Читать книгу Ashtanga Yoga - The Intermediate Series - Gregor Maehle - Страница 14

Patanjali portrayed the eight limbs of yoga as sequential in nature, which can be understood through the following metaphor: Conditioned existence was likened to confinement in a prison tower, with yoga as the means of escape; practicing the first limb was like dangling a silken thread from the tower, practicing the second like tying a thicker cotton thread to the silken one, practicing the third like following the cotton thread with a cord, and so on until the strong rope of the seventh limb allowed you to descend. In this metaphor, which I introduced in Ashtanga Yoga: Practice and Philosophy, the limbs of yoga are introduced sequentially and shown to work one after the other. This is a workable model, but it has its limitations; in particular, it insinuates that each limb of yoga is abandoned once the next one is achieved. But one cannot abandon any of the limbs until one has achieved all of them and is about to enter objectless samadhi, the highest form of samadhi. Those of us who haven’t yet achieved objectless samadhi need to practice the lower limbs as we progress through the higher ones.

A useful way to understand this aspect of the limbs is to think of the limbs as a set of Matryoshka dolls. These Russian nesting dolls are usually painted wooden figures, each of which can be pulled apart to reveal another, smaller figure of the same sort inside. When the outermost doll is opened, we find another doll in it; that second doll opens to reveal another inside it; and so on. If we think of yoga’s eight limbs as similar to these Russian dolls, the outermost doll would be the first limb, yama, and the last, innermost one would be the concluding limb, samadhi. Each successive doll is contained within the dolls outside it, just as each successive limb is supported by the already perfected limbs that lead to it. As you progress in your practice, each new limb brings you further along your path only if you adhere to it within the context of the earlier limbs or stages.