Yoga Hero: All of Yoga Podcast – Episode 12

The four locks and four keys –
The four types of people, and the four ways to treat them

This episode is the four types of people, and the four ways to treat them. Otherwise known as the four locks and four keys. Otherwise known as sutra 1:33!

Sutra 1:33 is:

‘By cultivating attitudes of friendliness towards the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous and disregard toward the wicked, the mind retains its undisturbed calmness.’

This is such an important and incredibly useful sutra. If someone tells us they got a promotion or they’ve met someone they’re really excited about, our first thought is to compare that to our own life ‘I haven’t had a promotion in years’ or ‘things are a bit stale in my relationship at the moment’. If someone tell us that they’re struggling, things at home are just too tough or work is way too much of a challenge, we compare that to our own lives. When someone mentions they’ve volunteered for a charity or run 10k for the first time or they’re learning a new language, we immediately start to think of our own achievements, and if there’s wicked, non-virtuous actions, we condemn them and think how we’d never, ever do something like that.

As you may, or may not know, yoga is the state of a peaceful mind – AND it’s the practice of working towards that state of a peaceful mind too.

In this episode, we break down how the four locks, and the four keys help us cultivate, and retain, a peaceful mind.

The yoga sutras of Patanjali are a sacred and honestly quite life-changing text. A sutra is a thread. The yoga sutras are nearly 200 statements, aphorisms, threads – that weave a rich tapestry of knowledge, but which isn’t set in stone, you can go back, unweave and re-weave, depending on how your views change, how your life experiences shape you, and so on.

The yoga sutras of Patanjali can seem inaccessible because there’s lots of long Sanskrit words and abstract concepts, and for most people, myself, it’s really hard or indeed impossible to study on your own. That said, it is an eminently practical text, it’s really a guide for life. If you think about yoga as the practice of working towards a more peaceful mind, there’s two ways we can achieve this; that work together. 1) is to give yourself less things to think about, to worry and stress about. and 2) is to make peace and to deal with what is already on your mind. Bear that in mind, as we now go on to break down this sutra.

Yoga Beyond Asana: Sutra 1:33 – practice for free

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The four types of people, and the four ways to treat them – Transcript

This episode is the four types of people, and the four ways to treat them. Otherwise known as the four locks and the four keys. Otherwise known as sutra 1:33!

Sutra 1:33 is:

By cultivating attitudes of friendliness towards the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous and disregard toward the wicked, the mind retains its undisturbed calmness.

As you may, or may not know, yoga is the state of a peaceful mind – AND it’s the practice of working towards that state of a peaceful mind too.

Before breaking this Sutra down, let’s have a look at it within the context of yoga, and within the context of the yoga sutras.

Yoga is the state, and the practice, of attaining a peaceful mind. Our asana practice, the physical practice, helps a lot towards this, which partly explains the strong focus on asana in yoga studios and online, but asana isn’t the whole practice. That’s really the reason for being for this podcast!

The yoga sutras of Patanjali are a sacred and honestly quite life-changing text. A sutra is a thread. The yoga sutras are nearly 200 statements, aphorisms, threads – that weave a rich tapestry of knowledge, but which isn’t set in stone, you can go back, unweave and re-weave, depending on how your views change, how your life experiences shape you, and so on. The yoga sutras of Patanjali can seem inaccessible because there’s lots of long Sanskrit words and abstract concepts, and for most people, myself, it’s really hard or indeed impossible to study on your own. That said, it is an eminently practical text, it’s really a guide for life. If you think about yoga as the practice of working towards a more peaceful mind, there’s two ways we can achieve this; that work together. 1) is to give yourself less things to think about, to worry and stress about. and 2) is to make peace and to deal with what is already on your mind. Bear that in mind, as we now go on to break down this sutra.

There’s one more thing to mention too which is really important to bear in mind with this sutra, which is that it’s only about you. It’s not asking you to permit or celebrate or judge or condemn another person’s actions – what they do is on them. It’s asking us to look inwards and explore the ways that we permit or celebrate or judge or condemn another person’s actions and question that and be very aware of how much that affects our inner state.

Ok…. with all that in mind, let’s go!

Sutra 1: 33 means the 33rd sutra of the 1st chapter. and it’s in four parts; the first of which is:

Cultivating attitudes of friendliness towards the happy

I’ve also seen this translated from a source I trust as ‘cultivating attitudes of friendliness and goodwill towards those who are happy’.

This certainly on the surface seems the easiest, and the most obvious. If someone is happy – be happy for them! Well of course! But what if your colleague is really happy, because they got the promotion that you were hoping to get? Or what if your friend is really happy, they think they’ve found the love of their life, but you’re currently going through a tough break up? What if a family member is enjoying great success with their small business and you’re scared to get yours off the ground? Or maybe you’ve been so so keen to try out a new restaurant but you just cannot get a table, and then your friend is able to book a table before you!

It can be something seemingly much small and inconsequential, or something huge. Well, first of all, if you were to feel anything other than friendliness or happiness towards happy people, it doesn’t really affect them in any way. All it does, is give you more to think about, to ruminate over. Why did they get the job / fall in love / have a successful business / get the restaurant booking, and I didn’t? Thoughts like these are prime candidates for going round and round and round your head.

And let’s be honest; that person is probably going to carry on being in that relationship or being in that job or enjoying their restaurant booking – whether you are happy for them or not! Secondly, to bear in mind, just because somebody looks happy about something on the outside doesn’t necessarily indicate what’s going on, on the inside, right?

If we go back to our main aim of the mind being as undisturbed as possible, as calm as possible, when you allow somebody else’s state to upset you, that is obviously taking your potential calmness, your peacefulness and throwing it away, because it’s dependant on what other people do, which is so far from your control! And remember, there’s many things in life where if it happens to somebody else, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it can’t happen to you. You, your best friend, your sibling and your work colleague could all find love on the exact same day! Remember, there’s a key word in this sutra which is ‘cultivating’. By ‘cultivating’ happiness for happy people. It’s a skill that we’re working on, and no one said it was easy, but it’s reassuring that the peacefulness comes from the actual process of doing the work, not just from the final result.

So let’s put this in to practice – right now – today. When someone tells you a bit of good news or something that they’re excited or happy about; watch your immediate thoughts. You might think ‘when will that happen to me’ – and that’s ok, it’s a human response, but you then have the control over what to think next, over where to place your focus next. So: think: I’m happy for them. Smile. Congratulate them. Dig deep and be authentic. And practice it again and again as often as you can until it’s second nature, which might be next week or in two decades time! One day, you’ll notice that your first thought is genuinely ‘that is great news’ rather than ‘why don’t things like that happen for me?’

The second part to this sutra is:

Cultivating compassion for the unhappy

Unhappiness here is basically everything apart from happiness. So people who are a little grumpy, or maybe a little bit preoccupied today, maybe like a bit moody all the way through to like a deep dark depression, overwhelming anxiety and struggling to leave the house. So all levels, all forms of really anything that you would say is, is not feeling happy, not feeling content within yourself.

I feel like this can be really hard when you think you can see the source of the unhappiness for the person that’s experiencing the unhappiness. Maybe you’ve got a good friend who’s in a relationship with a guy and the guy doesn’t really make her feel that good. He says to her, like, why would you go out wearing that you look like you’re wearing a bin bag, or something like that.

And then he’s like, only joking. And you’re like, Ah, why did you say I know you’re not joking, that kind of thing. And so then your friend is down in the dumps when you go out for your coffee; she says, ‘Oh, do I look like I’m wearing a bin bag?’ And you’re like, Oh, this is really annoying. Like I was so looking forward to coming out for coffee and now you’re all down in the dumps because that’s what he he said.

The key word here is compassion; not advice. Especially unsolicited advice!! Remember, it’s not about you solving, or judging, or comparing what’s going on in someone else’s life, but instead looking inwards and investigating, why is it affecting you? Why do you feel the need to fix your friend’s problems, when, let’s face it, you do probably have a couple of your own? Go with Patanjali’s advice and be compassionate. And that’s it. When you find yourself thinking, solving, analysing, pause and place your focus, your effort and your energy on being compassionate for your unhappy person. Just having some human understanding like ‘I am listening to you, I am empathetic towards you. I am here for you, you know whenever you need it.’

You know what compassion is, and you know how to be compassionate. There’s no need to complicate things – if you know someone that’s experiencing unhappiness, and like I say, that might be from just like a little bit of like grumpiness, all the way through to a life-affecting depression, the key is to meet them with compassion. Compassion for the unhappy. You are creating that skill, you are cultivating the skill of meeting unhappy people with compassion.

It’s worth saying here that by cultivating compassion for others who are unhappy, you’ll then much more likely have this skill to apply to yourself when you’re having a bit of a rough ride.

So we’ve had cultivating attitudes of friendliness toward happy people, and compassion for unhappy people.

The third part of this sutra is

delight in the virtuous

I think in English, we might think about virtuous people as people who are like maybe a bit smug. Maybe people who easily roll out bed at six in the morning and do their yoga practice for 90 minutes and then sit and meditate for 30 minutes and then they get up and they go and buy kale and they eat for breakfast and they are virtuous.

But really, these scriptures are talking about people who possess and express virtues. A virtue being a skill, a talent, a discipline; like compassion, like friendliness, like patience for example. In the Yoga Sutras, it says virtues are moral traits such as patience, courage and reliability that bring benefit to others and harm to no one. They are signs of spiritual maturity and serve as reliable compasses, with which we can navigate the uncertainties of life. Virtues can be developed through study and contemplation, and as the sutra suggests, through recognising their presence in others. So, when somebody’s really patient and you would have lost your temper by now – can you turn inwards and investigate what’s going on in you? Rather than comparing, or judging, or reasoning, just explore?

And last but not least

disregard toward the wicked

An alternative, and very useful, transliteration is equanimity toward the non-virtuous.

This is usually the hardest part to get your head around. Often people say that they just can’t stand by and let bad things happen. But that’s most certainly not what this sutra is saying, or recommending. Remember our context; yoga is about cultivating a peaceful mind; which means making peace with what’s already in our heads and giving ourselves less things to think, worry, ruminate over. If you’re busy getting involved with the actions of the wicked, or the non-virtuous, you’re giving yourself extra to worry about.

In many cases, the alternative to disregard would be to act with anger, to solve an injustice or put a wrong, right again. But we can do this from a place of equanimity; giving your future self less to regret, less to ruminate over. It’s not saying don’t act; it’s reminding us the nature of HOW to act in this circumstance.

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The whole sutra is asking us to turn inward and look honestly at our reactions, at our inner landscape, because, this is the only way we’re going to be able to respond in a way that fits with our own value set; to respond in a way that doesn’t give us more to think about, to stress over. Often, when we just react – without pausing, without care, that reaction in and of itself causes more issues! And the last thing that we need is more careless reactions and more issues!

Like I said just a moment ago, this is usually the hardest part to understand, but remember, this is something that we can start working on immediately, it doesn’t have to straight away be the finished product, it doesn’t have to be perfection. It’s called a yoga practice for a reason. If you hear of someone being wicked; just watch what happens, in your head, in your body, with your speech and your actions. Then pause. Does your inner landscape, your speech, your actions – reflect on your value set?

By cultivating attitudes of friendliness towards the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous and disregard toward the wicked, the mind retains its undisturbed calmness.

Patanjali groups all individuals in these four ways, often called the four locks; the happy, the unhappy, the virtuous and the wicked. And you have your four attitudes; your four keys – friendliness, compassion, delight, and disregard.

The four locks and four keys should always be with you in your pocket. If you use the right key with the right person, you cultivate retain your peace.

So, lovely yogis, I hope that’s been useful and insightful. We have a Yoga Beyond Asana class that revisits these learnings, and weaves them in with some movement, and some meditation to process. This is completely free to join, just check out our shownotes for the link.

Go and have a fabulous day, remember, you’re your own hero.

See you next time!