Ishvara Pranidhana

The last of the niyamas asks for something modern readers find hardest: pranidhana, a placing-down or dedication, directed toward Ishvara, the highest. Patanjali offers it, remarkably, as a complete route to samadhi in itself.

Whatever one's theology - and yoga's Ishvara is left spacious on purpose - the psychological movement is available to anyone: the deliberate release of the fiction that outcomes are ours to command. Work is offered, then the fingers open.

In practice it can be as plain as a sentence at the start of the day - let this be useful beyond me - and a moment at the end where results, good and bad, are handed back. What it trains is not passivity but a working relationship with the fact of not being in charge.

सम्पादकीय डेस्क से, शास्त्र डाइजेस्ट। (विस्तृत निबन्ध अभी अंग्रेज़ी में है; हिन्दी अनुवाद क्रमशः आ रहे हैं।)