Sutra I. 35 Vishayavati va pravrttir utpanna manasah sthiti-nibandhani

Commentary: This is mindfulness or awareness (vipassana). If the ordinary dualistic mind (manas) wanders from one thought object to another (vishayavati), one way to bind and redirect it and thus gain steadiness of the mind, while preventing the wavering cycle of attaching to an endless succession of further attachments, is to focus the wandering mind from such attachment to objects (vishayavati) through a technique which concentrates on one object at a time only. An example would be tratak, a mantra, or yantra, or any other focused concentration technique.

This tames the waves of the vrtti and causes a stability (sthiti) of the ordinary mind (manas), thus allowing it a chance to calm down and become clarified. Although here the vrtti are not destroyed but simply pacified and reduced (there is still attachment to an object present), never-the-less the mind has been stilled quickly and easily through this simple implementation. Then higher techniques may be applied. Thus manasah sthiti-nibandhani firmly establishes the mind in a stable base made fit for meditation. It is another practice in which one unites and focuses the cit-prana in order to cultivate samadhi.

Similar parallel corresponding techniques in astanga yoga (expounded in Pada II and Pada III) are pratyhara, dharana, and samyama. Pratyahara is bringing one's attention, energy, and awareness back inside and up to one's internal energy self regulatory centers. Dharana is concentration which is a preliminary to dhyana. In dharana the sadhak (practitioner) first focuses the mind on external (coarse) objects of the senses (vishaya) such as candles, flowers, pictures, mantra (japa), mandalas, tip of the nose, etc. Later one focuses on the more subtle and internal objects such as the breath, the chakras, the energy bodies, yantras, internal and/or psychic sounds, bandhas, mudras, etc. One is able to move from the gross (vitarka) to the more subtle (vicara) and eventually dissolve this inherently dualistic object orientation allowing us to then enter into the transpersonal non-dual space where meditation. Samyama is outlined in detail in Pada III.

From this stillness of mind the other techniques of yoga can be applied to move one even closer to objectless and formless samadhi eventually taking one step at a time. In our path to samadhi, we can first steady the wandering mind (manas) and our wandering internal energies by first limiting its excursions, then through concentration (dharana) on chosen objects that reflect the innate wisdom, then we gradually removing all object relationships, attachments, limitations, and impositions of duality as we go from the coarse and outer to the subtle and inner and then beyond even the most subtle -- all inclusive of both inner and outer -- the ultimate samadhi, nirbij-samadhi.