Yoga Sūtra Chapter Two verse 18

प्रकाशक्रियास्थितिशीलं भूतेन्द्रियात्मकं भोगापवर्गार्थं दृश्यम् ॥१८॥

prakāśa-kriyā-sthiti-śīlaṃ bhūta-indriya-ātmakaṃ bhoga-apavarga-arthaṃ dṛśyam ||18||

The seen has the qualities of brightness, activity and stay,
its nature is elements and senses,
taking the role of our essence
its purpose is worldly enjoyment and emancipation.

prakāśa - clearness, brightness, splendour, lustre, light; visible, shining, brightkriyā - doing, performing, performance, occupation with, business, act, action, undertaking, activity, work, labour; bodily action, exercise of the limbs; medical treatment or practice, applying a remedy; a religious rite or ceremony, sacrificial actsthiti - staying or remaining or being in any state or condition; continuance in being, maintenance of life, continued existenceśīla - character, nature; habit, custom, usage, natural or acquired way of living or acting, practice, conduct, disposition, tendencybhūta - material element, one of the 5 elements; that which is or exists, any living being; being or being like anything, consisting of, mixed or joined withindriya - faculty of sense; sense; organ of sense; organs of motor action and sensory perceptionātmaka - taking the role of our essencebhogā - worldly experience; enjoyment, eating, feeding onapavarga - completion, end; the emancipation of the soul from bodily existence, exemption from further transmigrationartha - purpose, aim; sense, meaning, notion; thing, object; acquirement of wealth; to go to one's business, take up one's workdṛśya - the seen; to be seen, visible
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Commentaries and Reflections

Commentary by T Krishnamacharya:

“What is the nature of the Dṛśya or what can be perceived?
It has three qualities; it reveals, it acts, it has substance.
It has many components, the objects known and the means to know them.
They serve two roles.
When in strong association with the perceiver they produce pleasure or pain –
when this association is absent they let the perceiver visualise its own nature.
Experience of pleasure or pain is by the perceiver.
Freedom from them is also its fundamental situation.
This freedom is no different from Mukti.”

Commentary by TKV Desikachar:

“The world exists to set us free.”

Commentary by S Ramaswami:

“Rather than the term Prakrti as used in Samkhya. Because we want to distinguish between the observed and the observed, Yoga uses the terms:
Dṛśya – Observed, Knowable, etc..
Draṣṭṛ – Observed, Knower, etc…

Once this wrong identification of Dṛśya with Draṣṭṛ is removed, then automatically Avidyā is removed, and there will be no force in the Citta ‘to act’.

This is the same in essence as in Sāṃkhya with Puruṣa Prakṛti Viveka or the distinction between Seer and Seen.

Thus in this Sūtra Dṛśya or the seen is described and is under the sway of the Gūna and thus has three qualities opposed to each other.

This Dṛśya can be for used for the purpose of object of enjoyment or experience or that of liberation or Kaivalya.”

Commentary by Paul Harvey:

“Yoga is not about not enjoying the world
because we see it as it really is.
Rather it is seeing the world as
it really is and still enjoying it.”

“How to relate with the inner conundrum that we are
thinking or feeling we are changing every 5 minutes.
Yet, from within that seeming flux we can observe that
we are only appearing to be changing every 5 minutes.
This implies that there is something else, not obvious,
yet constantly abiding within our psychic fluctuations.
Yoga offers a journey towards a direct experience of that
which perceives within our coalesced sense of “I” Am-ness.
In other words, how to be with that we call awareness or
the observer within the seeming seduction of the observed,
given that both mind and senses are part of the observed?”