The PātañjalayogaśāstraFootnote 1 (PYŚ) concludes with a description of the pinnacle of yoga practice: a state of samādhi called dharmamegha, cloud of dharma. Yet despite the structural importance of dharmamegha in the soteriology of Pātañjala yoga, the śāstra itself does not say much about this term. Where we do find dharmamegha discussed at some length, however, is in Buddhist yogācāra, and more broadly in early Mahāyāna soteriology, where it represents the apex of attainment and the superlative statehood of a bodhisattva (one whose aim is to become a buddha). Given the relative paucity of Brahmanical mentions of dharmamegha in the early common era, Patañjali appears to adopt this key metaphorFootnote 2 from a Mahāyāna context—and to revise its primary meaning from fullness to emptiness.

Within early Mahāyāna soteriology, the concept of dharmamegha is especially elaborated in yogācāraFootnote 3 and particularly in various sections of Asaṅga’s Yogācārabhūmiśāstra. We have become accustomed to discussing just one yogaśāstra in the classical period, that of Patañjali, but, as I have argued elsewhere, the Yogācārabhūmiśāstra (YĀBh) is worth considering as another śāstra on yoga discipline from the same period.Footnote 4 Since the earliest layers of the Yogācārabhūmiśāstra most likely predate the Pātañjalayogaśāstra,Footnote 5 it is reasonable to suggest that there may have been conceptual influence from yogācāra to Pātañjala yoga. In this article, I lay out four possibilities that can account for the intertextuality and the stark contrast between the ways in which these two classical yogaśāstras—the Pātañjalayogaśāstra and the Yogācārabhūmiśāstra—employ the superlativeFootnote 6 metaphor of dharmamegha. Working from the premise that the Pātañjalayogaśāstra post-dates the early layers of the YĀBh and therefore reworks the Buddhist metaphor, I demonstrate that Patañjali’s dharmamegha can be analysed as 1. a dead or commonplace metaphor, 2. a paralogical revision for polemical effect, 3. logically concordant with Buddhist soteriology, or 4. a (by)product of literary style. I evaluate these four arguments in turn to suggest that Patañjali’s strikingly empty metaphor of dharmamegha is largely a result of literary style and polemical revision due to doctrinal necessity.

Patañjali’s dharmamegha

Scholars of classical yoga have long debated the meaning of the term dharmamegha in the Pātañjalayogaśāstra,Footnote 7 and the detail of the debate has been focused on what dharma means.Footnote 8 One of the key reasons for the ongoing discussion is the polyvalence of the term dharma. Moreover, Patañjali does not expound dharmamegha’s meaning in any detail, and we do not often encounter this term in Brahmanical sources. It should be added that neither do the sub-commentators of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra shed much light on dharmamegha as a technical term. In combination, these factors point to dharmamegha being an uncommon term in Brahmanism in the early common era. I suggest that we may approach the doctrinal denotation of this term in a more fruitful way by considering what megha (cloud) means; it is only by elucidating the metaphoric function of megha in dharmamegha that we can arrive at a better understanding of the meaning of dharma in this compound.

In the Pātañjalayogaśāstra, there are two brief discussions of dharmamegha, which appear at the beginning and the end of the text. In itself, this positions these discussions as a structural and conceptual ‘bracket’ that frames the entire text. The first discussion takes place within the quintessential definition of yoga and the second discussion takes place in the concluding definition of liberation. In the first discussion, centred on dharmameghadhyāna, the meaning of dharma appears to be ‘virtuous or religious conduct’. In the second discussion, centred on dharmameghasamādhi, the primary meaning of dharma is liberating knowledge.Footnote 9

Dharmameghadhyāna

The first instance of dharmamegha occurs in the definition of dharmameghadhyāna (the absorption of dharmamegha). This appears in the bhāṣya to the second sūtra, the well-known yogaś cittavṛttinirodhaḥ (yoga is the cessation of mental fluctuation). The discussion explains how the mind must be sequentially purified of any vestige of the three guṇas (tamas, rajas, and sattva).Footnote 10

tad eva rajoleśamalāpetaṃ svarūpapratiṣṭhaṃ

sattvapuruṣānyatākhyātimātraṃ dharmameghadhyānopagaṃ

bhavati. tat paraṃ prasaṃkhyānam ity ācakṣate dhyāyinaḥ

(PYŚ 1.2; Maas 2006, pp. 5–6).

When that very [sattva] is established in its own form, without the least measure of rajas, being merely the cognition of the distinction between sattva and puruṣa, it is conducive to dharmameghadhyāna. Those versed in dhyāna (dhyāyinaḥ) call this [dharmameghadhyāna]

the highest enumerative reflection (prasaṃkhyāna).

The passage describes the highest level of meditative attainment in which concentration is so restricted that it perceives just one thing: the difference between the sattva guṇa (the ontological state of pure balance) and puruṣa (the state of pure consciousness). Concentration can only access this stage by being devoid of any trace of rajas (tamas long since having been eliminated). This restricted perception of the ‘difference’ also represents the state of being established in one’s own form, i.e. recognizing one’s true nature as puruṣa. Additionally, the passage reveals that dharmameghadhyāna is also called prasaṃkhyāna (enumerative reflection)Footnote 11 and confirms the enumerative aspect of prasaṃkhyāna in discerning discrete objects, in this case two objects (sattva from puruṣa).Footnote 12Dharmameghadhyāna, then, is a meditative technique that generates the capacity to discern the ultimate ontological distinction between prakṛti (principle of materiality) and puruṣa (principle of pure consciousness).

In Patañjali’s text there is no explanation of the term dharmamegha itself and what it means beyond its status as a label (of a technique or stage). However, in the preceding contrasting two descriptions of a citta (mind) that is pierced by either tamas or rajas, dharma is mentioned twice. In the case of tamas, the four characteristics of the mind are: lack of dharma, false knowledge, attachment, and weakness.Footnote 13 In the case of rajas, the four characteristics are dharma, knowledge, detachment, and strength.Footnote 14 These two paradigms mirror each other. I suggest that using dharmamegha to denote the presence of sattva represents a logical progression (beyond this mirroring) (Table 1).

Table 1 PYŚ 1.2

Notably, dharma is the only one of the four characteristics carried forward into the description of a mind with sattva. In such a framework, dharma continues the semantic denotation of the prior two sentences and means ‘religious conduct’ or ‘virtuous behaviour’.Footnote 15 In this context, the connection to the cloud image indicates an exceptionally elevated, i.e. ideal, state of dharma. With regard to dharma, then, citta has three expressions, which match the three guṇas: lack of dharma (tamas), presence of dharma (rajas), and exceptional dharma (cloud of dharma) that surpasses convention (sattva).

Dharmameghasamādhi

Patañjali’s second reference to dharmamegha occurs at the end of the śāstra, where it is discussed in more detail.Footnote 16 This description is of the highest attainment of yogic concentration, or dharmameghasamādhi (the concentration of the cloud of dharma). Here, we learn that dharmameghasamādhi is equivalent to the samādhi that is without seed of saṃskāra (mental imprint):

prasaṃkhyāne 'py akusīdasya sarvathā vivekakhyāter dharmameghaḥ samādhiḥ ||

yadāyaṃ brāhmaṇaḥ prasaṃkhyāne 'py akusīdas tato 'pi na kiṃcit prārthayate. tatrāpi viraktasya sarvathā vivekakhyātir eva bhavatīti saṃskārabījakṣayān nāsya pratyayāntarāṇy utpadyante. tadāsya dharmamegho nāma samādhir bhavati (PYŚ 4.29; Āgāśe 1904, p. 202)

For one who is without investment even in enumerative reflection (prasaṃkhyāna), dharmameghasamādhi arises from complete discriminating discernment (vivekakhyāti).

When this Brahmin is without investment even in enumerative reflection, then he does not strive whatsoever. Therefore one who is completely devoid of attachment thereto [to prasaṃkhyāna] has only discriminating discernment. Because of the destruction of the seed of saṃskāra, no other ideations arise. Then, there arises the samādhi that is called dharmamegha.

We previously encountered the state of seedless concentration; nirbīja samādhi was explained at PYŚ 1.51. Hence, the equivalence in the above passage would appear to confirm that dharmameghasamādhi and nirbīja samādhi are synonyms. As I have noted, the opening of the PYŚ presents dharmameghadhyāna as equivalent to prasaṃkhyāna (enumerative reflection). Now, it is explained that only when one abandons this technique of prasaṃkhyāna (the act of perceiving the difference between sattva and puruṣa, i.e. dharmameghadhyāna), can one attain the ultimate state of dharmameghasamādhi. We have, then, a simple progression that can be expressed in two ways: to say that prasaṃkhyāna leads to nirbīja samādhi is equivalent to saying that dharmameghadhyāna leads to dharmameghasamādhi.Footnote 17 The state of dharmameghasamādhi is further characterized as a state of infinite knowledge:

tadā sarvāvaraṇaṃalāpetasya jñānasyānantyāj jñeyam alpam || (PYŚ 4.31; Āgāśe 1904, p. 203).

Then for one who is free from the impurity of all obscuration due to infinite knowledge, that which is to be known is little.

This description of the cloud of dharma as infinite knowledge supports the reading of dharma in this instance as ‘body of teaching/doctrine’. Additionally, dharmameghasamādhi is also a state in which change and transformation are brought to a halt (PYŚ 4.32).Footnote 18 If, as we are told in PYŚ 1.1, yoga is samādhi, then the superlative state of yoga is dharmameghasamādhi. This is a liberated state of cessation.

From these two accounts of dharmamegha in the Pātañjalayogaśāstra, we can assert that dharmamegha can be both ethical-ontological (the virtuous condition of sattvaguṇa) and epistemological (the condition of unlimited knowledge) and that dharmameghasamādhi is a superlative state of cessation.

Dharmamegha in Buddhist Sources

In contrast to the dearth of sources for the term dharmamegha in Brahmanical texts,Footnote 19 there is an abundance of references in Buddhist literature. In Buddhism, the abstract concept of dharma is frequently represented via metaphors. For example, in the late-canonical Buddhavaṃsa (1st–2nd century BCE) we are told how the future Buddha will enlighten all beings. This is explained with three metaphors: the Dhamma-ship, the Dhamma-mirror, and the Dhamma-medicine (Collins 2010, p. 183). Each of these metaphors contains dense clusters of association, e.g. the ship as a vehicle for safe passage, the mirror as reflecting self-knowledge and awareness, and medicine as a healing modality. Dharmamegha is perhaps just one of the myriad metaphors in Buddhism that attempt to scaffold the meaning of terms like dharma. Nonetheless, whatever its origins, dharmamegha was picked up and amplified in a certain strand of Mahāyāna literature.

Dhammamegha in Pāli Sources

Some of the earliest detailed discussions of dhammamegha in the Pāli canon are to be found in the Apadāna and the Buddhavaṃsa, both containing biographical stories about the Buddha.Footnote 20 For example, the ApadānaFootnote 21 states:

dhammameghena vassante sabbe hontu anāsavā

ye’ttha pacchimakā sattā sotāpannā bhavantu te

(Apadāna, Buddhāpadānam 68; Lilley 1925–1927, Part 1: 5)

While the dharmamegha rains, may all contaminations cease; may [people] live according to their perfections, may they become stream-enterers.

In the Buddhavaṃsa, the Buddha is described both as being the agency of dhammamegha and as having a causative relationship to dhammamegha. As the agency of the cloud, the Buddha rains the showers of dharma:

so pi patvāna sambodhiṃ santārento sadevakaṃ

abhivassi dhammameghena nibbāpento sadevakaṃ

(Bv 17.2; Jayawickrama 1974, p. 68)

After he had attained Self-Awakening and was causing the world with the devas to cross over, he rained down from the cloud of Dhamma making the world with the devas cool (trs. Horner 1975, p. 67).

In contrast, the Buddha’s causative relation to the rain of dharma is outlined here:

dhammameghaṃ pavassetvā temayitvā sadevake

khemantaṃ pāpayitvāna nibbuto so sasāvako

(Bv 21.26; Jayawickrama 1974, p. 81)

Having made the cloud of Dhamma rain down moistening the world

with the devas (Bv 21.26; trs. Horner 1975, p. 80) [author’s italics].

Beyond the Pāli canon, dhammamegha appears in relation to yoga in the 1st–2nd century CE Milindapañha, in which the Indo-Greek king Menander poses questions about Buddhism. The example of dhammamegha appears in a long list of similes self-consciously presented to construct the paradigms of right behaviour for the earnest yogin. Using the structure of simile, the text lists five qualities of the cloud (megha) that the yogin yogāvacara is said to possess. The cloud is also understood to be a raincloud, and the five qualities of rain—settling, cooling, nurturing, protective, and abundant—are mapped to the yogin. The passage explains that dharmamegha is a fruit of yogācāra (Pāli: yogāvacara), or yoga discipline, and its function is to provide sustenance and nourishment to the world.

‘Revered Nāgasena, when you say five qualities of the rain-cloud must be adopted, which are these five qualities that must be adopted?’

‘As, sire, the rain-cloud allays dust and dirt that are arising, even so, sire, the yogin, the earnest student of yoga must allay the dust and dirt of the defilements that are arising. This, sire, is the first quality of the rain-cloud that must be adopted.

And again, sire, the rain-cloud cools the heat of the earth; even so, sire, the yogin, the earnest student of yoga must cool the world with the devas by the meditation of loving-kindness. This, sire, is the second quality of the rain-cloud that must be adopted.

And again, sire, the rain-cloud makes all seeds grow; even so, sire, the yogin, the earnest student of yoga, having in all creatures generated faith, should sow the seed of faith for (achieving) the three attainments: the deva-like and the human attainments and the attainment of the bliss of nibbāna, the ultimate goal. This, sire, is the third quality of the rain-cloud that must be adopted.

And again, sire, a rain-cloud, arising in due season, preserves the base of the dharaṇīruha (tree), the grasses, trees, creepers, bushes, medicinal plants and forest-trees; even so, sire, the yogin, the earnest student of yoga, having produced careful attention must, by means of that careful attention, preserve the Dhamma of recluses, so that all skilled states are rooted in careful attention. This, sire, is the fourth quality of the rain-cloud that must be adopted.

And again, sire, the rain-cloud in raining down fills rivers, reservoirs, lotus-ponds and gullies, crevices, lakes, water-pools and wells with showers of water; even so, sire, the yogin, the earnest student of yoga, having rained down the rain-cloud of Dhamma for the mastery of the tradition, should perfect the mind (of others) for the spiritual realisations they are longing for. This, sire, is the fifth quality of the rain-cloud that must be adopted. And this, sire, was said by the Elder Sāriputta, the General under Dhamma:

‘“Seeing folk capable of being awakened

Even be they a hundred or a thousand yojanas (distant),

Approaching them at the right moment

The Great Sage awakens them”’

(MP 7.56; trs. Horner 1963–1964, Vol 2: 291–292).Footnote 22

In comparison to the previous canonical examples, dhammamegha here is associated not with the Buddha, but with the agency of ‘the earnest yogin’ who takes centre-stage in book seven of the Milindapañha.Footnote 23 The rich detail provided by this simile is worth noting because in a simile the process of domain-mapping (transferring qualities) from source to targetFootnote 24 is more evident than in a metaphor, which is a more compressed linguistic and cognitive form. When we review the literary use of this metaphor further along, we must consider that the qualities so explicitly outlined in this simile are not always so explicit in a metaphor.Footnote 25

Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra and Daśabhūmikasūtra

Despite the early context for dhammamegha in Pāli sources, the most well-known discussions of dharmamegha in Buddhist literature are in the early Mahāyāna sūtras, particularly the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra and the Daśabhūmikasūtra, both dated to the early centuries CE.

The Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra (SPS) is often identified as the first sūtra text of the Mahāyāna corpus, proclaiming, as it does, the new vehicle. The text was produced in phases from circa 1st century BCE to 3rd century CE, and among the earliests layers of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra are the verse sections in Chapter Five.Footnote 26 Chapter Five, which deals with medicinal herbs (‘Oṣadhī-parivarto nāma pañcamaḥ’), contains extraordinarily detailed descriptions of the rain of true dharma. Although the compound dharmamegha does not itself appear in this chapter, this sūtra offers the first extended association of the Buddha with a raincloud of dharma.

dharma-rājā ahaṃ loka utpanno bhava-mardanaḥ |

dharmaṃ bhāṣāmi sattvānām adhimuktiṃ vijāniya || 1 […]

yathā ’pi Kāśyapā megho loka-dhātūya unnataḥ |

sarvam onahatī cāpi chādayanto vasuṃdharām || 5

so ca vārisya saṃpūrṇo vidyun-mālī mahā’mbudaḥ |

nirnādayanta śabdena harṣayet sarva-dehinaḥ || 6

emeva buddho ’pi ha loki Kāśyapa

utpadyate vāri-dharo va loke || [16ab]

(SPS 5.vv1, 5–6, 16; Wogihara and Tsuchida 1934, pp. 117–118).

The King of Dharma I am, who arose in the world to crush becoming;

Dharma I teach to beings, after I have discerned their dispositions.

It is like a great cloud which rises above the earth,

Which covers up everything and overshadows the firmament,

And this great cloud, filled with water, wreathed with lightning,

Resounds with thunder, and refreshes all the creatures.

Just so, O Kasyapa, the Buddha also

Arises in this world just like a rain-cloud (trs. Conze 1954, pp. 139–140).

The emphasis and repetition of the association between the Buddha and the raincloud over the course of this chapter is a new statement of doctrine. But it is not yet formulaic or standardised; in these verses the most frequent word used for cloud is megha, also giving rise to mahāmegha or ‘great cloud’. However, other terms for (rain)cloud are also used: mahā’mbudaḥ (Wogihara and Tsuchida 1934, p. 117, v6a), vāridhara (Wogihara and Tsuchida 1934, p. 118, v16b), and varṣam (Wogihara and Tsuchida 1934, p. 120, v26d and 121, v36a). Interestingly, when varṣam appears, it is in the compound dharmavarṣam, and so the closest we get to dharmamegha in the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra is dharmavarṣam. (I will return to this point below).

One of the central features of this rain of dharma is that it nourishes all life equally:

saṃtarpayāmī imu sarva-lokaṃ

megho va vāriṃ sama muñcamānaḥ |

(SPS 5.v24; Wogihara and Tsuchida 1934, p. 118)

I refresh this entire world

Like a cloud which releases its rain evenly for all

(trs. Conze 1954, p. 140).

This assertion is fundamental to the new Mahāyāna doctrine of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra. The text has to justify why the true teaching (or the new vehicle) has only been revealed now and not previously—and, in order to do so, the text locates agency on the part of the disciples and not on the part of the Buddha himself. The argument proceeds thus: even though rain falls equally on seeds, some seeds turn into flowers and some into trees—it depends upon the capacity of the seed itself.

mamāpi co varṣatu dharma-varṣaṃ

loko hy ayaṃ tarpitu bhoti sarvaḥ |

yathā-balaṃ cānuvicintayanti

subhāṣitaṃ eka-rasaṃ pi dharmam ||

tṛṇa-gulmakā vā yatha varṣamāṇe

madhyā pi vā oṣadhiyo yathaiva |

drumā pi vā ta ca mahā-drumā vā

yatha śobhayante daśa-dikṣu sarve ||

iyaṃ sadā loka-hitāya dharmatā

tarpeti dharmeṇ’ imu sarva-lokam |

saṃtarpitaś cāpy atha sarva-lokaḥ

pramuñcate oṣadhi puṣpakāṇi ||

(SPS 5.vv36-38; Wogihara and Tsuchida 1934, p. 121)

When I rain down the rain of the Dharma,

Then all this world is well refreshed.

Each one according to their power takes to heart

This well-preached Dharma, one in taste.

As when it rains the shrubs and grasses,

The bushes and the smaller plants,

The trees and also the great woods

Are all made splendid in the ten regions;

So the nature of Dharma always exists for the weal of the world,

And it refreshes by this Dharma the entire world.

And then, refreshed, just like the plants,

The world will burst forth into blossoms (trs. Conze 1954, p. 140).

This indicates that the true dharma has been available all along, but that a lack in the capacity of the disciples resulted in the lack of yield. The image of this ‘just rain of dharma’ provided by the Buddha is central to the text’s strategies of validation for its new doctrine.

The other key source in early Mahāyāna for the raincloud of dharma metaphor is the Daśabhūmikasūtra (DBS).Footnote 27 Although not explicitly a text about yoga, the Daśabhūmikasūtra employs the discourse of yoga. This text describes the ten stages or bhūmisFootnote 28 of attainment in the bodhisattva path to liberation, and the tenth stage, the bodhisattvabhūmi, is also called dharmameghabhūmi (the stage of the cloud of dharma). At the second level of the daśabhūmis, we are told about the aim of yoga:

tata uttarataraṃ pariśodhitāḥ sarvākārapariśodhitatvād yāvad daśabalabalatvāya sarvabuddhadharmasamudāgamāya saṃvartante tasmāt tarhy asmābhiḥ samābhinirhāre sarvākārapariśodhanābhinirhāra eva yogah karaṇīyaḥ

(DBS 2P; Rahder 1926, p. 26).

They [the adepts] are even more highly purified than that as a result of being purified of all forms when they approach full knowledge of every buddha-dharma, the power of the ten balas. As a result of that, then, it is only when total realization (samābhinirhāra),Footnote 29 happens, i.e. realization of the purification of all forms, that we should practise yoga.

Unlike in the Pātañjalayogaśāstra, we do not find discussions of dharmameghadhyāna or dharmameghasamādhi, but rather dharmameghabhūmi. Dharmamegha represents the 10th perfection (pāramitā), which is perfection of knowledge (jñānapāramitā). This bhūmi, the tenth stage in the bodhisattva path,Footnote 30 is also called the abhiṣekabhūmi, the level of anointment or coronation. The bodhisattva is like an ocean that can soak up the infinite amount of knowledge that rains down like a deluge from a raincloud.

tadyathāpi nāma bho jinaputrāḥ sāgaraṇāgarājameghavisṛṣṭo mahān apskandho na sukaro 'nyena pṛthivīpradeśena soḍhuṃ vā sampratyeṣituṃ vā svīkartuṃ vā saṃdhārayituṃ vā anyatra mahāsamudrāt / evam eva bho jinaputrā ye te tathāgatānāṃ bhagavatāṃ guhyānupraveśā yad uta mahādharmāvabhāsā mahādharmālokā mahādharmameghās te na sukarāḥ sarvasatvaiḥ sarvaśrāvakapratyekabuddhaiḥ prathamāṃ bhūmim upādāya yāvan navamībhūmipratiṣṭhitair api bodhisatvais tān bodhisatvo 'syāṃ dharmameghāyāṃ bodhisatvabhūmau sthitaḥ sarvān sahate sampratīcchati svīkaroti saṃdhārayati (DBS 10H; Rahder 1926, p. 89)

Oh you jinaputras, just as a great mass of water that is poured from a cloud of the ocean serpent-king is not easily borne, desired, claimed and drawn in by any other region of earth than the great ocean, thus, oh jinaputras, those who are entered in the secret of the divine buddhas – which is the revelation of the great dharma, the light of the great dharma, the cloud of the great dharma – this is not easily done by all beings, by all who are srāvaka and pratyekabuddha, or even by all bodhisattvas established in the first stage up to the ninth stage. It is the bodhisattvas established in this bodhisattva stage called dharmamegha who bear, desire, get and possess all of it.

In the Daśabhūmikasūtra, then, dharmameghabhūmi is the pinnacle of the path of practice for a bodhisattva. It represents innumerable samādhis, infinite knowledge, and abundant growth.

Dharmameghabhūmi in the Yogācārabhūmiśāstra

The term dharmamegha is also discussed in two sections of the Yogācārabhūmiśāstra: in the Bodhisattvabhūmi (BoBh) and in the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra (SNS). I will discuss the Bodhisattvabhūmi here, and the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra in a section further along. The Bodhisattvabhūmi draws on the Daśabhūmikasūtra for its tenfold scheme.Footnote 31 At dharmameghabhūmi, the bodhisattva becomes omniscient like a cloud that produces rain to provide sustenance to the world.

paripūrṇabodhisattvamārgaḥ suparipūrṇa-bodhisambhāraś ca sa bodhisattvaḥ tathāgatānām aṃtikād dharmameghabhūtām atyudārāṃ duḥsahāṃ tadanyaiḥ sarvasattvais saddharmavṛṣṭim sampratīcchati / mahāmeghabhūtaś ca svayam anabhisaṃbuddhabodhir abhisaṃbuddhabodhiś ca aprameyānāṃ sattvānāṃ saddharma-vṛṣṭyā nirupamayā kleśarajāṃsi praśamayati / vicitrāṇi ca kuśalamūlaśasyāni virohayati vivardhayati pācayati tasyāṃ bhūmāv avasthitaḥ / tasmāt sā bhūmir dharmameghety ucyate / tenaiva cārthena paramo vihāro draṣṭavyaḥ (BoBh 2.4.12; Wogihara 1930–1936, pp. 354–355).

The bodhisattva who has completed the bodhisattva path and fulfilled all requisites for awakening, [being] near the tathāgatas, immediately desires a rain of true dharma, grand and unbearable for all beings other than him, being the cloud of dharma. That [bodhisattva] consists of a great cloud [that] automatically [contains both] the awakening by non-enlightenment and the awakening by enlightenment and causes to be settled the particles of dust of the kleśas of countless beings by means of an incomparable rain of true dharma. While established in this stage [ground], he causes the diverse virtuous roots of grain [corn] to sprout, grow and mature. This is the reason why this stage is called dharmamegha. And it is only by means of this that the supreme abode is experienced.

The bodhisattva enters into deeper meditation, acquiring endless samādhis and limitless powers, and overcomes even the subtlest trace of the kleśas (mental afflictions). The cloud has a beneficial function in that it produces growth, proliferation and propagation of virtue.Footnote 32

In structure, the Bodhisattvabhūmi is similar to another text that is generally attributed to Asaṅga, the Mahāyānasūtrālaṁkāraśāstra (MSA).Footnote 33 This treatise, which provides an overview of the yogācāra frame and the path of the bodhisattva, also refers to dharmamegha, both in the verses themselves and in the commentary (which may have been authored by Vasubandhu). In the commentary to Mahāyānasūtrālaṁkāraśāstra 11.46, dharmamegha denotes mastery over action attained by the bodhisattva.Footnote 34 In Chapter 20, one of two chapters outlining signs of practice and attainment, dharmamegha is the tenth stage of the bodhisattva’s progress and has a technical meaning of ‘pervasion’ ‘because it is like a raincloud in the sky of the Dharma, pervading both (concentrations and retentions)’ (MSA 20.38cd; trs. Jamspal et al. 2004, p. 332).Footnote 35 The commentary to this verse adds: ‘“pervading both” means that because the Dharma—permeating the foundational (consciousness), and attained by means of the doors of concentrations and retentions—is like a raincloud (pervading) the sky-like (Dharma-realm)’ (trs. Jamspal et al. 2004, p. 332).Footnote 36

Vedic Forerunners of the Cloud of Dharma

Despite the proliferation of dharmamegha in Buddhist sources, the vibrant elemental imagery of the raincloud is not, of course, unique to the Buddhist conceptual sphere. In Vedic ritual, rainfall is one of the frequently cited objectives of the fire sacrifice. Furthermore, the fire of tapas produces power in the ascetic, ‘which may manifest itself as a sexual and fecundating energy which when released generates rainfall, fertile fields, and biological offspring’ (Kaelber 1989, p. 144).Footnote 37 The Vedic deities such as Soma, Agni, Varuṇa and Indra were all closely associated with water. As Proferes states: ‘these gods reside in water, generate rain, or set the cosmic stream free to flow to earth for the benefit of humankind’ (Proferes 2007, p. 78). In its description of the anointing or abhiṣeka of the king, the Ṛg Veda carries the image of the unction waters as a raincloud (abhravarṣa, lit. ‘cloud-rain’) of soma pouring down on earth, streaming with light and splendour.

ete somā ati vārāṇy avyā

divyā na kośāso abhravarṣāḥ,

vṛthā samudraṃ sindhavo na nīcīḥ

sutāso abhi kalaśāṁ asṛgran (ṚV 9.88.6)

These pressed soma juices, like heavenly buckets of cloud-rain, streamed at will through the heavenly wool strainer into the vessels like rivers downwards to the sea (cited and trs. Proferes 2007, p. 94).

Water forms a central part of the rituals of abhiṣeka, consecration in the form of the sprinkling of liquids and water (Davidson 2002, p. 123; Proferes 2007).Footnote 38 Indeed, as Proferes has argued, royal power and investiture provides a key paradigm for early Indic soteriology (Proferes 2007).Footnote 39 Significantly, a synonym for dharmameghabhūmi in the Daśabhūmikasūtra is abhiṣekabhūmi. The abhiṣekabhūmi was used to explain the Buddha as the Dharmarāja (king of dharma) in the final birth of a bodhisattva.Footnote 40 One can suggest that archaic Vedic metaphors, such as the abhravarṣa of soma, could have formed the basis for the Buddhist elaborations of dharmavarṣa,Footnote 41dharmameghavarṣaFootnote 42 and dharmameghabhūmi.Footnote 43 Therefore, although the early classical context for the technical term dharmamegha is, as far as we know, Buddhist (and specifically early yogācāra within Mahāyāna), the Buddhists themselves were, most likely, drawing on earlier Vedic images of fertility and cosmogony in the abhiṣeka of the king.

To sum up so far, neither dharmameghadhyāna nor dharmameghasamādhi appear in the Buddhist sources that I have examined; rather, we find the compound dharmameghabhūmi in the Mahāyāna literature. However, given that the depiction of dharmameghabhūmi in the Yogaācārabhūmiśāstra contains elimination of the kleśas, the attainment of infinite knowledge, and is related to ultimate samādhi, it is reasonable to make a link to the other dharmamegha that shares these features—that of Patañjali. However, in contrast to the qualitative abundance and the abundant quality of the Buddhist dharmamegha, Patañjali’s metaphor is fairly devoid of qualities.

The Revision of a Superlative Metaphor

Drawing on conceptual metaphor theory, I will now present four different analyses that can each, in part, account for Patañjali’s unique treatment of the term dharmamegha in relation to Buddhist sources.

Dharmamegha as a Dead Metaphor

One argument that can explain the two variant metaphorical treatments of dharmamegha in yoga and yogācāra is that of the standard distinction between creative and commonplace (dead) metaphors, underpinned by a passage of time. Dead metaphors are those that have been divorced from their original domain associations over time and have simply become a name or semantic placeholder for a thing or state.Footnote 44 Interpreting a dead metaphorFootnote 45 effectively becomes disambiguation. It is possible that by the 4th century CE, the original domain qualities of the Buddhist term dharmamegha had been ‘forgotten’ by Patañjali (as they would be eventually by Patañjali’s sub-commentators; see below). This would suggest a passage of time from the Buddhist ‘active’ generation of dharmamegha to Patañjali’s ‘dead’ usage. According to this argument, by the time of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra, dharmamegha was a moribund metaphor and not much more than a ‘label’, abstracted from its metaphorical context. However, given the approximate and close datings of the main texts under discussion here,Footnote 46 this argument is not robust.

Patañjali’s Paralogical Metaphor: The Raincloud Without Any Rain

Conceptual metaphors are informed by processes of reasoning: not only can conceptual metaphors be driven by analogical reasoning (in the mapping from the source to the target domain), but they are often underpinned by syllogistic structures of deductive reasoning and are therefore subject to logical entailment. Metaphors, then, have their own logical entailments,Footnote 47 partly determined by the sensori-motor experience of the world we live in.Footnote 48 For example, the logical entailments of a cloud are qualities such as ‘spatially elevated, water-producing, visible, etc.’ and not ‘bright green, underground, and made of bricks’. The metaphorical application of ‘cloud’ has to be consistent with real-world experience and also has to be internally logical (non-contradictory) in terms of the qualities it represents (i.e. in reality a cloud cannot be thunderous and fluffy at the same time). Yet some metaphors do operate on the basis of contradiction.Footnote 49 Therefore, the term ‘paralogical’ is apt to describe a metaphor in which there appears to be ‘a logical conflict of central meanings’ (Kamber and Macksey 1970, p. 871).Footnote 50

Functionally, Patañjali’s dharmameghasamādhi closely resembles the Buddhist dharmameghabhūmi as a superlative state: it is the goal of practice that provides endless knowledge and ultimate liberation. However, Patañjali strips back the metaphoric content of the Buddhist dharmamegha, so that the conceptual significance of the cloud is quite different; whereas the Buddhist cloud of rain primarily represents cultivation of growth, Patañjali’s cloud represents cessation of growth. In mapping the qualities of megha to the domain of liberation, Patañjali selectively edits the qualities in order to revise the dharmamegha metaphor for polemical effect.

As we saw in “Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra and Daśabhūmikasūtra” and “Dharmameghabhūmi in the Yogācārabhūmiśāstra” sections, in the early Mahāyāna context dharmamegha was an elaborate metaphorical cluster to indicate vastness, abundance, a higher state, nectar from ‘above’, the cooling and extinguishing of flames of affliction, and primarily the stimulation of roots of virtue to sprout, grow, and ripen. The image of the cloud is effective in this context because it is interwoven with the image of water as ‘rain’ or ‘ocean’. Notably, the flow of abundance is in two directions, from above (from the cloud to the ocean or earth) and from below (from the ocean to the cloud). This reflects the bodhisattva emphasis on ‘cascade’ teaching (sharing knowledge), in which the bodhisattva receives the rain of knowledge from the tathāgatas and then, in turn, rains knowledge to mortals.

In the Pātañjalayogaśāstra, however, there is no such description of what the cloud of dharma contains, no image of a ‘rain of abundance’ or an ‘ocean of knowledge’. It is as though the name ‘dharmamegha’ is co-opted from Buddhist sources, abstracted for its symbolic or functional value, and divested of its obvious metaphoric content. But perhaps it is the very sparseness of Patañjali’s image that is itself most interesting, because it contains a logical twist. Patañjali’s inclusion of the term dharmamegha, if indeed it is co-opted, may be an active critique of the ‘other school’ of yoga, the rival yogācāra. Patañjali, then, not only divests dharmamegha of its qualitative content, but also subverts its metaphoric logic, or entailments—and hence conceptual power—by imbuing it with the notion of lack rather than abundance. Far from expressing fecund growth by nurturing and cultivating the seed, Patañjali’s dharmamegha samādhi is nirbīja samādhi, the state in which all traces of the seed of future kleśa have been eradicated. Here, the cloud of dharma presides over the negation of the seed, and the goal is to cut any growth by root and branch:

tallābhād avidyādayaḥ kleśāḥ samūlakāṣaṃ kaṣitā bhavanti kuśalākuśalāś ca karmāśayāḥ samūlaghātaṃ hatā bhavanti

(PYŚ 4.30; Āgāśe 1904, p. 202)

From attaining that (dharmamegha), the kleśas of avidyā etc. are cut by root and branch and the karmic substrata, good and bad, are destroyed utterly.

Hence Patañjali’s dharmamegha metaphor is a raincloud without any rain.

The cessative and negating functionsFootnote 51 of Patañjali’s dharmamegha are continued in the interpretations of the sub-commentaries. It is worth reviewing these in brief, since they amplify the logical entailments of Patañjali’s metaphoric treatment of dharmamegha. In the earliest commentary on the PYŚ, the c. 8th-century Yogasūtrabhāṣyavivaraṇa,Footnote 52 Śaṅkara does not elaborate on YS 4.29 (the only sūtra to refer to dharmamegha), but does explain the term as the maturing of correct vision.Footnote 53 Yet the Vivaraṇa to YS 4.30-31 carries a set of interesting metaphoric entailments that belong to the cloud of dharma. Overall, Śaṅkara’s treatment of dharmamegha continues Patañjali’s spartan presentation to elaborate a further act of qualitative erasure, one that is progressively unfolded.

While Patañjali abstracts the raincloud image to divest it of rain, thus committing a logical inversionFootnote 54 of the original metaphor, Śaṅkara takes this process several steps further. He describes a rain of negation, rain as ontological isolation, an impotent ocean, and the eventual erasure of the cloud itself. Let us now look at how he does this:

  1. 1.

    Firstly, Śaṅkara reinstates the image of rain in the cloud metaphor: ‘Its name is dharmamegha because it rains the utmost dharma called kaivalya (isolation)’.Footnote 55

  2. 2.

    The rain, according to Śaṅkara, is the dharma of kaivalya (isolation)—which denotes dharma as an ontological state.Footnote 56 In Sāṃkhya, this ontological state of kaivalya is characterized by subtraction (of the material world from consciousness, which is separate) rather than abundance (in the material world). This contrasts with the Buddhist rain of infinite abundance.

  3. 3.

    Next we encounter an image of a body of water. Śaṅkara likens sattvic knowledge (the highest form of knowledge in the material realm) to an ocean, which brings to mind the ocean of knowledge of the Daśabhūmikasūtra. However, unlike that image, Śaṅkara’s image of the ocean is one that is devoid of potency because it is a great ocean (mahodadhi), motionless (nistaraṃga), isolated, unchangeable (avikriya), still, empty, not capable of perceiving anything.

  4. 4.

    Finally, the resulting state of sattva is as if the sun stands in the middle of a clear sky with all clouds vanished (Viv 4.31).Footnote 57(Viv 4.31; Sastri and Krishnamurthi 1952, p. 365).

Here we see the active erasure of the cloud image itself. In Śaṅkara’s final interpretation, the cloud has been dispelled.Footnote 58

In his explication of dharmamegha, Śaṅkara steers Patañjali’s process of negation to its logical conclusion, so that dharmamegha becomes a cloud of dharma without a cloud.

Although it is beyond the scope of this study to fully consider later historical commentaries, it is interesting to note that the subsequent medieval sub-commentators appear to have followed Śaṅkara’s interpretation of dharmamegha to mean ‘absence of cloud’. In the 10th-century Bhojarāja’s Rājamārtaṇḍa connects dharmamegha to Patañjali’s image of irrigation (PYŚ 4.3) and follows Śaṅkara’s reading of dharmamegha as resulting in a sky that is free from clouds (Mitra 1883, pp. 203–204). Vācaspatimiśra (circa 10th century) elaborates further on the metaphor by asserting that a cloud-free sky increases available light: ‘For just as in autumn when the rays of the moon are freed from a dense veil [of cloud], and when they are brilliant in all directions, the light is so endless.’ This light leads to endless knowledge (Woods 1914, p. 342).Footnote 59 Śaṅkara thus initiates a change in the primary metaphoric function of dharmamegha from water-producing to light-producing, and this interpretation is consolidated in the commentaries of Bhojarāja and Vācaspatimiśra. In these medieval sub-commentaries, the original metaphoric import of dharmamegha as a positive image has been forgotten to such a degree that the cloud becomes the obstacle to the light, the factor that obscures knowledge, rather than the producer of knowledge as rain. However, this trend does not continue consistently. In the circa-14th-century Pañcadaśī, an introduction to Vedānta, the author describes dharmamegha in terms resonant of the early Mahāyāna texts: ‘The experts of yoga called this samādhi the cloud of dharma, since it rains an immeasurable downpour of the nectar of dharma.’Footnote 60 And, indeed, the last of the classical commentators, the 15th–16th-century Vijñānabhikṣu, also re-establishes the centrality of water to the metaphor in the form of rain: dharmamegha is so-called because it rains or pours down the dharma that completely destroys the remainder or root of all afflictions and actions.Footnote 61 With the exception of the Pañcadaśī, the train of medieval commentarial revisionsFootnote 62 sustains Patañjali’s treatment of dharmamegha as a negating principle.Footnote 63

According to this line of analysis, Patañjali’s dharmamegha is a polemical revision of a core Mahāyāna metaphor; Patañjali grafts the signature Buddhist term dharmamegha onto his own Sāṃkhya-inflected system in full knowledge of its flagrant polemic effect. The significance of inverting the metaphoric value reflects that he is also inverting its soteriological value: Patañjali takes the abundantly rain-filled dharmamegha that symbolizes social sharing and converts it to an empty dharmamegha that symbolizes internal cessation. With its emphasis on teaching for the benefit of all humankind, Buddhist dharmamegha thus stands in stark contrast to the Sāṃkhya ontological divorce from the material world.Footnote 64 Given that the co-option of terms and concepts was common between rival religious groups in the classical period, the argument that Patañjali’s dharmamegha was an intentional paralogical revision of metaphor is a strong one.Footnote 65

Dharmamegha as Cessative Liberation

According to this third argument, Patañjali’s dharmamegha does not carry entailments that contradict Buddhist soteriology, but rather dharmamegha is logically concordant with a slightly variant scheme in the Yogācārabhūmiśāstra, in which the superlative state on the path to liberation is not ‘abundance’ but ‘cessation’.

There is a least one description in the Yogācārabhūmiśāstra that comes close to representing dharmamegha in terms of cessation. In the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra,Footnote 66 the seventhFootnote 67 chapter refers to the ultimate form of yoga discipline, which is Buddhist yoga. This chapter contains the ten bhūmis that we find in the Daśabhūmikasūtra, with dharmamegha as the tenth stage. However, it also includes an 11th bhūmi beyond the 10th to represent the superlative state, tathāgatabhūmi, ‘the stage of realization of enlightenment’ (Cleary 1995, p. 62).Footnote 68 As in the Daśabhūmikasūtra and the Bodhisattvabhūmi, the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra’s description of dharmamegha is a cloud of vast expansion, conveying a sense of infinitude (SNS 7; Cleary 1995, p. 72).Footnote 69 However, dharmamegha is now separated from the bodhisattvabhūmi, which replaces it as the superlative state. This innovated 11th stage is a state of permanent cessation, and the qualities mapped to this bhūmi express negating functions: the elimination of the kleśas, non-attachment, and non-obstruction of realization (SNS 7; Cleary 1995, p. 72). From this observation, one can speculate that Patañjali’s dharmamegha echoes not the Daśabhūmikasūtra nor the Bodhisattvabhūmi but rather the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra by combining the 10th and 11th levels of attainment into a single concept: a dharmamegha that produces not abundance but cessation.Footnote 70

In the Pātañjalayogaśāstra, dharmameghasamādhi is equated with seedless concentration (nirbīja samādhi), which is the state of cessation of affliction (kleśanirodha) in which all traces of the seed of future kleśa have been eradicated (PYŚ 4.29). Generally in the PYŚ, the botanical image of the seed is one that is clearly framed in terms of non-germination.Footnote 71 There is therefore no need of an image of ‘rain’ to accompany the seed, as this would in fact be counter-productive to the soteriological goal of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra. Within a soteriology of cessative liberation, then—possibly shared with texts such as the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra—Patañjali’s dharmamegha is logically concordant, and its entailments are selectively edited to make it so.

In summary, this argument posits that Patañjali does not deliberately invert the metaphor for polemical effect, but is rather drawing on the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra’s version of dharmamegha, and—resonant of Buddhist Sarvāstivāda or Sautrāntika positions—constructs a concept of liberation as strictly cessative. Due to certain conceptual and discursive interconnections between the Pātañjalayogaśāstra and the Yogācārabhūmiśāstra,Footnote 72 we cannot rule out this line of reasoning. However, given the relative paucity of information on the bhūmis in the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra and the prevalence of theories of cessation in Buddhist literature as a whole, there would be no need to tie Patañjali’s soteriology specifically to the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra, rather than to any other Buddhist text from the early common era. The argument that Patañjali’s dharmamegha draws on the SNS does not stand up to scrutiny.

There is, however, one further, and stronger, argument to be laid out in order to understand how Patañjali’s dharmamegha relates to its contemporaneous Buddhist contexts.

Factors of Literary Style: From Hyperbole to Understatement

Patañjali’s apparent inversion of the metaphoric value of dharmamegha may be a product of literary form. Literary style itself not only affects the way metaphors are employed but it can also amplify doctrinal difference. The richly evocative cosmological descriptions of Mahāyāna Buddhist treatises co-evolved with the invention of writing (Harrison 2003), whereas Brahmanic śāstras are a more faithful transmission of oral culture—Tubb and Boose describe the sūtra format as ‘essentially signposts in a line of oral argument’ (Tubb and Boose 2007, p. 1). I suggest that since the descriptive structures of Mahāyāna Buddhist writing are more elaborate, they can more effectively exploit the literary potential of metaphors.

In the textual culture of early Mahāyāna, literary style became more complex and innovative than that of oral texts.Footnote 73 Indeed, the invention of writing may have partly provided the impetus and vehicle for doctrinal developments in Buddhism that led to Mahāyāna.Footnote 74 The Mahāyāna writers displayed specific literary techniques to hone and express doctrinal concepts: for example, conveying ‘eternity’ and ‘infinity’ through syntagmatic extension.Footnote 75 As a result, the Buddhist accounts of dharmameghabhūmi in the Daśabhūmikasūtra and the Yogācārabhūmiśāstra are hyperbolic, so as to become almost almost unprocessable in the cognitive domain (Flores 2008, p. 14). In terms of source and target, the Mahāyāna literary style exaggerates the structure of metaphor, repeating and multiplying the qualities of the target domain to enhance meaning. Thus a basic doctrinal statement such as: ‘The Buddha is infinite’ becomes ‘The Buddha is immeasurably infinite, projected across the sky a million trillion times, in countless infinite directions, in myriad images of forms upon forms for all eternities upon eternities, with innumerable qualities,’ etc.Footnote 76 This literary style is not just about embellishment. It is the use of particular literary devices to formally express the doctrine of infinitude: the layering of synonyms upon synonyms generates chains of signifiers that appear to be without end. Furthermore, the stylistic use of synonymic saturation is the doctrine of infinitude in experiential form for the text’s consumer, whether through reading, listening, or imagining.

The Mahāyāna literary style contrasts significantly with the literary style of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra. The Brahmanical sūtra genre of compressed aphorismsFootnote 77 belongs to oral textual culture and was designed for memorization. Hence, it is formally minimal. Patañjali’s metaphor is only superlative, and is not linked to any numbered levels or stages of attainment, as in the Buddhist schemes. I propose that, by virtue of a literary style that rests on compression, Patañjali’s dharmamegha is ‘super-compressed’ and takes all ten levels of the dharmameghabhūmi scheme and squashes them into one. Synechdochally, dharmamegha is a part that stands in for the wholeFootnote 78: the superlative stage in itself signifies the whole scheme of ten stages (and therefore dharmamegha stands in for the whole of spiritual cultivation or bhāvanā, as not just any part but the best part). For audiences in the living religio-philosophical communities of the 4th century CE, the context would have been obvious—that of the Buddhist scheme of the daśabhūmis (the ten foundations or stages). Today’s readers, however, have to painstakingly unpick the densely compressed threads of meaning. There is often an ‘enigmatic’ quality to a sūtra text because so much is left unsaid (and without living oral transmission has been lost to history).

There is one other instance of understatement in Patañjali’s dharmamegha. Patañjali describes the infinite knowledge of dharmamegha by referencing what is not accessed: the unaccessed knowledge is likened to fireflies in the sky (PYŚ 4.31). In Patañjali’s image, the ineffability of infinite knowledge is not conveyed (as in the Mahāyāna texts) with metaphors of infinity but with a counter-intuitive simile of extreme finitude. The infinity of the knowledge gained is demonstrated negatively: that which remains unknown at the level of dharmamegha is like fireflies in the sky, i.e. insignificant. Although Patañjali’s account of dharmamegahasamādhi shares a theory of infinite knowledge with the yogācāra attainment at dharmameghabhūmi, the metaphor is framed in the negative. Such apophatic soteriology is reified by the compression of literary form, creating an ellipsis at the heart of the text.

There is one final aspect of paralogical revision, and it is a ‘re-vision’: the inversion of the significance of the ‘vision’ of dharmamegha. Although the yoga and yogācāra presentations of infinite knowledge are framed differently, both accounts are anchored in the root metaphor of vision (knowing is seeing).Footnote 79 The soteriology of Sāṃkhya rests on the correct vision (i.e. knowledge) of the ultimate ontological distinction (puruṣa and prakṛti). Equally, Mahāyāna visionary meditation gravitates around florid images of the Buddha. Yet these are two divergent notions of vision: Patañjali’s vision of dharmamegha is the perception of an unseen reality (puruṣa), while the yogācāra vision is of the majestic spectacle of proliferating buddhas without end. It is, then, perhaps no surprise that underlying the construction of negative metaphors in Patañjali’s text is a doctrine of negative vision: the goal of Sāṃkhya is to see the unseen (the non-material).

Both the sūtra and the Mahāyāna śāstra formats gesture towards the ineffable. They simply do it in opposite ways: Patañjali approaches the ineffability of puruṣa through silence and apophasis, while the verbose proliferation of Mahāyāna texts signal that even an infinite number of synonymic descriptions could never suffice to express the unbounded state of Buddhahood.Footnote 80 These issues of style both reflect and generate doctrinal differences between yoga and yogācāra. There appears to be no precedent in Buddhist thought for abstracting dharmamegha from the tenfold (or sometimes 11-fold) scheme of bhūmis in order to treat it in isolation in a meditation treatise. Thus Patañjali’s appropriation of dharmamegha is already radical—in that he leaves behind the other nine steps and indeed the whole paradigm. If it is the case that Patañjali merely abstracts the superlative state, this is itself a hostile paradigmatic revision.

Lakoff and Johnson insisted that domain-mapping in metaphor could never be a totalising enterprise, or it would result in simple identification between two domains. Hence domain-mapping is always partial, in that there is selective editing (highlighting and hiding). Neither Patañjali nor the Mahāyāna scholars mapped all the qualities of a cloud to the theory of liberation. In order to make dharmamegha work at all, they had to exclude a whole host of other properties (e.g a cloud can also be gloomy, destructive, beyond reach, etc.). As we have seen, Patañjali’s dharmamegha is more of a semantic placeholder than a ‘productive’ metaphor that maps domain qualities of rain, elevation, fullness, unattainability, ephemerality, abundance, etc. Indeed, Patañjali’s metaphor contains little domain-mapping of qualities—most are hidden, and not highlighted.

Conclusion

By categorizing the Yogācārabhūmiśāstra as a yogaśāstra, I have put forward the necessity of considering that there were prior systems of non-Brahmanical yoga discipline to Pātañjala yoga.Footnote 81 If Pātañjala yoga post-dates early yogācāra—and it most likely does—this strengthens the argument that Patañjali knowingly references key yogācāra paradigms.

In my concluding assessment, Patañjali’s strikingly empty metaphor of dharmamegha is largely a result of literary style and polemical revision due to doctrinal necessity. It is not a result of deliberate harmonization with Mahāyāna soteriology (such as that of the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra) nor due to the ambiguity of dead metaphor. Indeed, because of the specific use of the term dharmamegha in Buddhist texts from the 2nd-century CE onwards, it can be stated with some confidence that Patañjali adopts the term dharmamegha from the Buddhist conceptual sphere for polemical effect. The nature of this revision is paralogical; selective editing highlights the negating qualities of a raincloud to support a doctrine of apophasis and a soteriology of cessation, in line with Sāṃkhya metaphysics. The revision of the dharmamegha metaphor was also compounded by factors of literary style, in particular the predominant feature of the Brahmanical sūtra genre, compression. What is less easy to clarify is the exact Buddhist textual sources, debates or thinkers from which Patañjali may have drawn. However, due to their association of dharmamegha with yoga discipline (yogācāra), we can point to the early layers of the Yogācārabhūmiśāstra (the Bodhisattvabhūmi and the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra) and to the Daśabhūmikasūtra, all of which potentially predate the Pātañjalayogaśāstra.Footnote 82 This article has traced the metaphoric import of megha in dharmamegha, using conceptual metaphor theory, and also hopes to provide a fresh starting point for revisiting the meaning of dharma in dharmamegha.