A Sutra a Day: IV-14 – What's Your Opinion Worth?

Jan 12, 2013 | Philosophy, Wisdom, XSutras, Yoga practices, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Yoga teaching  | 0 comments

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More often than not we are required to make quick decisions and then we move on and live with the choices we made. Life is usually being fired at us point blank and there’s not a lot of time to reflect even on the important stuff so as to arrive at our best options.
So it goes with impressions of people, also; isn’t it often the case that we sum up a person on first meeting, slot them in to a pigeonhole, and then there they stay.
It happens with yoga poses too. Depending on whether you have had a good experience in performing a pose, you decide you like it or you don’t. You’ll either anticipate or dread meeting up with the pose again in subsequent classes.
Sutra IV-14 is about understanding the reality of objects, separate from our accumulated desires and impressions, our ways of thinking, seeing and feeling.

This means that any conclusion is provisional. As soon as one pronounces it, it is already out of date – a mere state. It is, therefore, imprudent to conclude, judge, or fix an opinion on an event or an individual.*

I can’t imagine living my life free from judgments and opinions, but I have experienced the freedom of not being so attached to them. Where this applies to my judging and evaluating another person, it lets him or her out of the box, too. This is a great practice for a yoga teacher, or anyone really.
Parinama-ekatvat-vastu-tattvam
An object’s reality depends on uniting the changes of the three constituent qualities of nature.*
*The Essence of Yoga – Reflections on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Bernard Bouanchaud

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