Patanjali begins Sutra 1.20 right where 1.19 leaves off. While the previous verse described practitioners who arrive at samadhi by virtue of birth or merit from past lives, Sutra 1.20 turns to the rest of us — the seekers walking the gradual path. The verse names five qualities — shraddha, virya, smriti, samadhi, and prajna — that build on each other to produce the deepest meditative absorption. For the dynamic that determines how quickly these qualities ripen, see our breakdown of tivra-samvega in Sutra 1.21.
This guide unpacks each of these five qualities, why their order matters, and what cultivating them looks like in a modern practice.
What Yoga Sutra 1.20 Says
The original Sanskrit reads:
“Shraddha-virya-smriti-samadhi-prajna-purvaka itaresam”
A close English rendering: “For others (itaresam), [samadhi] is preceded by (purvaka) faith (shraddha), energy (virya), remembrance (smriti), absorption (samadhi), and wisdom (prajna).”
The word itaresam — meaning “for the others” — is the crucial pivot. Patanjali has just spoken in Sutra 1.19 about videhas and prakriti-layas (those who reach samadhi as a function of disembodied or merged consciousness). For everyone else — the human practitioner doing the work in this lifetime — the door to samadhi opens only after these five qualities are built up in sequence.
The Bridge Between Sutras 1.19 and 1.20
Sutra 1.19 introduces what classical commentators call bhava-pratyaya samadhi — a samadhi caused by the very nature of one’s being. Beings who arrive at this samadhi do so passively; it is not earned.
Sutra 1.20 introduces the contrasting category: upaya-pratyaya samadhi — samadhi born of method. This is the active path. It is the path most yoga students travel, and the one Patanjali devotes the rest of the Yoga Sutras to mapping.
Read together, Sutras 1.19 and 1.20 frame a fundamental choice point. Either samadhi is the consequence of grace or prior karma (1.19), or it is built deliberately through the five qualities Patanjali names next.
Shraddha: The Foundation of Faith
The first quality is shraddha, often translated as faith — but with an important distinction. Shraddha is not blind belief; it is a confident trust grounded in repeated experience.
For Patanjali, shraddha is the conviction that the practice works. When a student returns to the mat, sits for meditation, or steadies the breath through pranayama, shraddha is what carries them through inevitable boredom, frustration, and doubt. The B.K.S. Iyengar tradition describes shraddha as the mother of all other qualities — without it, the other four cannot take root.
In practical terms, shraddha grows when small, repeatable experiences of clarity, ease, or insight accumulate. Each time a practice produces even a glimpse of stillness, shraddha deepens. Conversely, when shraddha collapses — when the student decides the practice is “not working” — virya immediately follows. Effort cannot be sustained without trust in the path.Virya: Sustained Energy and Effort
The second quality, virya, is often rendered as energy, vigor, or zeal. Several commentaries equate virya with the resolute commitment Patanjali later describes in Sutra 1.12 as abhyasa — sustained, devoted practice over a long stretch of time.
Virya is what shows up at 5:45 a.m. for asana practice when the body is stiff and the bed is warm. It is the resolve to return to the meditation cushion after a week of distracted sittings. Crucially, virya is not the same as straining or forcing. Spiritual literature in many traditions warns against confusing virya with willpower in the Western sense — the yogic understanding of virya is closer to the steady burn of a coal than the flare of a match.
When shraddha is steady, virya follows naturally. The practitioner does not have to manufacture motivation; the faith that this work matters supplies its own fuel.
Smriti: Mindful Remembrance
The third quality is smriti, which Patanjali has already introduced in Sutra 1.11 as one of the five vrittis (modifications of the mind). In that earlier context, smriti as a vritti refers to memory in the ordinary sense — past experience returning to consciousness.
In Sutra 1.20, smriti carries a refined meaning. It is the power of recall in practice — the capacity to remember, in the heat of an emotional reaction or a meditative absorption, the deeper purpose of yoga. It is what allows a yogi who has touched stillness once to find their way back. Smriti, in this technical sense, is closer to the Buddhist concept of sati (mindfulness) than to ordinary memory.
A practical example: a meditator notices that anger has arisen. Smriti is what reminds them, in that exact moment, that this anger is itself a passing modification of the mind — a vritti — and not the self. Without smriti, the same anger would simply carry them away.
Samadhi: The State of Absorption
The fourth quality is samadhi itself — but here it functions as a precondition rather than a final goal. This subtle distinction confuses many first-time readers. Why would samadhi precede samadhi?
Vyasa, the earliest known commentator on the Yoga Sutras, clarifies: the samadhi mentioned in Sutra 1.20 is the developing capacity for sustained absorption, the early stages of meditative steadiness that prepare the practitioner for the deeper states Patanjali calls samprajnata and asamprajnata samadhi.
In practical terms, this stage of samadhi is the experience of returning to the same object of meditation repeatedly until the mind no longer slips away. The breath becomes a stable platform. The mantra becomes a continuous current. The internal noise drops. Each session of this preliminary samadhi raises the floor of what the next session is capable of.
Prajna: The Wisdom That Emerges
The fifth and culminating quality is prajna — wisdom or discernment.
Prajna is not intellectual understanding. It is direct, non-conceptual knowing that emerges out of sustained samadhi. The intellect can read books about the nature of the self; prajna sees it. The intellect can categorize the kleshas — those root afflictions discussed in Patanjali’s second chapter; prajna recognizes them while they are still subtle, before they cloud the mind.
Patanjali names prajna last because it cannot be cultivated by effort alone. It is the fruit of the previous four. Where shraddha says “this practice can transform me,” and virya does the work, and smriti returns the mind to its center, and samadhi creates the conditions, prajna is what ripens. Once prajna is established, samadhi proper — the absorption Patanjali defines elsewhere as kaivalya or liberation — becomes possible.
How to Cultivate These Five Qualities Today
The neat sequence of Sutra 1.20 — shraddha, virya, smriti, samadhi, prajna — is sometimes mistaken for a five-step ladder where each rung is climbed and left behind. The classical reading is different. The five qualities reinforce one another. Cultivating any one strengthens the others.
A few concrete practices for each:
To build shraddha
Keep a brief practice journal. Note one moment per session when the mind quieted, the breath deepened, or insight surfaced. Re-read the journal monthly. Direct evidence of progress is the most reliable fuel for faith.
To build virya
Commit to a small daily practice rather than a heroic weekly one. Twenty minutes of sitting every morning builds more virya than two hours on Saturday. Patanjali’s Sutra 1.14 calls this dirgha kala nairantarya. The principle of dirgha kala is virya’s structural foundation.
To build smriti
Use a simple anchor — the sensation of breath at the nostrils, or the phrase “I am aware” — and gently return to it when the mind drifts. Each return strengthens the meditative version of smriti.
To build samadhi
Shorten the gap between sessions. A practitioner who sits daily for thirty days has a meaningfully different mind than one who sits weekly for half a year. Frequency, more than duration, builds the early stages of samadhi.
To allow prajna
Stop seeking it. Prajna does not respond to ambition. Continue the previous four — and prajna will surface in its own time. The most a practitioner can do is keep the conditions clean: a steady seat, a clear motive, and the willingness to be honest about what arises.
The Bottom Line
Sutra 1.20 is, in a sense, the most practical verse in the first chapter of the Yoga Sutras. After many sutras devoted to defining yoga, the mind, and the obstacles to stillness, Patanjali finally answers the question every practitioner asks: how do I actually get there?
The answer is five qualities, built in sequence, each one reinforcing the others. None of them is exotic. None of them requires the right birth, the right culture, or the right teacher. They require only a willingness to start, and to keep going. For everyone walking the path described across the Yoga Sutras, Sutra 1.20 is the map.
