what's so opaque about the aphorisms that writers start to pre-interpret them for you, invariably tinted with their own precepts and ideas? It's a little like somebody chewing your food for you. The aphorisms are not that opaque and its an enjoyable and useful excercise to read them in their simple, bare and clear form, until the understanding comes - your own realizations rather then someone elses. You could read a book like this over the weekend, but I'm not sure it's supposed to be read like that. It seems better you should do the mental work yourself, aphorism by aphorism. There is an effect to this, which could be lost if it's all been solved and explained for you. Therefore I prefer authors that appeared to be going to great lengths to avoid adding too much of their own coloring, like William Q. Judge's interpretation from 1914. That is regrettably only available from Kessinger in bound photocopy format. I wish somebody would make a decent new print of it.

Anyways, Patanjali's aphorisms are worth the time in any form and I shall thank any author who spent his time to bring them to more of us, different introductions will appeal to different people.