Dvivedi, Manilal Nabhubhai [Komm.]: The Yoga-sūtra of Patanjali: (translation, with introduction, appendix, and notes based upon several authentic commentaries) (Bombay, 1890)

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attenuating those causes which distract the mind and then by
completely destroying them.

HI. The distractions are five, viz., Ignorance, the
Sense of being, Desire, Aversion, and Attachment.

These will be defined.

IV. Ignorance is the source of those that follow,
whether they be in the dormant, attenuated, over-
powered, or expanded condition.

Though the causes of distraction are five in number, they
all arise from ignorance which, therefore, is the real great
distraction. All distraction is misery. Distractions, i.e., their
causes, are here shown to be of four kinds. They may be
dormant, that is, not developed for want of proper conditions,
as in the case of those who are described as Videha and
Pmkrtilaya (XIX., Sect. I). It is for this .reason that they
are not really mukta, absolved. Attenuated as in the case
of those devoted to preliminary Yoga. The force of the
causes of distraction is reduced to its lowest minimum, and
hence they disturb them but seldom. Overpowered and
expanded are in the case of those who are in the ordinary
course of life. These are only relative terms, for the distrac-
tions are overpowered, i. e., held in suspension, for a time, when
a contrary impulse is expanded, and vice versa. An example
in point is that of a man who loves an object with which he
loses his temper for a moment. The love is at first expanded
and becomes overpowered when anger takes its place. Over
and above these four conditions of the causes of distraction, a
fifth must be taken notice of, though, being the same as