8th Limb · Antaraṅga
The Dissolving — not an achievement, but what remains when effort falls away.
Root: sam (together, completely) + ā (toward) + √dhā (to place) — “placing together completely,” total absorption. One-line: the dissolving.
What is Samādhi
The eighth limb — something that arises
The eighth limb, and the point at which the whole sequence stops resembling a set of instructions. Every limb before this one asks for effort — restrain this, cultivate that, hold attention here, sustain it there.
Samādhi is described instead as something that arises: the subject-object distance that dhyāna still preserves — a mind attending to an object — gives way, and only the object's essence remains, the mind's own sense of itself as separate falling away.
In the Ashtanga Tradition
Practice, and all is coming
Consistent with this lineage's broader reluctance to over-theorise the higher limbs, samādhi is never presented as a technique or a class-time target. Pattabhi Jois's own phrase — “practice, and all is coming” — points here directly: not a destination pursued, but something that tends to arrive, unannounced, after years of sincere and fairly unglamorous engagement with the seven limbs that come before it.
Practising It
Approached only sideways
The most honest practical note is closer to a caution than a technique: samādhi seems to only be approached sideways, through regularity and sincerity in everything that precedes it — not through wanting it directly. Reaching for it tends to be exactly what keeps it out of reach.
Saṃyama · the three held together
One deepening process, viewed at three depths
Dhāraṇā, Dhyāna and Samādhi are not three separate techniques but one continuous operation — attention bound, attention flowing without break, and the gap between subject and object dissolving entirely. Patañjali names the three together saṃyama the moment he has defined them, and relies on it constantly thereafter. It is why he calls these three the antaraṅga — the more internal limbs: unlike the five before them, none touch conduct, body, breath, or the senses. All three work directly, and only, with citta, the mind.