Yoga and Buddha: What's the relationship?

Yoga scholars often differ in characterizing the exact relationship between Patañjali’s Yoga Sutras and Buddhism. Karen O’Brien finds the text weaving Buddhist strands into a Sankhya textile with the Buddhist terminology paralleling the Sankhya metaphysics. Pradeep Gokhale believes Sankhya and Buddhism to be the text’s primary influences with the Yoga Sutras fitting Buddhist psychology into a Sankhya framework. He sees Patañjali learning from Buddhists as Gautama learned from Brahmanists and hears echoes of the Buddhist Dhammapada rustling through Patañjali’s eight limbs.

Translator Edwin Bryant insists that the Yoga Sutras are fully Vaishnavite or Shaivite in theology, but his commentary engages more frequently with Buddhist conceptions. (Consider the commentary on the following passages: 4.14,15,19,20,21, and 33.) Furthermore, Buddhist influence upon the yoga of Patañjali seems not to have ended with the composition of his text. James Mallinson asserts that classical yoga evolved into physical yoga within a Buddhist context around 1000 CE then shifted to Vishnu and Shiva devoted monasteries only as Buddhism left India. Thus, Yoga appears to have a long-standing synergistic relationship with Buddhism, as it does with Sankhya.

Still, this widespread consensus is far from universal. The Yoga Sutras translation by Graham Schweig from Yale University Press makes a case that reading Patañjali’s work in close comparison to the Upanishads and Bhagavata Purana offers more interpretive light than reference to the context of Sankhya and Buddhism. Before that scholarly publication stills the clashing waves of debate, I relish this opportunity to swirl an amateur toe in the waters (and muddy them one more time).

Pradeep Gokhale’s comparison of the Yoga Sutras to the Dhammapada offers a small but significant methodological advantage in the pursuit of ideological parallels. Since both texts consist of pithy philosophical aphorisms, one might expect that closely related content would display its similarity more obviously when expressed in comparable literary forms. In this essay, we have compiled a few of these parallel passages and offered analysis on their relevance to the relationship between the Yoga Sutras and Buddhism. Such parallels prove nothing but can suggest much for further inquiry.

At the commencement of this primary Buddhist text, the main point of contention with Patañjali arises. Dhammapada 1 claims “Our life is the creation of our mind.” While no concept is more central to the Yoga Sutras and its definition of Yoga than the Citta mind, Patañjali holds the mind to be an interface between the eternal realities of purusha and prakrti, which it does not create. The Yoga Sutras exalt the nearly unlimited powers of the mind to obtain omniscience, omnipotence, and the discriminative insight that gives liberation, but still insist that worldly and spiritual entities are real, not mind generated.

A far closer parallel from our Buddhist text reads “Those who think the unreal is, and think the Real is not, they shall never reach Truth.” However, the ignorance that blocks Patañjali’s path confuses eternal with temporary, maintaining the reality of both. Mind is central in the Yoga Sutras because of its position between the primary realities, not as the only reality. Since the goal of the Yoga Sutras is the Kaivalya separation of purusha from prakrti, the denial of their reality (and thus the existential situation to be resolved) is a difference of perspective that cannot be harmonized with Patañjali’s system. This results in the text’s repeated assertions of the reality of worldly and spiritual entities.

Yet, aside from this point of contention, parallel passages in the Dhammapada and Yoga Sutras reflect more unity than disunity. The Dhammapada shares Patañjali’s conviction the path is mind control meditation and the destination is joyful enlightenment. “Those who are watchful, in deep contemplation, reach in the end joy supreme.” “The mind is wavering and restless, difficult to guard and restrain: let the wise man straighten his mind.” (Compare with sutra 1.2.) “Today this mind does not stray and is under the harmony of control, even as a wild elephant is controlled by the trainer.” “Those who make the channels for water control the waters … and the wise control their minds.” (The Yoga Sutras use the same farming metaphor for a different point.)

Both texts emphasize body and sense control as foundational for the journey. “The man who wisely controls his senses as a good driver controls his horses, and who is free from lower passions and pride, is admired even by the gods.” “Good is the control of the eye, and good is the control of the ear; good is the control of smell, and good is the control of taste.” (Compare with sutras 2.54, 55.) “There are men both steady and wise whose body, words and mind are self-controlled.” (Compare with sutra 2.46.) “It is not a little good that a Brahmin gains if he holds back his mind from pleasures.”

The Dhammapada and Yoga Sutras share a view that ignorance is the main obstacle to the aspirant. “Better than a hundred years lived in ignorance, without contemplation, is one single day of life lived in wisdom and in deep contemplation.” “But the greatest of all sins is indeed the sin of ignorance. Throw this sin away, O man, and become pure from sin.” (Compare with sutras 2.4, 24, 25.) Likewise, both texts contend that the seeds of such obstacles can be burnt to render them infertile. “He who is free from pleasure and pain, who is calm, and whose seeds of death-in-life are burnt, who has conquered all the inner worlds – him I call a Brahmin.” “But he in whom the roots of desire have been uprooted and burnt away, then he both by day or by night can achieve supreme contemplation.” (Compare with sutra 3.50.)

The Dhammapada´s Nirvana and Patañjali´s Kaivalya are both portrayed as dimensional shifts from the realm of life and death cycles or upper and lower worlds. “It is painful to leave the world; it is painful to be in the world. … The long road of transmigration is a road of pain for the traveller: let him rest by the road and be free.” “Some people are born on this earth; those who do evil are reborn in hell; the righteous go to heaven; but those who are pure reach Nirvana.” “Better than power over all the earth, better than going to heaven and better than dominion over the worlds is the joy of the man who enters the river of life that leads to Nirvana.” (Compare sutra 3.51 where invitations from celestial beings in celestial realms comprise a distraction from the Kaivalya route.)

Nirvana and Kaivalya are also seen as beyond the realm of past and future time. “There is no path in the sky and monks must find the inner path. … They have crossed the river of time and they have overcome the world.” “Leave the past behind; leave the future behind; leave the present behind. You are then ready to go to the other shore. Never more will you return to life that ends in death.” (Compare sutras 4.12, 13 where past and future are considered real but are confined to the guna-underpinned realm of prakrti from which purusha seeks to achieve Kaivalya liberation.)

Like sutra 2.15, the Dhammapada laments that suffering permeates worldly existence. “All is sorrow. When one sees this, he is above sorrow. This is the clear path.” Like sutra 2.9, the Dhammapada acknowledges that even the wise cling to life. “All beings tremble before danger, all fear death.” Like sutra 3.22, the Dhammapada holds that karma is an extended process not easily terminated. “A wrong action may not bring its reaction at once.” Like sutra 2.28, the Dhammapada envisions Yoga leading the seeker to their inner light leading to their liberation. “Spiritual Yoga leads to light: lack of Yoga to darkness.” “The path of those who are rich in virtue, who are ever watchful, whose true light makes them free, cannot be crossed by death.” “Who can trace the invisible path of the man who soars in the sky of liberation.”

So, it can be seen in these parallel passages that the Yoga Sutras and one of Buddhism’s foundational texts share many of their fundamental conceptions, not merely much overlapping vocabulary that was common to Indic philosophical discussion of the time. I concur with Philipp Mass that “an eye on Buddhist influence is crucial to understanding the Yoga Sutras”. The true point of serious contention is the unreality of the purusha and prakrti duo. “All is unreal. When one sees this, he is above sorrow. This is the clear path.” “For whom ´name and form´ aren´t real, who never feels ´this is mine´ and who sorrows not for things that are not, he in truth can be called a monk.” “He who has gone beyond the illusion of Samsara, the muddy road of transmigration so difficult to pass; who has crossed to the other shore and … has reached in his deep contemplation the joy of Nirvana – him I call a Brahmin.”

While the reality of purusha and prakrti is central to Patañjali’s philosophical discourse leading to Kaivalya, this is a mostly theoretical part of Yoga. Certainly, multitudes have practiced Yoga meaningfully without an understanding of Sankhya metaphysics or in outright denial of such dualism. At the level of practice, Yoga and Buddhism may not only be branches of the same tree that intertwine over and over throughout centuries, but may still be compatible spiritual pursuits capable of harmonious synergy today. In addition to the affinity of Yogic and Buddhist practice, there has been a shift in modern Yoga away from the Sankhya dualism underlying the Yoga Sutras towards the monism of Advaita Vedanta, which also tends towards an idealist understanding. This further erodes the strict alignment of Yoga with its Sankhya roots, rendering the anti-Buddhist polemics of Patañjali both unnecessary and unappealing to contemporary practitioners.

Patañjali’s Yoga Sutras will no doubt remain the classic formulation of classic Yoga. Still, few modern yogis devote the absolute dedication required to ascend the eight steps of Patañjali’s staircase. (Like Philipp Mass, we consider Patañjali’s eight limbs to be consecutive steps intended to be practiced in order and that Patañjali’s use of a phrase for Yoga’s eight limbs common in early Buddhist literature for the eight-fold path may indicate inspiration, rather than mere coincidence. Nevertheless, we reject his identification of Vyasa with Patañjali.) Whether the door at the top of the stairs opens up to Kaivalya or Nirvana will remain a moot point to the Yogic masses piled up on the first few steps in their Lululemon pants. Should your author make unexpected progress in his remaining years, he will try to send back from the great beyond an appendix to this essay, settling definitively the (nonviolent) rumble in the jungle between Patañjali and the Buddhists. Unless they are practicing pranayama, readers are not encouraged to hold their breath.  

Sources

Bryant, Edwin. God in the Yoga Sutras. Interview with Adam Keen. 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGXzTf6ZA-4

Bryant, Edwin. The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary. North Point Press. 2009.

Mascaro, Juan. The Dhammapada. Penguin Books. 1973.

Mass, Philipp. More on Postures in the Patañjala Yogasastra. Loyola Marymount University Yoga Studies lecture. 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch v=3SHfITqhW_A

Gokhale, Pradeep. Buddhist Roots of Patañjala-yoga. SOAS Centre of Yoga Studies lecture. 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzCL7JOHP90

Mallinson, James. New Light on Saktism and Hathayoga. Sakta Traditions Online Lecture Series. Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2ZKdWb1MaQ

O’Brien, Karen. Entangled Ontologies in the Patañjalayogasastra. SOAS Centre of Yoga Studies lecture. 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j0VzRaUKiY

Schweig, Graham. Discoveries in the Yoga Sutra. Loyola Marymount University Yoga Studies lecture. 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPBOkc7nV_s

Sutton, Nick. Exploring the Yoga Sutras Class Notes. Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies.