Apart from these the citta possesses volitional activity (ce@s@ta) by which the conative senses are brought into relation to their objects.  There is also the reserved potent power (s’akti) of citta, by which it can restrain itself and change its courses or continue to persist in any one direction.  These characteristics are involved in the very essence of citta, and form the groundwork of the Yoga method of practice, which consists in steadying a particular state of mind to the exclusion of others.

Merit or demerit (pu@nya, papa) also is imbedded in the citta as its tendencies, regulating the mode of its movements, and giving pleasures and pains in accordance with it.

Sorrow and its Dissolution [Footnote ref 1].

Sa@mkhya and the Yoga, like the Buddhists, hold that all experience is sorrowful.  Tamas, we know, represents the pain substance.  As tamas must be present in some degree in all combinations, all intellectual operations are fraught with some degree of painful feeling.  Moreover even in states of temporary pleasure, we had sorrow at the previous moment when we had solicited it, and we have sorrow even when we enjoy it, for we have the fear that we may lose it.  The sum total of sorrows is thus much greater than the pleasures, and the pleasures only strengthen the keenness of the sorrow.  The wiser the man the greater is his capacity of realizing that the world and our experiences are all full of sorrow.  For unless a man is convinced of this great truth that all is sorrow, and that temporary pleasures, whether generated by ordinary worldly experience or by enjoying heavenly experiences through the performance of Vedic sacrifices, are quite unable to

_______________________________________________________

_____________

[Footnote 1:  Tattavais’aradi and Yogavarttika, II. 15, and Tattvakaumudi, I.]

265

eradicate the roots of sorrow, he will not be anxious for mukti or the final uprooting of pains.  A man must feel that all pleasures lead to sorrow, and that the ordinary ways of removing sorrows by seeking enjoyment cannot remove them ultimately; he must turn his back on the pleasures of the world and on the pleasures of paradise.  The performances of sacrifices according to the Vedic rites may indeed give happiness, but as these involve the sacrifice of animals they must involve some sins and hence also some pains.  Thus the performance of these cannot be regarded as desirable.  It is when a man ceases from seeking pleasures that he thinks how best he can eradicate the roots of sorrow.  Philosophy shows how extensive is sorrow, why sorrow comes, what is the way to uproot it, and what is the state when it is uprooted.  The man who has resolved to uproot sorrow turns to philosophy to find out the means of doing it.