(Sanskrit: वृत्ति), literally “whirlpool”, is a technical term in yoga meant to indicate that the contents of mental awareness are disturbances in the medium of consciousness.
Vritti is literally translated as whirlpool or waves, and in this context we mean it as mental waves. What are the mental waves? Well, that is everything going on inside of our mind.
A good way to translate vritti is mental activity. You could say mental waves, but a more practical direct translation is a mental activity because any activity of the mind is vritti. If you’re studying something, writing, thinking about something, that’s vritti. When you sit to meditate and your mind is stubborn, that is vritti causing you to wandering away.
It’s vritti you see when you observe your mind. You’re observing the vritti. That’s all the swirling waves, all the things that are going on inside of ourselves.
(Sanskrit यम) Literally, “self-control, restraint, forbearance.” Also: “Rider, charioteer, rein, bridle. Road, end, way, path, course, progress. Carriage. Cessation. God of death. Twin, twin-born, couple, one of a pair. Crow.”
Continue reading “Yama”
(Sanskrit योग) “union.” Similar to the Latin “religare,” the root of the word “religion.” In Tibetan, it is “rnal-‘byor” which means “union with the fundamental nature of reality.”
“The word YOGA comes from the root Yuj which means to join, and in its spiritual sense, it is that process by which the human spirit is brought into near and conscious communion with, or is merged in, the Divine Spirit, according as the nature of the human spirit is held to be separate from (Dvaita, Visishtadvaita) or one with (Advaita) the Divine Spirit.” – Swami Sivananda, Kundalini Yoga
(or Yogacarya) A school of Buddhism founded in India by Asanga (300 AD). “The Yogacharyas from the Mahayana school state that Alaya is the personification of the Illuminating Void.” – Samael Aun Weor, Cosmic Teachings of a Lama
