SoundsofStillness and Richard, I received this Gita quote and think it's pertinent:
Meditation does not unfold the Self -- the Self, it must be repeated, unfolds Itself by Itself to Itself. The wind does nothing to the sun; it only clears away the clouds and sun is found shining by its own light. The sun of the Self is self-effulgent. Meditation only takes the mind out of the clouds of relativity. The absolute state of the Self ever shines in Its own glory." ~Maharishi~ ~On the Bhagavad-Gita, Commentary on Chapter 6, verse 5* (p. 396) On Tuesday, June 17, 2014 6:01 PM, "'Richard J. Williams' pundits...@gmail.com [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> wrote: On 6/17/2014 1:07 PM, soundofstilln...@ymail.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: >From my minimalist way of understanding, Shyam Ranganathan is suggesting, as >he did in his translation and commentary of the Yoga sSutra that Purusha = >Person indeed does have "Agency" according to the great philosopher Maharishi >Patanjali. > >"The Sankhya Karika appears to state that it is nature that brings about freedom, while Patañjali’s view seems to be that it is persons that are the explanation of freedom (I write about this in my introduction to my translation). The relevant points of comparison are the Sankhya Karika 17, 44–45, 62–64, where the person is >described as irrelevant to the process of liberation, and Yoga Sutra I.21, IV.18, and IV.29 where persons and their self improvement are treated as instrumental to liberation . . ." > >http://indianphilosophyblog.org/2014/03/07/moral-standing-and-yoga/ > >"irrelevant to the process of liberation" sayest the Sankhya Karika > >"persons and their self improvement are treated as instrumental to liberation" sayest the Yoga Sutra > >Letting go for a moment (or two) everything you've read, thought and talked about, concentrated on, contemplated . . . and based on your Person(al) experience of tens of thousands of hours of meditation, what sez you? > >Do Purusha(s) = You have agency regarding their/Your realization, enlightenment and liberation? > >Or as the Sankhya Karika and Vedanta suggest, from my understanding, Purusha, Person, Pure Awareness, >is but the observer with no capacity to act at all. > >And what did Maharishi have to say? > In commenting on Bhagavad Gita, Maharishi has brought our attention to the existence of the gunas, whose concern is action, which, in every case, is the result of the interplay of three constituents born of nature - eternal becoming, termed prakriti in the Gita. Rajas, sattva and tamas - these three propensities regulate the state of action and are relative to each other and to all that exists in the phenomenal world. That is, nature, which is everything, is subject to the law of causation - cause and effect. It is the gunas, without exception, that govern all action-reaction in the material world, according to the rishis. However, Maharishi has also called our attention to the fact that nature, governed by the three gunas, is entirely separate from the transcendental field - the field of Being, termed Purusha in the Gita. Work cited: "On the Bhagavad Gita" By Maharishi Mahesh Yogi II., v. 45, p. 126 VI., v. 1, p. 384 > >