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The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali define yoga as the stilling or cessation of the fluctuations of the mind, allowing the Seer to rest in its essential nature.
Classical Indian traditions define yoga in several related ways, including union, concentration, restraint of the senses and mind, equanimity, disciplined action, and a means of attaining liberation. Early sources such as the Maitrayaniya Upanishad describe yoga as the joining or integration of breath, mind, senses, and the universe, while the Katha Upanishad presents it as firm control of the senses leading to a supreme state. The Bhagavad Gita broadens the concept by defining yoga as equanimity in success and failure, skill in action, and freedom from suffering, while also teaching the paths of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, and jnana yoga.
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali define yoga as the stilling or cessation of the fluctuations of the mind, allowing the Seer to rest in its essential nature.
Classical definitions vary across Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, and tantric traditions: yoga may mean concentration, union with the divine or ultimate reality, spiritual discipline, ethical and intellectual practice, or the means to liberation.
The Katha Upanishad associates yoga with the steady restraint of the senses and cessation of mental activity.
The Bhagavad Gita defines yoga through equanimity, skilled action, separation from suffering, devotion, knowledge, and disciplined conduct.
Jain sources define yoga as the combination of right knowledge, right faith or doctrine, and right conduct that leads toward liberation.
Buddhist Yogacara describes yoga as a fourfold practice involving faith, aspiration, perseverance, and appropriate means.
Scholars emphasize that yoga is difficult to define precisely because its meaning changes across historical periods, philosophical schools, and religious traditions.
A broad term for spiritual, mental, ethical, and physical disciplines aimed at controlling the body and mind and attaining liberation or another tradition-specific goal.
A state of deep concentration or absorption that classical commentators identify with yoga.
Patanjali's description of yoga as the cessation or stilling of the fluctuations of consciousness or mind.
The even-mindedness toward success and failure that the Bhagavad Gita identifies as yoga.
The discipline of performing action without attachment to its results.
The path of devotion and loving dedication to the divine.
The path of spiritual knowledge and insight into reality.
The withdrawal of the senses from external objects as part of meditative discipline.
The freedom from suffering, worldly attachment, and rebirth that yoga practices are commonly intended to achieve.
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