Swami Chinmayananda
Swami Chinmayananda Commentary
As an efficient complement to the previous verse, this stanza explains the mind of the Yogi of collected thoughts, who is absorbed in Yoga. This explanation is given through the help of a famous simile: “as a lamp in a spot sheltered from the wind does not flicker.” The example is quite appropriate inasmuch as the mind is fickle and unsteady as the tip of a flame. Thoughts appear in the mind every second, in a continuous stream, and these constant thought disturbances — each dying, yielding its place to a new one — give us the apprehension of a solid factor called the mind. Similarly, the tip of a flame also, (it can be experimentally proved) is never steady, but the flickering is so fast, that it gives us an illusion of a definite shape and solidity.
When this flame is well protected from the fickle breeze, it becomes steady in its upward flight. In the same fashion the flame of the mind, flickering at the whims and fancies of the passing sensuous desires, when arrested in meditation, becomes steadily brilliant although its thoughts are employed in the contemplation of the Self by a constant flow of Brahmakara Vritti. In short, repeated and constant thoughts of Brahman — Vast and Infinite, Eternal and Blissful, the Substratum for the entire Universe — is the “Yoga of the Self (Yogam atmanah).
HAVING THUS, THROUGH MEDITATION, BECOME SINGLE-POINTED, WHAT WOULD BE THE STAGES OF PROGRESS ACCOMPLISHED? THIS IS DESCRIBED IN THE FOLLOWING FOUR STANZAS:
Adi Sankara Commentary
Yatha, as; a dipah, lamp; nivata-sthah, kept in a windless place; na ingate, does not flicker; sa upama, such is the simile-that with which something is compared is an upama (smile)-; smrta, thought of, by the knowers of Yoga who understand the movements of the mind; yoginah, for the yogi; yata-citasya, whose mind is under control; and yunjatah, who is engaged in; yogam, concentration; atmanah, on the Self, i.e. who is practising Self-absorption. By dint of practising Yoga thus, when the mind, comparable to a lamp in a windless place, becomes concentrated, then-
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