by experience. Vasanas are innate
sa@mskaras not acquired in this life. See _Vyasabha@sya, Tattvavais'aradi_
and _Yogavarttika_, II. 13.]

264

engrossing to him, tend to be revived, for though these might
not now be experienced, yet the fact that they were experienced
before has so moulded and given shape to the citta that the
citta will try to reproduce them by its own nature even without
any such effort on our part. To safeguard against the revival of
any undesirable idea or tendency it is therefore necessary that its
roots as already left in the citta in the form of sa@mskaras should
be eradicated completely by the formation of the habit of a contrary
tendency, which if made sufficiently strong will by its own
sa@mskara naturally stop the revival of the previous undesirable
sa@mskaras.

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 Ved