I.20 sraddha virya smrti samadhiprajña purvakah itaresam

“Practice must be pursued with trust, confidence, vigour, keen memory and power of absorption to break this spiritual complacency.”

The word sraddha is often translated into the word “faith” – a faith that comes from direct experience.

The scientist comes to the lab to perform an experiment, setting up the controlled conditions under which the observation is made of an event plus an intervention to exert a particular change. The scientist may be skeptical about the intervention, but has faith in the method such that if a change is revealed, there is certainty that the result was produced through the effort.

Yoga is your inner laboratory, a place where you can put your faith in the practice to the test. Yoga does not require you believe in anything, rather that you deliberately create the conditions, make an effort (tapas) and observe what happens. Faith (sraddha) emerges as a result of repeated experiments. BKS describes Patanjali’s use of the word sraddha as an encouragement to intensify one’s practice to reach the highest goal.

Sutra and translation excerpted From: B. K. S. Iyengar. “Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/light-on-the-yoga-sutras-of-patanjali/id538108384

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.
Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
― Rumi

See you on the mat.