Blurb:

This chapter presents some of the practices of the Kāpil Math monastic institution founded in the early twentieth century that subscribes to the teaching of the Yoga and Sāmkhya systems of religious thought with Pātañjalayogaśāstra and Sāmkhyakārikā as the foundational texts. The chapter argues that their practices are based on an understanding that all is suffering, which is stated prominently not only in the Yogasūtra but also in the Sāmkhyakārikā. Suffering is caused by a basic disharmony at the foundation of the material creation (prakrti) and the avoidance of pain means the avoidance of the uniting of the subject (purusa) and the object (prakrti) (Yogasūtra 2.17) and when this union ends, the cycle of rebirth also ends. The followers of the Kāpil Math realize that it will take many lifetimes to attain this. What is attainable in this life is the improvement of their karmāśaya and vāsanās. In the Kāpil Math one important way of influencing the vāsanās is repeating the teaching of Sāmkhyayoga every day in ritual recitation of stotras that state the teaching and goals of Sāmkhyayoga. This recitation creates a state of mind and an embodied experience that leaves an impression, a samskāra, and forms a behavioral tendency, a vāsanā, and prepares for a Sāmkhyayoga practice that will continue over many lives. This understanding that no practice of Sāmkhyayoga is lost but shapes tendencies over many lives is an essential aspect of the yoga tradition of the Kāpil Math. The teaching of Sāmkhyayoga is here closely connected to conceptions of rebirth and does not make sense without the doctrine of repeated embodiment.