Sutra 14 Sa tu dirgha-kala-nairantarya-satkara-asevito drdha-bhumih

Commentary: Practice will eventually spontaneously manifest from the inside out as a natural result. One naturally abides in their true self-nature (buddhanature) after the pulls of the past, the future, and existential fixations are broken. Practice becomes continuously inner directed (nairantarya), gains its own integrity and maturity eventually becoming firmly established through repeated prolonged or consistent application (dirgha-kala) especially when combined with the concentrated energetics of dedication, diligence, devotional attentiveness (satkara) which are assiduously cultivated (asevito). Simultaneously as our practice matures in stages, the quality of our enthusiasm, dedication, devotion, and desire to practice synergistically improves. In other words we find that functional practice leads to even more enthusiasm to the fertile soil (abhumih) of an even more functional (a-sevitah) practice i.e., it becomes natural, flowing, and self perpetuating. In terms of psycho-neuro-physiology a positive biofeedback loop is formed. Thus we start to listen within and are instructed by the innate original wisdom embedded in cit-shakti instead of the chitta-vrtti. When a practitioner releases old bodymind patterns they may feel a bit unstable or different. Not being predictable often is feared, but one can start to cultivate and welcome that state. Fresh unpredictability and non-expectation are to be welcomed. Here a sense of great fearless stability is eventually won (swarupa-sunyam as described in III.3). As we will learn in Sutra I.17-19 this is a timeless state of boundless openness that yoga provokes. It is not a state of attachment (raga) to things, objects, or separate phenomena upon which to grasp.

A major reason why these eight sutras (I.12-19) dedicated to vairagyabhyam (the practice of vairagya) are grossly misunderstood by scholars is because one cannot grasp onto vairagya. As soon as one attempts to hold onto it, vairagya, of course vanishes; yet it can be sustained. Yoga practitioners who meditate (dhyana) without an object know this, but scholars do not. Vairagya leads to natural openness and liquidity, our natural unconditional state (samadhi), which Patanjali defines as swarupa-sunyam (see III.3).

I.14 can be understood as a natural continuation of Sutra 13. Although Patanjali will offer many specific practices (sadhana) later on, he expands upon this theme that through a consistent and sustained dedication, inspired enthusiasm, and devoted concentration (yatnah), which is innately informed and integrated in our daily practice (abhyasa), then a certain steady and balanced (sthitau) state is achieved, which liberates the naturally fertile and self perpetuating potential of the practice over time. Here the practice itself becomes steady, self established, self liberating, and inner directed (nairantarya) having established a direct communion and intelligent energetic dynamic of its own because the inner conduits (nadis) of the (cit-prana) animated by cit-shakti has now become opened. A good practice grows on us naturally and is naturally expansive, self liberating, and self instructive.

Yoga Darshana Upanishad,4.40-58 trsl., J. Varenne, Yoga in the Hindu Tradition, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1976.

In meditation practice (dhyana), for example, the yogi may sit connecting earth with sky -- shakti with shiva, differentiated reality with undifferentiated reality, ever-newness with ever presence, body and mind, earth with sky, muladhara with sahasrara, etc. while establishing a base by completely emptying one's karmically controlled thought processes. That is the end of the citta-vrtta. That is yoga. The focus is on emptiness of thought formations by letting them go immediately. In practice when we watch for them to arise, they do not. Thoughts cannot be caught. The practice goes like this: "Empty empty empty, let it go let it go let it go, open open open". Dhyana itself bestows upon the yogi, who has self-discipline, the direct experience of an all inclusive, limitless, and boundless mind that is empty of "stuff". It is sublime spaciousness and uncontrived union devoid of conceptual processes, mental formations, partiality, or limitation. Success in meditation usually proceeds after much sustained practice (abhyasa), but mastery of vairagya is the primary keyless key that opens the open doorway. hence it is vairagyabhyam. (Please see I-15-- 19.)

Mahayana yogis use the term, sunyata, to connote emptiness. They also call the realization of the inseparability of form and emptiness as the middle way  (Madhyamika), of which the heart sutra (Hridayam Prajnaparamita) is a principle example. It is easier to understand that emptiness is directed toward "the self"; i.e., the concept the observer and/or the observed, which has been ranted by the mind (a citta-vrtti) as possessing any substantial true existence by itself. Rather the forms attributed to the self and selfness of perceived independent objects/phenomena reflect a fundamental unawareness of the evolutionary process and whole system universal awareness. Things and beings are empty of any separate/independent self, but rather are the result of fragmented and limited thought processes (citta-vrtta).

Another way of saying the same thing, is that all things and beings are inter-connected/interdependent. Theravadin Buddhists assign selflessness, no self, or similar transpersonal attributes to the miscalculation that ideates a "self", utilizing the word anatta or anatman. Mahayana yogis may criticize that as applying to the observer, but not to the observed, thus asserting the need for applying sunyata to both self and phenomena. I think this is needless nitpicking, after all if there is no separate self/observer, how could there be a separate independent object to view? We wont bother belaboring these ideological disputes, but just to say that the ideation of an independent self creates a static state that upholds all citta-vrtta. The ideation of an ego, by nature, creates static.

Emptiness is easily understood as open space, an open mind, an unobstructed mindset free from static,  the open channel for compassion and wisdom to flow. For yogis it is the central channel (the sunya nadi or sushumna). It is transconceptual, transpersonal, non-dual and uncontrived. One simply lets go (vairagya) of their dualistic attachments, and relaxes into the natural state. That natural state is the larger context – the whologram, web of life, the ever-present continuum that completes both birth and death – that which remains nameless, and transconceptual.

That is how vairagya, emptiness (sunyata), transpersonal self (anatta), non-duality (asamprajnata), and objectless transconceptual meditation (dhyana) are mutually related terms demonstrating relaxing into samadhi as our natural state. The yogic mantra: "Om Namah Shivaya", signals in the destruction of mental constructs, while making the mind open and empty, yet conscious. The Buddhist mantra: "gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, fully self-illumined, so it is" connotes the same uncontrived unattached openness of mind.

Then in I.15 (after addressing the characteristics of abhyasa) Patanjali details the practice of vairagya (what some may call the practice of non-practice).