Yamas & Niyamas
Before posture, before breath, before meditation, Patañjali asks how you live. Ten short words — five restraints and five observances — are the ground on which every other limb of yoga stands.
People often come to yoga for the stillness at the end. Patañjali begins somewhere else: with not harming, not lying, not stealing. On The Sutras you met these as the first two of the eight limbs; on Yoga as Philosophy you saw why a restless mind cannot be still. This page goes into the ethics themselves — what each one means, how the tradition explained it, what it might look like on a Tuesday afternoon in Klang or Kuala Lumpur, and how to start.
Yoga view The scheme and its explanations here are those of Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra and its oldest commentary, the Yoga-bhāṣya; other schools’ readings are gathered below.
Restraints and observances
The yamas are restraints: things one holds back from. The niyamas are observances: disciplines one takes up. The first list is given in a single line:
The very next sūtra makes a striking claim. These are not rules for a particular caste, place or season:
The Yoga-bhāṣya explains with examples. A fisherman may harm fish but nothing else — a restraint limited by livelihood. Someone may refuse to kill at a holy place, or on a sacred day, or except for a ritual. Each is a partial vow. The mahāvrata, the “great vow,” has no such exceptions: it holds for everyone, everywhere, always. In a literature where so much duty depends on one’s station (see Dharma), this is a deliberately universal ethic.
The five restraints
Tap each yama for its meaning, a modern application and a question to ask yourself:
The five observances
The two lists make a pair. The yamas turn outward, towards how others are treated; the niyamas turn inward, towards how one trains oneself. Both are needed: a person can be kind and chaotic, or disciplined and cruel.
Cultivating the opposite
What happens when anger arises and you want to strike, or envy and you want to take? Patañjali’s answer is one of his most practical:
The next sūtra (2.34) explains what to reflect on. Harmful acts may be done oneself, caused through others, or merely approved of. They arise from greed, anger or delusion, and may be mild, middling or intense — and all bear endless fruit in suffering and ignorance. Pratipakṣa-bhāvanā is not pretending the thought isn’t there. It is turning towards its consequence, and deliberately growing the opposite: patience where there is anger, generosity where there is greed. The commentary’s image is blunt: one who has renounced harm and then returns to it is like a dog going back to its vomit.
Notice that “approved of” is on the list. Cheering on cruelty, sharing a malicious rumour, nodding along — these too are harm.
What each practice bears
Sūtras 2.35–45 describe what happens when each practice becomes firmly established. The first is the most quoted:
The rest, in brief: for one grounded in truth, actions bear the fruit spoken of (2.36); in one who does not steal, all jewels come near (2.37); from sexual restraint comes vigour (2.38); from non-possessiveness, understanding of how and why one is born (2.39). Purity brings aversion (jugupsā) to one’s own body and to bodily contact with others — a renunciant’s ideal — and then clarity, cheerfulness, one-pointedness, mastery of the senses and fitness to see the Self (2.40–41). Contentment brings unsurpassed happiness (2.42); austerity, the perfection of body and senses as impurities burn away (2.43); self-study, communion with one’s chosen deity (2.44); and devotion to the Lord, the perfection of samādhi (2.45).
Some of these sound like powers, and the tradition did read them that way. Many modern readers take them psychologically too — a truly gentle person does calm others; a person who wants nothing is hard to bribe and easy to trust. Both readings can be held together.
Brahmacarya: then and now
No yama is read more differently today than brahmacarya. Compare:
The Yoga-bhāṣya defines it as restraint of the sexual organ, and the later commentators extend it to every form of sexual thought and contact. The word also names the celibate student stage of life (see The Four Stages of Life). The classical texts were written by and largely for male renunciants; their warnings are addressed to men and often cast women as the danger. That should be said plainly.
Community practice Many traditions have held that for a married person brahmacarya means faithfulness and restraint within marriage, not lifelong celibacy — a reading found in some later texts and very widely taught by householder gurus. Sexual intimacy in a faithful marriage is then no breach of the yama.
Modern reading Many contemporary teachers read brahmacarya as moderation of all the senses and the wise use of energy — not wasting it in compulsive pleasure of any kind. Gandhi took a lifelong vow of brahmacharya in 1906 and made it central to his politics; his later “experiments” testing that vow, which involved young women of his circle, are rightly criticised today. The word means “conduct in brahman,” which some read as living in a way that keeps the divine in view.
When truth and harm collide
If ahiṃsā is the root, what happens when telling the truth would hurt someone? The Tamil Tirukkuṟaḷ, in its chapter on truthfulness (வாய்மை, vāymai, chapter 30), defines truth itself by harmlessness:
தீமை இலாத சொலல் vāymai eṉappaṭuvatu yāteṉiṉ yātoṉṟum / tīmai ilāta colal What is called truthfulness? Speech that brings no harm whatever to anyone. Tirukkuṟaḷ 291
The next couplet goes further: even a falsehood shares the nature of truth if it brings blameless good. The Yoga-bhāṣya says something similar from the other side — true words that injure are not satya but a semblance of it. Try a classic case. (For the epic’s own hardest test of truthfulness, see the dilemma on Dharma.)
Truth, or protection?
A frightened young woman runs past you and slips into a shop. A moment later a man arrives, plainly furious, and asks you which way she went. You have vowed never to lie. What do you say?
What this protects
The letter of your vow: your words match the facts.
What it costs
The Mahābhārata tells of the ascetic Kauśika, famed for truthfulness, who told robbers where villagers were hiding. They were killed, and Krishna says Kauśika fell into suffering for it: his truth served harm (Karṇa Parva). By Patañjali’s commentary and the Kuṟaḷ alike, this is not satya at all.
What this protects
Her life — which ahiṃsā, the root yama, demands. Kuṟaḷ 292 would count this falsehood as truth, because its fruit is blameless good.
What it costs
You did deceive. Some ethicists, in India and elsewhere, insist one should never lie; and a habit of “good lies” can quietly grow. The test of a protective untruth is that you would be willing to defend it openly afterwards.
What this protects
Both satya and ahiṃsā: you say nothing false and give nothing away. Many teachers prefer this path wherever it is open — silence and action rather than words.
What it costs
It may not be open. If he forces an answer, you are back at the first two choices. Ethics is learned in the moments when the tidy option disappears.
One ethic, many traditions
Patañjali’s five yamas are the same list as the five “great vows” (also mahāvrata) taken by Jain monks and nuns; Jain laypeople take them in a lighter form as the “small vows.” The Buddhist five precepts overlap closely — refraining from killing, taking what is not given, sexual misconduct and false speech — and add refraining from intoxicants. Historians debate who influenced whom; the shared ground is what matters most. See In Dialogue for these traditions on their own terms.
Tamil ethics walks the same road. In the Tirukkuṟaḷ’s book of virtue, chapters follow one another on abstaining from meat (26), austerity (27), not stealing (29), truthfulness (30), not giving way to anger (31), not doing harm (32) and not killing (33). Many Malaysian Tamil families who have never opened the Yoga Sūtra learned these values from the Kuṟaḷ at school.
One yama for one week. Choose a single restraint or observance — just one. Write it on a card you will see each morning. Each evening, take two minutes: where did I keep it, where did I slip, and what was going on when I slipped? Do not punish yourself; simply notice. At the end of the week, write one sentence about what you learned. Many people find that one yama, watched closely, shows them all the others.
- Advaita treats ethical discipline as preparation: it purifies the mind (citta-śuddhi) so that knowledge of the Self can dawn, but does not itself liberate. See Advaita Vedanta.
- Vaiṣṇava and Shaiva bhakti see virtue flowing from love of God: one who sees the Lord in all beings will not harm them. Shaiva Siddhānta places right conduct in caryā, the first of its four steps.
- Mīmāṃsā grounds duty in Vedic injunction rather than in a universal vow, and defended animal sacrifice as an exception to non-harming — a view the yogic “great vow” seems to reject.
- Jains would say the vows are not a preliminary at all but the path itself.
Check your understanding:
Which of these is a niyama, not a yama?
Contentment is the second observance (2.32). The other two are restraints (2.30).
What makes the yamas a “great vow” (2.31)?
They apply everywhere, to everyone, always.
Pratipakṣa-bhāvanā means…
Yoga Sūtra 2.33–34: reflect on where the harm leads, and grow its opposite.
Kuṟaḷ 291 defines truthfulness as…
Truth is tested by its harmlessness.
Questions people often ask
Does ahiṃsā mean I must be vegetarian?
Many traditions say yes, and the Tirukkuṟaḷ has a whole chapter against eating meat. Others in the wider Hindu world eat meat, especially in parts of Bengal, Kerala, Nepal and among many Malaysian families, and offer animals at some shrines. Patañjali’s great vow points clearly towards not harming animals; how far each person takes it is a matter of conscience and community.
Does ahiṃsā forbid self-defence?
For a renunciant, the ideal is very close to total non-violence. For people with duties to protect others, the wider tradition — the Gītā above all — does not forbid force used rightly. The yogic ideal is that even necessary force be free of hatred.
Do I need to perfect the yamas before meditating?
No. The limbs grow together. Patañjali calls them limbs, not steps, and a little meditation makes the ethics easier, just as a cleaner life makes meditation easier. See Meditation.
॥ Pause and reflect
- Which of the ten comes most naturally to you, and which is hardest?
- Recall a time when truth and kindness pulled in different directions. What did you do — and what would you do now?
- Is there something you have “approved of” that you would not have done yourself?
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Key terms on this page
Sources & further reading
- Edwin F. Bryant, The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary (North Point Press, 2009).
- Swāmi Hariharānanda Āraṇya, Yoga Philosophy of Patañjali, trans. P. N. Mukerji (State University of New York Press, 1983).
- James Haughton Woods (trans.), The Yoga-System of Patañjali, Harvard Oriental Series 17 (1914).
- G. U. Pope (trans.), The Sacred Kurral of Tiruvalluva-Nayanar (1886).
- Padmanabh S. Jaini, The Jaina Path of Purification (University of California Press, 1979).
- Peter Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2000).
- Christopher Key Chapple, Nonviolence to Animals, Earth, and Self in Asian Traditions (State University of New York Press, 1993).