The Four Yogas

Overview

Recall questions on the meaning of yoga, karma yoga and ordinary work, jnana yoga and its link to raja yoga, bhakti yoga as open to all, hatha yoga and its Western development, and whether the four are one path.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Yoga is a word most people think they already understand. What does it mean in Hindu teaching?

   Model answer

   The word carries the sense of yoking or joining, and it names any disciplined path that binds a person to the ultimate. It is not a single technique. Hindu tradition offers several yogas suited to different temperaments, on the reasoning that an active person, a reflective person and an emotionally devotional person will not be reached by the same practice, so the tradition supplies a route for each rather than one method for all.

2. 2

   Explain karma yoga.

   Model answer

   The discipline of action. Rather than abandoning work, the practitioner continues to do what duty requires while surrendering any claim on the outcome, offering the act itself rather than seeking its fruit. The Gita presents this to Arjuna as the answer to his paralysis: withdrawal is not available, but selfless performance is. Its immediate effect is described as cleansing the mind of the grasping that binds a person to rebirth.

3. 3

   How can ordinary work become a path to the transcendent?

   Model answer

   Because on this account it is attachment, not activity, that binds. Once the ego's investment in results is withdrawn, an action no longer builds up the sense of a separate doer accumulating gains, and the practitioner comes to see the true self as the unaffected witness rather than the agent. Many devotional teachers add that the work may be consciously offered to God, which turns duty into worship. Vivekananda extended the idea into social service, arguing that serving people is serving the divine present in them.

4. 4

   What is jnana yoga, and why has it been associated with particular groups?

   Model answer

   The path of knowledge, aimed at direct realisation that the self is not the body, mind or personality but is identical with Brahman. Its method is threefold: hearing the teaching from a qualified teacher, reasoning it through, and sustained meditative absorption in it, with the negative method of setting aside every inadequate description. It has been associated with brahmins and with renouncers because it presupposes leisure, Sanskrit learning, textual training and a considerable degree of dispassion, though Advaita teachers have argued that the qualification is really vairagya and discrimination rather than birth.

5. 5

   How do jnana yoga and raja yoga fit together?

   Model answer

   Raja yoga supplies the practical psychology that jnana yoga needs. Patanjali's eight limbs move from ethical restraints and observances through posture, breath control and withdrawal of the senses to concentration, meditation and samadhi, and the aim is stated at the outset as stilling the mind's fluctuations. A mind trained this way can sustain the reflection that jnana requires. Their metaphysics differ, since classical yoga rests on the Samkhya dualism of purusha and prakriti while Advaita is non-dual, but in practice meditation and knowledge have long been taught together.

6. 6

   Explain bhakti yoga.

   Model answer

   The path of loving devotion to a personal deity, most prominently Krishna, whom his devotees identify with the supreme reality itself. Its practices are famously listed as nine, including hearing about the Lord, chanting the name, remembering, serving, worshipping, bowing, friendship and complete self-offering. The Gita commends it to Arjuna in its closing counsel of surrender, and the bhakti schools hold that devotion is not merely a preparation but the means of liberation and, for many, its content.

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