Yoga

Yoga is one of the six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy, systematized by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras, which sets out an eightfold path (ashtanga) of ethical restraint, physical discipline, breath control and progressively refined meditative absorption aimed at stilling the fluctuations of the mind (chitta vritti nirodha) so that the true self (purusha) can be recognized as distinct from the material world (prakriti) it had mistakenly identified with. Its metaphysics closely follows the dualism of the Samkhya school, accepting Samkhya's twenty-five principles and its distinction between consciousness and matter, but Yoga adds a personal deity (Ishvara) as an object of meditative devotion and, more distinctively, supplies the practical technique by which Samkhya's liberating discrimination is actually achieved. Patanjali's system built on much older ascetic and meditative practices already widespread in India, systematizing them into a philosophically grounded discipline rather than inventing meditation itself, and later commentators including Vyasa elaborated its psychology of mental states and stages of absorption (samadhi) in detail. As a formal darshana, Yoga's influence on Indian philosophy is closely tied to Samkhya, while the meditative and postural practices it systematized went on to shape devotional and, much later, transnational understandings of yoga far beyond this original philosophical school.