Yoga Sutra 1.5 — vrittayah panchatayyah klishtaaklishtah — is the hinge between the diagnosis of the mind and the work that follows. Patanjali has just told us that yoga is the cessation of mental fluctuations (1.2), defined the seer’s true nature (1.3), and described what happens when we lose it (1.4). Now, in seven Sanskrit syllables, he tells us the fluctuations come in five varieties — and each one can be afflicted or unafflicted. This single distinction reframes practice as moral discrimination, not just thought-stopping.
The Sanskrit Breakdown — Vrittayah Panchatayyah Klishtaaklishtah
The sutra reads vṛttayaḥ pañcatayyaḥ kliṣṭākliṣṭāḥ. The most common English rendering is “The vrittis are five-fold and either painful or not painful.” Like every Patanjali sutra, the literal Sanskrit carries technical precision that a smooth translation softens. Each of the three words is doing real diagnostic work.
Vrittayah — The Mental Fluctuations
Vritti is the same word Patanjali introduced in Yoga Sutra 1.2: a wave, a turning, a circular movement of the mind-stuff. The plural vrittayaḥ simply means “the fluctuations.” If you remember 1.2 — yogas chitta vritti nirodha, “yoga is the stilling of the fluctuations of consciousness” — then 1.5 is the moment Patanjali begins to break the catch-all term vritti into its working parts. Without that breakdown, “stilling the mind” remains a slogan. With it, the practitioner has a taxonomy to work from.
Panchatayyah — Five-Fold
Pañcatayyaḥ simply means “of five kinds” or “five-fold.” It is a numerical promise: there are exactly five categories. Patanjali will name them in the very next sutra — pramana (correct knowledge), viparyaya (misperception), vikalpa (conceptual imagination), nidra (sleep), and smriti (memory). For a complete walk-through of each, see The 5 Vrittis: Yoga Sutra 1.6 Explained. Sutra 1.5 sits one rung above the list, telling us how to relate to each of the five before we have even met them.
Klishta and Aklishta — Afflicted and Unafflicted
Here is the diagnostic move. Kliṣṭa comes from the root kliś, to torment, to trouble, to cause pain. The same root gives us klesha — the five afflictions Patanjali catalogs in chapter two: ignorance, ego, attachment, aversion, and the fear of death. Akliṣṭa, with the negating prefix a-, means “not afflicted” — not necessarily pleasurable, but not driven by those root afflictions. A vritti is klishta when it is fueled by or feeds back into the kleshas. A vritti is aklishta when it is free of that fuel and, instead, contributes to liberation.
Why This Sutra Reorganizes Practice
If you read Sutra 1.2 in isolation, yoga sounds like a war on thoughts: stop the fluctuations. Many practitioners come away with the impression that the goal is a blank mind, and that any thought arising on the cushion is failure. Sutra 1.5 quietly corrects this. The vrittis are not the enemy. Some of them — the aklishta ones — actively support practice. Discriminating between the two becomes the work.
This reframes the practitioner’s job. Rather than indiscriminately suppressing mental activity, you observe each arising movement and notice its quality: is this thought tightening the grip of the kleshas, or is it loosening them? A memory of a loved one’s birthday that prompts a kind action is the same category of vritti — smriti, memory — as a grudge replayed for the hundredth time. They share a form. They do not share an effect. One is aklishta; the other is klishta.
The Same Vritti Can Be Either
The most important commentary point on Sutra 1.5 — emphasized by Vyasa in the oldest extant commentary on the Yoga Sutras — is that klishta and aklishta are not categories of vritti. They are qualities a vritti can take. The same arising can be either, depending on what is fueling it and what it leaves behind. This makes Patanjali’s psychology subtler than a simple list of “good thoughts” and “bad thoughts” would suggest.
Pramana — Correct Knowledge
Correct knowledge — accurate perception, valid inference, trustworthy testimony — sounds inherently aklishta. It is not. A scholar accumulating accurate knowledge to fuel professional pride is producing klishta pramana: it strengthens asmita, the second klesha. A practitioner studying the same facts to refine their understanding of the witness produces aklishta pramana. Same category. Different fuel.
Smriti — Memory
Memory is the clearest case. The same memory replayed with longing produces craving and feeds raga, the third klesha. Replayed with resentment, it feeds dvesha. Replayed as data — what worked, what did not, what to refine — it is aklishta. The form of the vritti is identical; the quality is opposite. For a full treatment of how memory turns afflicted, see Raga: The Third Klesha and the Pull of Attachment.
Nidra — Sleep
Sleep as a vritti often surprises modern readers. Patanjali classifies the experience of sleep — particularly dreamless sleep — as a mental fluctuation because the mind continues to register “I slept well” or “I slept badly” upon waking. Klishta nidra is sleep used as escape, the kind that thickens dullness and reinforces avoidance. Aklishta nidra is rest that genuinely restores the system and lets practice continue with clarity. Sleep itself is not the issue. Why you are reaching for it is.
The Link to the Kleshas
The reason klishta and aklishta are not interchangeable with “bad” and “good” is that Patanjali has a specific, technical meaning for “afflicted.” A vritti is klishta when it is rooted in or reinforcing one of the five kleshas: avidya (ignorance), asmita (ego-identification), raga (attachment), dvesha (aversion), and abhinivesha (the clinging to existence). A vritti is aklishta when its root system is free of those five — when it does not draw on them and does not water them.
This is a more rigorous test than moral judgment. A “kind” thought driven by the need to be seen as kind is klishta — it feeds asmita. A “negative” thought that accurately names a difficult truth without aversion may be aklishta. The metric is not the surface flavor of the thought. It is the root and the fruit.
How to Apply Sutra 1.5 in Practice
The practical use of this sutra is on the cushion and off it. It gives the practitioner a simple, repeatable question to ask of any mental movement that arises: is this klishta or aklishta? You are not asked to suppress, judge, or chase the thought. You are asked only to notice its quality.
The On-the-Cushion Test
In seated practice, when a thought arises, two checks are enough. First, what root is feeding this — ignorance of the witness, ego, craving, aversion, or fear of loss? If you can name any of the five, the vritti is klishta. Second, what does this thought tend toward — does it tighten the identification with the modifications described in Yoga Sutra 1.4, or does it loosen it? Tightening is klishta. Loosening is aklishta.
The Off-the-Cushion Test
Off the cushion, the same diagnostic applies to action. A useful question after a conversation, a decision, or an emotional reaction: which of the five kleshas, if any, drove this? If one drove it, the thought-stream behind the action was klishta. If none did — if the action came out of clarity, accuracy, or genuine care — the underlying vrittis were aklishta. Most days, you will find a mix. That is the honest starting point. Patanjali is not asking for purity. He is asking for discrimination.
What Sutra 1.5 Does Not Say
Two common misreadings are worth flagging. The first is that aklishta vrittis are spiritually superior and the goal is to have more of them. They are not, and that is not the goal. The goal of the Yoga Sutras is nirodha, the cessation of fluctuation altogether. Aklishta vrittis are a temporary scaffolding — useful while we still have a mind that moves, eventually quieted along with the rest. They are the safer fuel, not the destination.
The second misreading is that klishta vrittis must be fought, repressed, or denied. Patanjali nowhere instructs the practitioner to push down a klishta thought. He instructs the practitioner to see it. Seeing is what loosens it. The same point will return in chapter two with pratiprasava — the dissolution of kleshas by tracing them back to their source rather than by attacking them.
Where the Series Goes Next
Sutra 1.5 sets up the next move beautifully. Having declared that the vrittis are five-fold and either afflicted or unafflicted, Patanjali immediately names the five categories in Sutra 1.6 and defines each one in detail across 1.7 through 1.11. The taxonomy unfolds. By the end of the first chapter, you have not only the seer (1.3), the trap of misidentification (1.4), and the diagnostic of afflicted versus unafflicted (1.5) — you have the full working vocabulary needed to begin practice with discrimination.
If you are studying the sutras in sequence, the natural next step is to walk through each of the five vrittis in turn, then return to chapter two for the kleshas that fuel the klishta versions. The two lists — five vrittis and five kleshas — interlock. Sutra 1.5 is the sutra that names the interlock and gives the practitioner a way to feel it in real time.
A One-Line Summary
Yoga Sutra 1.5 tells us that the mind moves in five repeating patterns, and that every one of those patterns can be feeding our suffering or quietly dissolving it. The practitioner’s job is not to silence the mind by force. It is to learn the difference.
