Yoga

Yoga means “union” and “discipline”: any steady practice that quiets the mind and joins the individual to the highest reality. It is far older and wider than physical postures, and covers paths of action, knowledge, devotion and meditation.

What yoga means

The word comes from the root yuj, “to join” or “to yoke”, like harnessing a restless animal to a plough. Yoga can mean the goal (union), the method (discipline) or a path (as in karma yoga). Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras define it as the stilling of the movements of the mind and set out eight limbs: restraints, observances, posture, breath control, withdrawal of the senses, concentration, meditation and absorption.

Yoga in the Bhagavad Gita

The Gita uses the word in many senses, and each of its eighteen chapters is called a yoga. Verse 2.48 defines yoga as evenness of mind in success and failure, and 2.50 calls it skill in action. In 6.19 a steady mind is compared to a lamp that does not flicker in a windless place. Krishna teaches Arjuna the practice of meditation in Chapter 6.

The main paths

Four paths are most often named. Karma yoga is selfless action, jnana yoga is the path of knowledge, bhakti yoga is the path of devotion, and dhyana yoga is meditation. The Gita does not rank them as rivals; it suggests they fit different temperaments and often work together.

Yoga and liberation

Every path aims at freeing the mind from the grip of desire and confusion so that the self can be known as it is. In that sense yoga serves moksha, and it rests on understanding atman and the pull of the gunas.

Yoga is systematized in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras and taught in many forms in the Bhagavad Gita, especially in Chapters 2, 3, 6 and 12.