mirror of
https://github.com/kennethreitz/kennethreitz.org.git
synced 2026-10-24 14:39:14 +00:00
kennethreitz
ce93f429a2
Publish the Obsidian vault's Knowledge folder as /knowledge (881 notes, 67 folders), with a Knowledge item in the nav and footer. - scripts/import_knowledge.py regenerates data/knowledge from the vault: slugged paths, folder notes as index pages, wikilinks resolved to site links (or plain text), callouts, highlights, and Dataview tables rendered statically. Personal notes are withheld via an exclusion list plus a privacy guard. - tuftecms/core/knowledge.py builds a concept index from note titles and aliases. First mentions on ordinary pages link to their Knowledge note (capped, never in headings, code, links, or sidenotes); Knowledge pages list related notes and where they're mentioned across the site; other pages get a Related Knowledge block. - Knowledge URLs join sitemap.xml (so the sweep test covers them), never displace existing legacy slugs, list alphabetically, and mermaid diagrams render client-side only on pages that have them.
50 lines
4.3 KiB
Markdown
50 lines
4.3 KiB
Markdown
---
|
||
description: The royal road runs inward. Eight limbs, one destination.
|
||
source: obsidian-knowledge
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
# Raja Yoga
|
||
|
||
> *The royal road runs inward. Eight limbs, one destination.*
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
## The Path
|
||
|
||
Raja yoga — the "royal" yoga — is the path of meditation: the systematic training of attention until the mind, stilled, reveals what it was obscuring. Where Jnana works through inquiry, Bhakti through love, and Karma through action, Raja works directly on the instrument itself. Its founding definition is the second sutra of its founding text: *yogash chitta vritti nirodhah* — yoga is the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind. Everything else in the path is the answer to how.
|
||
|
||
The scriptural basis is Patanjali's Yoga Sutras (c. 2nd century BCE–4th century CE), 196 aphorisms that compress the whole psychology of concentration into four short chapters. The name "Raja yoga" itself was popularized by Vivekananda, whose 1896 book of that title — the Sutras with commentary, delivered to Western audiences — effectively introduced meditation to the English-speaking world and framed the four paths as suited to four temperaments. Raja, in his frame, is the path for the contemplative and experimental temperament: the person who wants neither doctrine nor devotion but a method they can verify in their own awareness, step by reproducible step. It is the yoga for empiricists of the inner world.
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
## Method and Stages
|
||
|
||
The method is the eight limbs — and the limb-by-limb detail lives in its own collection, [Eight Limbs of Yoga](/knowledge/spirituality/yoga/eight-limbs-of-yoga), which this note defers to rather than duplicates. In brief: two limbs of ethics — restraints toward the world and observances toward oneself — three that quiet the instrument — posture, breath, sense-withdrawal — and three inner limbs that are one act of attention at increasing depth: [Dhyana](/knowledge/spirituality/yoga/eight-limbs-of-yoga/dhyana) preceded by concentration, culminating in [Samadhi](/knowledge/spirituality/yoga/eight-limbs-of-yoga/samadhi), the absorption in which only the object shines. The ordering is an argument about dependencies: ethics before technique, body before breath, withdrawal before concentration. Applied together, the inner limbs are *samyama*, Patanjali's instrument for investigating anything — including the mind itself.
|
||
|
||
Patanjali is the systematizer rather than inventor; the practices he codified are older, and their descendants travelled everywhere — dhyana becoming *chan* and Zen as it moved east through Buddhist Asia. The philosophical frame of the Sutras is dualist Samkhya rather than the non-dualism of [Vedanta](/knowledge/spirituality/vedanta), but the traditions have shared the method for centuries: [Hinduism](/knowledge/religions-of-the-world/hinduism) largely reads Patanjali's summit and Vedanta's realization as one summit approached from two maps.
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
## In This Vault
|
||
|
||
For Kenneth this is the path of [Meditation](/knowledge/spirituality/meditation) practice, when it happens — as [Yoga](/knowledge/spirituality/yoga) admits, with honesty the Sutras would approve of. The deeper affinity may be temperamental: Raja yoga treats consciousness as something to be investigated with method and rigor, which is recognizably the spirit of the vault's own consciousness research, run on different equipment.
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
## Related
|
||
|
||
- [Yoga](/knowledge/spirituality/yoga) — the four paths overview
|
||
- [Eight Limbs of Yoga](/knowledge/spirituality/yoga/eight-limbs-of-yoga) — the method, limb by limb
|
||
- [Meditation](/knowledge/spirituality/meditation) — the inner limbs in practice
|
||
- [Dhyana](/knowledge/spirituality/yoga/eight-limbs-of-yoga/dhyana) — the seventh limb, unbroken flow
|
||
- [Samadhi](/knowledge/spirituality/yoga/eight-limbs-of-yoga/samadhi) — the eighth limb, absorption
|
||
- [Hinduism](/knowledge/religions-of-the-world/hinduism) — the parent tradition
|
||
- [Vedanta](/knowledge/spirituality/vedanta) — the non-dual reading of the summit
|
||
- [Jnana Yoga](/knowledge/spirituality/yoga/four-yogas/jnana-yoga) — inquiry, which needs the stillness Raja trains
|
||
- [Bhakti Yoga](/knowledge/spirituality/yoga/four-yogas/bhakti-yoga) — devotion as effortless concentration
|
||
- [Karma Yoga](/knowledge/spirituality/yoga/four-yogas/karma-yoga) — equanimity carried into action
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
*Still the water and the moon appears. It was always overhead.*
|