The Sāmkhya Kārikā and the Roots of Yoga

Sāmkhya is one of the earliest among the six philosophical schools (darśana) of India, traditionally said to be established by Rishi Kapila whose original work Shastritantra is unfortunately lost today. The earliest sources we have today of this school is Sāmkhya Karika of Isvara Krishna. The other five philosophical schools are Yoga, Nyāyya, Vaisheshika, Mimāmsā and Vedanta. The exact date of the Sāmkhya Karika‘s composition is not known, but because owe are able to date earlier translations of the text the date is said to be before 350 CE. To fully understand the foundations of the symbolic and philosophical language used by Patanjali in his Yoga Sutra we must have familiarity with the sāmkhya vision of life. Patanjali’s worldview, his view of the universe, so to speak, is organized and shaped by a vision of life, of its goals and values, its significance and possibilities, that is rooted in sāmkhya philosophy. He doesn’t state this to his audience in the Yoga Sutra, he didn’t have to, it was so much a part of their milieu, so embedded in the lives of his readers (or listeners) that it presumes a familiarity and understanding of sāmkhya in the way we may, for example, presume our personal right of freedom, the need for proteins in our diet, and the ‘fact’ that the earth orbits the sun. This course will introduce you to the philosophy of sāmkhya as presented in the Sāmkhya Karika and implied in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. Both samkhya and yoga are presented as ways to address the fundamental, essential and universal crises of life: the presence of unnecessary sorrows, existential ignorance, misunderstandings and pain. Patanjali assumes his readers are familiar with this idea and doesn’t introduce the notion at the beginning of his text. But Ishvara Krishna begins his exposition of samkhya by stating it clearly:  “Because of the torment (abhighātāt) of the threefold suffering (duḥkha-trayā),” he states at the beginning of his text, “a desire arises (jijñāsā) within us to remove (abhighātaka) this suffering.” Stated explicitly or merely implied, the journey samkhya begins there, the journey of yoga begins there, and so too does our journey to understand ourselves more fully and with greater insight and compassion begins there as well. The Samkhya Karika goes on to explain the nature of this threefold suffering, and so begins its construction of an elegant and deeply relevant symbolic language to describe the plight and possibilities of human existence. It will go on to present many rich and evocative terms that present a profound vision and understanding of life, such as purusha, prakriti, manas, buddhi, ahamkara, guna, buddhi-indraya, karman-indriya, and others. These are not mere technical terms, or categories for scholars to debate. but living symbols that align with aspects of our ordinary, everyday experience. To work out a basic understanding of these and other unique perspectives of samkhya is begin to …