Being dyed less

From the Patanjali Yoga Sutras, Sutra 1.12

abhyāsa-vairāgyābhyāṃ tan-nirodhaḥ

Two levers, not one. Show up again and again, and stop being dyed by the result.

I knew about the first one. Consistency, reps, keep going. Everyone knows about the first one. The second lever I have been skipping for years is marked as dual in Sanskrit, which is a separate grammatical number from the plural. The grammar holds the two together as a pair. I have been trying to make half a mechanism stabilize me.

And vairāgya is not what I assumed. I am using uncolored as a working metaphor, not as a definitive translation. The version where you pretend not to care may still leave you governed by the result, only from the other direction. The text treats rāga and dveṣa, attachment and aversion, separately in sutras 2.7 and 2.8. What seems to be asked here is harder: keep caring completely, and stop being moved by the result.

This takes me back a decade. Somewhere in May 2016. Personal front. Work front. Dual fronts. I wanted to care. I wanted to create. I wanted to get consumed by what I was causing and creating. Not getting consumed made me less happy.

Which is the joke. Being consumed is how I understand sārūpya here. Sutra 1.4 describes taking the shape of whatever is moving in you. I was chasing the dye and calling it devotion. I did not know what care was. Care can stay complete, total, mad, and still not be moved by its own output.

This week, effort stays exactly where it is. Nothing changes on the input side. I only track one thing: how much I move when I check the result. Zero to five, once a day. Care stays high, coupling comes down.

Not caring less. Being dyed less.