Lesson 5: Online Education in Yoga by Sri Prashant Iyengar

This lesson has two topics. First there is a deeper understanding of yama and niyama as vows or anushthana and not just moral-ethical principles. Second, he explains what is meditation expounding on dynamic meditation of Guruji B.K.S.Iyengar’s yogic practices.
1.
We are critical, and tend to assess people in their morality and ethicality, while we deem ourselves that we are morally, ethically strong. If somebody is a good person, it does not mean that the person has not taken a vow to be good; the person is merely good.
Patanjali embarks upon the topic of vratas or vows, either atomic vows or great vows.
We are aware only of yoga practices. We think this is something to be practiced and we don’t give any framework of anushtha. Whereas Patanjali in his text speaks of anushthanam,
In the II:28 sutra of ashtanga yoga he says ‘yogangaanushthanat’.
2. Meditation has become a fashion. Everyone wants to get meditation, but no one wants to know what is meditation.
Guruji often said that his yoga is dynamic meditation. How can the asanas or Iyengar yoga that is being practiced, be a dynamic meditation? Because usually meditation means sitting quiet, relaxed, and then closing the eyes and doing something as meditation.
Absolute thoughtlessness will not be meditation. Also, every thought will not culminate in a meditative state. Yogic subject matter is the best subject matter, to be going for meditativity.
So, there is a thinker, there is thinking, there is a thought. Thought about the thought is the component of the meditativity.
Iyengar Yoga is not dynamic meditation, Iyengar’s yoga was dynamic meditation. It was his yoga which was meditation, because yogasanas, are a wonderful condition to enter into the academy of meditativity.
What is a point doing a Sirsasana which is perfect to look at, by hook or crook? The instrumentation should be proper. So that should be under scrutiny. In meditativity you get reflections.
Like if you swallow a psychedelic pill, psychedelic drug, you don’t need a thought scheme, for you to have that psychedelic state. But asana is not a psychedelic pill, that you get that state sublime state. It is autogenically turned out, biochemically turned out, electrochemically turned out. So there is always the thought process, which is why in asanas, the precept of activity process and thought process is introduced.
Meditation is not dhyana. Dhyana is a wider concept, meditation is a component of it.