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Patanjali’s yoga has been very much misunderstood and misinterpreted. Patanjali is not a gymnast, but yoga looks like it is a gymnastics of the body. Patanjali is not against the body. He is not a man to teach you contortions of the body. He teaches you the grace of the body, because he knows only in a graceful body a graceful mind exists; and only in a graceful mind a graceful self becomes possible; and only in a graceful self, the beyond.

Step by step, a deeper and higher grace has to be attained. Grace of the body is what Patanjali calls asan, posture. He’s not a masochist. He is not teaching you to torture your body, he is not a bit against the body. How can he be? He knows the body is going to be the very foundation stone. He knows that if you miss the body, if you don’t train the body, then higher training will not be possible.

The body is just like a musical instrument. It has to be rightly tuned; only then will the higher music arise out of it. If the very instrument is somehow not in a right shape and order, then how can you imagine or hope that the great harmony will arise out of it? Only discordance will arise. The body is a veena, a musical instrument.

The posture should be steady and should be very, very blissful, comfortable. So never try to distort your body and never try to achieve postures that are uncomfortable.

For the Westerners, sitting on the ground, sitting in padmasan, the lotus posture, is difficult. Their bodies have not been trained for it. There is no need to bother about it! Patanjali will not force that posture on you. In the East, from their very birth people are sitting in this way, small children are sitting on the ground. In the West, in all the cold countries, chairs are needed; the ground is too cold. But there is no need to be worried about it. If you look at Patanjali’s definition of what a posture is, you will understand: It should be steady and comfortable.

If you can be steady and comfortable in a chair, it is perfectly okay -- no need to try a lotus posture and force your body unnecessarily. In fact, if a Western person tries to attain to the lotus posture it takes six months to force the body -- and it is a torture. There is no need. Patanjali is not in any way trying to help or persuade you to torture the body. You can sit in a tortured posture, but then it will not be a posture according to Patanjali.

A posture should be such that you can forget your body. What is comfort? When you forget your body, you are comfortable. When you are reminded continuously of the body, you are uncomfortable. So whether you sit in a chair or you sit on the ground, that’s not the point. Be comfortable, because if you are not comfortable in the body you cannot long for other blessings that belong to deeper layers. The first layer missed, all other layers are closed. If you really want to be happy, blissful, then start from the very beginning to be blissful. Comfort of the body is a basic need for anybody who is trying to reach inner ecstasies.

And whenever a posture is comfortable it is bound to be steady. You fidget if the posture is uncomfortable. You go on changing sides if the posture is uncomfortable. If the posture is really comfortable, what is the need to fidget and feel restless and go on changing again and again?

And remember, the posture that is comfortable to you may not be comfortable to your neighbor; so please, never teach your posture to anybody. Every body is unique. Something that is comfortable to you may be uncomfortable to somebody else.

Every body has to be unique because every body is carrying a unique soul. Your thumbprints are unique; you cannot find anybody else anywhere in the world whose thumbprints are just like yours. And not only today, you cannot find anybody in the whole past history whose thumbprints would be like yours. And those who know about these things, they say that even in the future there will never be a person whose thumbprint will be like yours. A thumbprint is nothing, insignificant, but that too is unique. That shows that every body carries a unique being. If your thumbprint is so different from others, your body -- the whole body -- has to be different.

So never listen to anybody’s advice. You have to find your own posture. There is no need to go to any teacher to learn it; your own feeling of comfort should be the teacher. And if you try -- within a few days try all the postures that you know, all the ways that you can sit -- one day you will fall upon, stumble upon, the right posture. And the moment you feel the right posture, everything will become silent and calm within you. And nobody else can teach you, because nobody can know how your body harmony, in what posture, will exactly be steady and comfortable.

Try to find your own posture. Try to find your own yoga, and never follow a rule because rules are averages. They are just like, in a given city there are one million people: somebody is five feet tall, somebody five-five, somebody five-six, somebody six feet, somebody six and a half feet. One million people, including children -- you add up their heights and then you divided the total height of one million people by one million; then you will come to an average height. It may be four feet eight inches or something. Then you go and search for the average person -- you will never find them. The average person never exists. "Average" is the most false thing in the world. Nobody is average, everybody is himself. Nobody is average. "Average" is a mathematical thing; it is not real, it is not actual.

All rules exist for the average. They are good to understand a certain thing, but never follow these rules; otherwise you will feel uncomfortable. Four feet eight inches is the average height -- now, you are five feet tall, four inches taller -- cut it down. Uncomfortable! Walk in such a way that you look like the average: You will become an ugly phenomenon, a cripple; you will be like a camel, crooked everywhere. One who tries to follow the average will miss.

Average is a mathematical phenomenon, and mathematics does not exist in existence. It exists only in man’s mind. If you go and try to find mathematics in existence you will not find it. That’s why mathematics is the only perfect science -- because it is absolutely unreal.

Only with unreality can you be perfect. Reality does not bother about your rules and regulations; reality moves on its own. Mathematics is a perfect science because it is mental, it is human. If man disappears from the earth, mathematics will be the first thing to disappear. Other things may continue but mathematics cannot be here.

Always remember, all rules, all disciplines, are based on the average; and the average is nonexistential. Don’t try to become the average -- nobody can. One has to find one’s own way. Learn the average -- that will be helpful -- but don’t make it a rule. Let it be just a tacit understanding. Just understand it and forget about it. It will be helpful as a vague guide, not as an absolutely certain teacher. It will be just like a vague map, not perfect. That vague map will give you certain hints, but you have to find your own inner comfort, steadiness. How you feel should be the determining factor. That’s why Patanjali gives this definition, so that you can discover your own feeling. There cannot be any better definition of posture:

Posture should be steady and comfortable. In fact, I would like to say it the other way, and the Sanskrit definition can be translated in the other way: Posture is that which is steady and comfortable. Sthir sukham asanam: That which is steady and comfortable is posture. And that will be a more accurate translation. The moment you bring in "should," things become difficult. In the Sanskrit definition there is no "should," but in English it enters.

I have looked into many translations of Patanjali. They always say, "Posture should be steady and comfortable." In the Sanskrit definition, sthir sukham asanam -- there is no "should." Sthir means steady, sukham means comfortable, asanam means posture -- that’s all. "Steady, comfortable: that is the posture."

Why does this "should" come in? Because we would like to make a rule out of it. It is a simple definition, an indicator, a pointer -- it is not a rule. And remember it always: People like Patanjali never give rules; they are not so foolish. They simply give pointers, hints. You have to decode the hint into your own being. You have to feel it, work it out; then you will come to the rule. But that rule will be only for you, for nobody else.

If people can remember this, the world will be a very beautiful world -- nobody trying to force anybody to do something, nobody trying to discipline anybody else. Because your discipline may have proved good for you, but it may be poisonous for somebody else. Your medicine is not necessarily a medicine for all. Don’t go on giving it to others.


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