The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

~ Garchen Rinpoche

A feeling of deep gratitude accompanies having arrived, being present, mindful, grounded, and integrated, while taking each situation as a very attentive learning opportunity -- an opportunity to love more deeply. If that means cleaning up the creek, so that the animals have a healthier habitat, or cleaning up our own habitat,  or helping our elderly neighbor, or being an instrument of peace, we are doing what feels good to us while moving more deeply into our heartmind. Vairagya brings us joy by acting as the agent of love and happiness without attachment to results. Sure we may intend or prefer specific results, but it is far more important to act upon this urge as the impetus of spontaneous compassionate love, than to worry about its success or failure.

“Renunciation is not giving up the things of the world, but accepting that they go away.”

~Shunryu Suzuki

The highest vairagya is attained in non-dual realization that there is no separate object of body or mind to grasp, because there is no separate self, but that is a deep realization for beginner's to grasp. Grasping at concepts is of course also raga. Apara vairagya is the lower vairagya that relates to worldly objects and objects in general (and hence samprajnata), while para vairagya relates to the highest vairagya beyond dualistic ways of subject/object duality (and hence is associated with asamprajnata samadhi). In an indirect way all aversion (dvesa) fear, hatred, dislike, repulsion, and the like are also due to raga. In dvesa (aversion) there is always an underlying preference involved (like and hence dislike) -- an attachment to results. Advanced yogis love to give and help. Making others happy, naturally makes them happy. They practice vairagya spontaneously without any expectations for reward.

~ Rabindranath Tagore.

So to reiterate, vairagya means is non-attachment in terms of egoless/selflessness, in terms of the absence of an I/it duality, the absence of the false identification (samyoga) with objects (pratyaya), in terms of samprajnata, in terms of dualistic coarse and even subtle identifications with the citta-vrtti.

In this way any impulse toward incessant striving, stress, tension, and uniformed willpower is put on the back burner.. Thus the yoga statement that success comes from both grace (through vairagya and isvara pranidhana) and a sustained sadhana (practice) is completely non-dual. It is not an either/or proposition (is it grace or sadhana). The two meet as one -- divine will and individual will are married/synchronized here. This is how nirodha (cessation) of the vrtti is established through effective practice.

The common man, who has become addicted to cognitive processes of objectification and who has lost awareness of subjective experiential wholeness (beingness) may not be able to imagine surrendering his small minded mental operations and processes (vrtti) or having them cease. For them they identify *with* the citta-vrtti, they identify themselves *as* the vrtti, nay they are the vrtti. Sri Patanjali discusses this practice further in I.23.

Skillful methods and disciplines of renunciation and mechanisms of regret are stop gap methods, necessary once the citta-vrtti has become ingrained/imprinted. Renunciation is only the precursor to true integral vairagya. It is method that is implemented only after our true innate vision (vidya) has become obscured. Renunciation and regret mechanisms should not be fixated upon as another "object" within the field of the consciousness, rather they are to feed the fire so that the soup becomes fully cooked. Yogis are often reminded not to mistake the method/boat for the shore. Right renunciation rather forms the basis of the stream winner, where there is no more falling backward. These activities must lead to liberation from the limited fetters of ignorance which obscures the mind and nadis, so that one can open to vast objectless liberation. It moves us from the contraction of a closed and armored heart, to an open HeartMind.

Sooner or later we give up this human body and with it the sense organs and their apparent objects of cognition, but we do not normally give up the limited mindset – the conditioned interpreter of our past conditioning. Dreams and bardo realms follow the mindstream with or without the physical body, until the mindstream is purified of its limited attachment habits.

On becoming undistracted upon unbounded space, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche said: