Recognizing samskaras can grant insight into yourself profound enough to help remove shame, break cycles of addiction and trauma, and find liberation. I know, that sounds lofty, but I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t believe it. This topic is so vast that I think it needs to come to you in at least two parts. Today, my goal is for us to walk away understanding what samskaras are and why it’s worthwhile to identify our own samskaras.

What are samskaras anyway?

Samskara is a Sanskrit word defined as a "mental conformation or latent karmic tendency shaping one's present life." Huh? If that left you scratching your head, don't worry. Me too.

In Tantra Illuminated, Christopher Wallis states that samskaras are “subliminal impressions of past experiences.” He goes on to say, “In classical yoga philosophy, the practices of yoga (especially meditation) have the primary purpose of dissolving samskaras in order to bring about [this] clear vision and the clear discernment that results from it.”

Samskaras in the Sutras

While Wallis describes the concept of a samskara in a five-word definition (clarity is his gift), that’s really just a jumping-off point for us. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras (Sutras 4.9-4.12) link samskaras to the concept of karma. We’ll get into karma in a future post, but for now, let’s look at Sutras 4.11 and 4.12 (this is from the Alan Finger and Wendy Newton translation and commentary):

4.11 Samskaras are a part of the subtle substratum of the causal plane. When the samskaras are resolved at this most subtle of levels, our karmic experience is resolved, as it is based on this underlying matrix.

4.12 The past and future both exist in the present moment. How past and future are perceived depends on the conditions of the moment.

To put into the clearest of terms, samskaras are the basis for why we do what we do (past, present, and future). Note that samskaras aren’t merely patterns, which is how they're often defined. Samskaras are the conditions that initiate and underpin our patterns and habits.

What my houseplant can teach us about samskaras

Now we know roughly what samskaras are, but what we’re talking about might still seem a little hazy. Know that it can take time for these things to become clear. While you’re waiting for time, practice, and self-reflection to pull understanding out of the mental stew, a visual aid can be helpful. Enter my darling houseplant, a Dracaena marginata.

I received the tree as a gift last year, and all through the winter, it grew in a pretty pot on the corner of my desk. I gave it all the love, food, water, and sunshine that a Dragon Tree could want, and in return, it converted my exhalations into clean air. It became tall and proud as the months went by.

By springtime, I noticed that Dracaena was losing its luster. It wasn't dying right that minute, but it wasn't thriving either. The tips of the leaves turned brown, and a few withered and dropped. I went into super plant-parent mode and ran down a checklist of all the things that could be wrong. After exhausting every other option, I realized Dracaena needed a bigger home.

When I tried to slip the plant from its pot, it wouldn't budge. After much massaging, some cajoling, and lots of yogic breathing, I managed to extract Dracaena from its prison.

It was stuck because it was doing what plants do in the environment I had given it. The conditions initiated a specific growth pattern. It put out roots, and as those roots became too large, they started to curve around the inside of the flowerpot. This quest for more legroom set off a growth habit that perpetuated itself into an ever-tightening bundle of roots. Soon the plant wasn’t just responding to the initial conditions; it was also responding to the pattern created by the conditions.

Over time, the roots continued to spiral. The still-developing Dracaena required more roots to sustain its growth, but it was also bound by the constraints of its container. The spiraling intensified. At this point, even if the plant spontaneously decided that it wanted to grow roots in a different direction, it could not. There simply wasn’t room for anything other than the spinning that had already been set in motion.

We’ve got to bust out of our flowerpots

If I had not made the decision to up-pot my rootbound plant, it would have eventually choked itself out and died. It had already begun the process of shedding what it considered the least-essential parts of itself in an act of self-preservation.

How many of us are walking around like this plant? On the surface, we're functioning, but if you peel back a few layers, we're stuck in cycles of behaviors and thought processes based on things that happened to us (or our ancestors). The events impact us so greatly that we generalize our world based on what happened. It’s exactly what Sutras 4.12 was talking about.

It’s not that all samskaras are bad

Subliminal impressions aren’t inherently negative, just like a plant growing roots isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. In fact, it’s necessary for a plant to grow roots to live. If we didn’t have some framework for how to see and react to the world, we’d probably never get anything done. We’d be reinventing the wheel all the time.

In addition, you might have a positive subliminal impression that informs your worldview. For example, you may have grown up with the understanding that the world is made up of kind people trying to do the right thing. Your general thought pattern when interacting with others might be to find the good in what they’re doing. If someone didn’t meet your expectations, you’d get curious about why that is rather than take their actions personally.

The discussion of samskaras skews toward the negative end of the spectrum because our most negative impressions lead to devastating, dysfunctional patterns that rob us of our chance at wellness and joy. A classic example is a person who keeps dating people who are the same kind of wrong for them over and over. Someone might have a tendency to cling tightly to people or things because of some experience with abandonment. Addictions of any sort grow out of these subliminal impressions, too. The patterns can be a lot more subtle than that, but hopefully, those examples give you a sense of the impact that unchecked negative impressions can have.

We’re all going through it together

Regardless of whether you ascribe to beliefs in things like karma, reincarnation, or epigenetics, there’s plenty to suggest that our perceptions and the habits they create develop over the long term. Just looking at the patterns that manifest in your lifetime can bear out a similar conclusion: the longer we hang onto our notions, the more entrenched we become (for better or for worse). Something that may seem like just the way things are to one person may be completely different from your reality, which might fly in the face of objective reality. Getting beyond all the impressions is the name of the game.

All this means is that we have unpacking to do. Whether or not you choose to reflect on yourself and notice patterns is up to you, but nobody gets to take a pass on whether they're impacted by samskaras. It's within our nature to form impressions and act based on them. Some of the patterns might even feel embarrassing to think or talk about. There’s absolutely no shame in recognizing those patterns and working through the ones that cause suffering for ourselves and others.

Okay, so what now? You get the gist of samskaras, and perhaps a few of the examples felt relatable. The question is, what can you do with the information in the context of your yoga practice? Next time, we’ll dive into some specific practices that can help us identify our samskaras and help us rewrite scripts that do not serve our well-being and the well-being of others.

Have you ever noticed yourself approaching new events according to past experiences?