he do this? 

Source: https://www.elephantjournal.com/2012/02/krishnas-10-definitions-of-yoga-in-the-bhagavad-gita/  &   https://www.youtube.com