svadhyaya (Jnana Yoga)

देहबुद्ध्या तु दासोऽस्मि जीवबुद्ध्या त्वदंशकः। आत्मबुद्ध्या त्वमेवाहमिति मे निश्चिता मतिः॥

“Lord, while I identify myself with my body, I am Your servant.
When I consider myself as Jiva, I am a part of You.
But when I look upon myself as the Atma, I am You.”

Jnana Yoga is the path of knowledge and I find that it fits in with the svadhyaya limb of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. The study is said to be done in three parts:

• sravana, Hearing
• manana, Reflection
• nididhyasana, Meditation and Contemplation

Bibliography:

• Jnana Yoga by Swami Vivekananda

sravana

It is easy to jump from teaching to teaching not getting deep into either the practice or the philosophy. There are so many books by such prominent gurus as Swami Sivananda, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Chinmayananda and Swami Dayananda Saraswati. Not to mention the many shastras and the commentaries of Sankara, Ramanuja, and others. You add in the many books on Yoga and the Vedantic texts and you have a mountain of literature.

The problem is that Yoga and Vedanta are not meant to be just studied, they are meant to be internalized and practiced. As part of the Sadhana that I am going through with a basis in Raja Yoga, I find that the best way to approach this is to slow down. Start with the dhyana (meditation) piece and learn to still the mind. This seems to be a prerequisite to understanding the texts.

I read four types of literature for my svadhyaya practice with the morning being more Yoga oriented and the evening being more Vedanta oriented:

• Practice of Yoga. I read a single book on the Practice of Yoga focused on an aspect that I am struggling with. Yoga is citta-vritti-nirodha (stilling the mind) and so the book should be one focused on improving a specific Limb of Yoga to still the mind. I put the book into practice as quickly as possible. For example, each of Swami Sivananda's books have a ton of practical advice on how to put the teachings into practice. So I take the advice and figure out how to implement it as part of my routine. However, I find that psychology, history, and other books can be useful ways to addressing the yamas and niyamas as well. In this regard a secular book should have the goal of how it improves the Raja Yoga practice.
• Patanjali Yoga Sutras. I study this text daily as a means to deepen my Raja Yoga practice. Since Raja Yoga is the path that I have decided to follow, I think it is the most important text for me to read and contemplate.
  1. Read a single verse
  2. Try to memorize the verse in Sanskrit
  3. Read the commentary on the verse
  4. Write my own understanding of the verse and the commentary
• Vedanta. Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads, Brahma Sutra, Yoga Vashista, and other texts are not fast reads. They are full of deep philosophical insights that are maent to be read slowly and contemplated. Reading the text quickly is futile as you won't internalize the philosophy. My approach is to:
  1. Read a single verse or a few verses at a time
  2. Read one or many commentaries such as Advaita Vedanta, Vishishtadvaita, Dvaita, or others.
  3. Write my own understanding of the commentary
  4. Read and understand the Sanksrit
  5. Contemplate the meaning of the verse.
• Bhakti. Vedanta is a deep philosophy and it is a bit hard to jump straight into it. But I think a way to personalize the philosophy is to see how it was practiced. The way to do this is to read about great Gurus such as Ramakrishna or Vivekananda. These people lived the philosophy and so their teachings are a way to understand the philosophy in practice. So I read the Bhakti texts to get a more of a story-based understanding of the philosophy.

manana

How to Learn a Subject

Based on this knowledge when you want to learn something and learn it deep you should do the following:

1. Pick the subject
2. Get a cursory understanding of the subject
3. Books
4. Podcasts
5. YouTube
6. Message Famous People and Talk to Them
7. Pick the next layers. Ask a series of questions that you want to answer from the previous layer. This could be the 2-4 topics that interest you about that subject but mostly I’d say use Pareto’s Principle and pick the 20% that will give 80% of the benefit right away.
8. Learn each layer by books, media, papers, etc. but have specific deadlines for each since knowledge builds on existing knowledge it may be readily forgotten if the existing knowledge isn’t reaccessed.
9. Break each thing into individual chunks. If you are learning a new movement example for Krav Maga move to individual pieces: the feet, hips, hands, the movement of the hips, the movement of the legs, where you are on the floor and where you should be. I learn systems for how they fit together.
10. Note the Following:
11. Fears (i.e Like the Fear of Formulas)
12. Need to do this because certain aspect of learning is expanding your comfort level and to do that you need to understand that you may get overwhelmed and have to note the fear of the unknown so that you can work through it.
13. Mental Models of Similar / Adjacent Subjects
14. Practice with b in mind.
15. Apply the new knowledge immediately to a small project. Make it immediately usable and test this with your own hypothesis.
16. This helps you solidify your understanding
17. Take what you learned and what you applied and systematize it. Since you applied the learning you have made it your own and that much more influential to yourself.
18. Write it down as a checklist
19. Create programs that execute what you learn
20. Goto 3 – Remember what layer you are in when reading or learning something. If you read a book similar to what someone has already written then you are not going to learn anything.– Most business books all have similar topics and cover an aspect but think layers. Example of how something could be broken down: