The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

My Penguin Classic edition of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra begins with a long introduction, by translator Shyam Ranganathan, about the many challenges faced when translating philosophical texts, especially when you are trying to make them clear and accurate to an audience that comes for a completely diffe......more

Yoga is all the rage nowadays, as all of us in the modern world know. If I decided today that I wanted to start taking yoga classes, I could just head over to Bedrock Yoga, on Main Street in downtown Manassas, Virginia, and get started. And while that’s not likely to happen, I respect yoga – as phys......more

Engaging translation but not the best commentary This book was first published in London in 1982 as Effortless Being: the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. I assume the translation of the sutras is the same while Shearer, who is a disciple of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, has updated his Introduction. The text......more

Until Patanjali wrote his original yoga sutras about 4000 years ago, there was no written record about yoga, even though it was already being practiced for centuries. Sutra in Sanksrit means a thread that holds things together. Each of Patanjali's short, sharp and succinct sutras is like a little kn......more

Georg Feuerstein is in love with his words. How else to explain his needlessly flashy translation that renders perfectly well known Sanskrit terms such as samadhi with equivalents like "enstasy"? Eliade sets many excellent precedents in his "Yoga", but this is not one of them. Feuerstein's translati......more