The misery which is not yet come is avoidable.
Verse 2.15
परिणाम ताप संस्कार दुःखैः गुणवृत्तिविरोधाच्च दुःखमेव सर्वं विवेकिनः ॥१५॥
pariṇāma tāpa saṁskāra duḥkhaiḥ guṇa-vrtti-virodhācca duḥkham-eva sarvaṁ vivekinaḥ ॥15॥
The wise man knows that owing to fluctuations, the qualities of nature, and subliminal impressions, even pleasant experiences are tinged with sorrow, and he keeps aloof from them.
Verse 2.16
हेयं दुःखमनागतम् ॥१६॥
heyaṁ duḥkham-anāgatam ॥16॥
The misery which is not yet come is avoidable.
This sutra explains that the wise man knowing that all pleasure leads to pain, remains apart from the laws and the machinery of karma.
Owing to past impressions, obstructions and anguish, the quality of any action is adulterated by its contact with the gunas of nature, so he treats even pleasant experiences as inherently painful, and holds himself aloof from them.
The wise person knows that
thought transformations, afflictions, instincts and even pleasures end sooner or later in pain, so he shuns the causes of both pain and pleasure.
if we are intellectually sensitive, we will be able to discriminate quickly between the pleasant and unpleasant, the mixed and unmixed, and reject unsuitable thought and action.
This sutra states that pure inner peace can be reached by acquiring the right knowledge that will wipe out the roots of pain and pleasure.
Past pain is finished. Pain that we are in the process of experiencing cannot be avoided, but can be reduced to some extent by yogic practice and discriminative knowledge.
Unknown future pains can be prevented by adhering now to yogic discipline.
Patanjali is saying that yoga is a preventive healing art, science and philosophy, by which we build up robust health in body and mind that which can be avoided future Sufferings.
“Desires, ever fed, are never satisfied.”
Wise is he who looks for no pleasures in this world, for, ruled as everything is by the principle of duality, every pleasure must be offset by an equal and opposite pain. Why continue forever on this roller coaster ride?
Yoganada Paramahamsa
All of us are products of a mixture of the three gunas. Creation itself, says Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, is a product of the mixture of the three gunas. To apply this word to the presence of the three gunas in the body is confusing. How can our cravings create such a mixture? Worse still, how can they cause the gunas to be in conflict with one another?
In a saint, for example, tamoguna, may be expressed only in his need for sleep at night. And in a tamasic person, sattwa guna may find expression in the same way: in deep sleep! Thus we have explained for us the fact that sattwa guna alone is not enough to lift us even farther—out of the gunas altogether, into the state known as triguna rahitam: beyond all the three gunas. Within sattwa, therefore, are the seeds of return to tamas. In fact, the waves of our consciousness toss constantly up and down. The best person may in time, through a single fault, become evil; the worst person has the divine spark within him which can lift him to become among the best.
The fact that rajoguna has two directions. There is raja-sattwa, and rajo-tamo. Some of our activating qualities lead upward toward sattwa—for example, a desire to help the homeless or the ill—and others of our qualities lead downward toward tamas—for example, a desire to shirk one’s duties and go partying.
Within man’s nature is a vast horde of countless qualities, some of them good, some of them half-and-half, and some of them bad. Since spiritual awakening (the definition of yoga) comes when all the vrittis, or vortices of energy and consciousness in the spine are dissolved, and the energy is able to flow smoothly toward the brain, inner conflict, owing to cravings in the mind, produces confusion. We may say they cause conflict in the directions of the inner energy; it hardly knows whether its flow ought to be upward or downward. We might say also that desires leave us not knowing whether we’re coming or going! This is the inner conflict.
When you reach the state of Jivan Muktha, and rise above the ego altogether, even the strongest karma will pass you by but it wont affect you to the slighest. Even if you are to be sqaushed by life events, these events or karma wont affect the self.
PATANJALI YOGA SUTRAS