Sva'dhya'ya

Sva'dhya'ya means the clear understanding of any spiritual subject. In ancient days students carried on their day-to-day Sva'dhya'ya in the hermitage of the rs'is. But the circumstances have changed and the term Sva'dhya'ya has also lost its meaning with passage of time. Nowadays reading religious scriptures without grasping the meaning is also considered to be Sva'dhya'ya. Religious professionals have misguided the public by their misinterpretation of the term sva'dhya'ya. They say, "These are the results of reading such-and-such books; it matters little whether you understand the meaning or not. If you cannot find time to read books, simply touch your head with them thrice; or if you have no time to hear religious sermons, offer fruits or sweets to the deity. This will yield the same result. This is the real thing".

Sva'dhya'ya means not only to read or hear a subject, but also to understand its significance, the underlying idea. Acceptance of the outward or crude meaning has only led to the corruption of spiritual life, and this ultimately greatly distorted people's religious belief.

To understand the underlying meaning of what is laid down in scriptures, the idea is to be grasped first; otherwise the proper spirit will never be realized.

Those with vested interest seek to keep the public away from the true spirit of the scriptures, because this facilitates their exploitation.

Tapah

Tapah means to practise penance to reach the goal. To practise shaoca it is not necessary to undergo physical discomfort to serve humanity. A donation of ten rupees brings no physical discomfort for millionaires. It is, therefore, not tapah for them but this gift helps them in practising mental shaoca. There must be one and only one purpose behind the practice of penance and that is to shoulder the sorrows and miseries of others to make them happy, to free them from grief and to give them comfort.

Just like shaoca, in the practice of tapah there must not be even the least bit of commercial mentality. Physical service in almost all cases relates to tapah. Therefore, those who are afraid of physical labour or hate the labourer/working people can never become a ta'pasa. If you serve the sick people who are in great pain for hours together to give them needed relief, this is tapah; but if you serve them with the selfish motive of securing their assistance in your bad days, the entire effort of tapah is lost in a moment. Tapah is, therefore, to be above selfishness. As a rule, the practice of tapah will lead to mental dilation, and this dilation will certainly help a spiritual aspirant, to a large extent, in to establish himself in the Cosmic idea. The practitioners of tapah know that the served is the Supreme Entity, their cherished goal. They are servants and the service rendered by them is their meditation.

The very purpose of tapasya' of those who ready themselves to render service to the served only after consideration of their caste, creed, religion or nationality is defeated, because it is not possible for them to serve with due sincerity with such a lack of large-heartedness. Those who look upon the served only as an expression of the Cosmos and look after their comforts selflessly develop devotion or love for the Supreme in a short time. When love is aroused, and devotional sentiment is expressed, what else remains to be achieved?
What place does knowledge or reasoning occupy in tapah? This is a very important question. Truly speaking, far greater knowledge is required to render service pertaining to tapah than to render service pertaining to shaoca. Tapah devoid of knowledge is bound to be misused.

The opportunists will misuse your energy by extracting work from you to serve their selfish ends, and at the same time this will deprive the real sufferers of their due services from you. A rich miser approaches you with a tale of woe and entreats you to give him relief. Being moved with pity, if you do what is needed to relieve him of his suffering, the very purpose of tapah will be defeated, as it is without any knowledge or reasoning. The end result of your service will be that the rich man whom you have served will become more miserly and more selfish and will, in future, try to deceive in a greater way people who dedicate themselves to the service of humanity. Secondly, as you will to some extent know his inner motive, you will become mentally depressed and you will also develop a hostile attitude towards him.

Therefore, while following the principle of tapah you should ascertain fully well whether the person you are going to serve, really needs your service. Only then should you engage yourself in service.

In practising tapah you should always give consideration to those who are inferior to you and not to those who are superior. Your responsibility is greater for those who are weaker, poorer, less educated, more ignorant and downtrodden in comparison with you. Your responsibility is very little for those who are above your level, who are better off and more powerful than you. Therefore, you will have to ascertain with discrimination where your responsibility lies and to what extent; otherwise all your time, energy and labour employed in tapah will be in vain. To banquet the rich is of no use -- give food to the starving. There is no need to send presents to your superiors -- send medicine and food to the sick. Don't waste your time in flattering the rich; it will yield no result. Conquer the hearts of the underprivileged by your sympathetic behaviour and accept them in your society.

You cannot attain the Supreme Stance by tapah, if it is devoid of discrimination; because in such cases you do not make the proper use of objects. Of course it is better to do something than nothing, and with this end in view, tapah even without discrimination has some value. It has some psychological benefit. Buddha said,

"Win the miser by charity,
Win the liar by speaking the truth."

You can definitely influence a miser by your charity, and there is nothing bad in this; but it is not what is understood by the term "tapah".

There is another peculiarity in tapah. When the activities of human beings are not guided by discrimination, they are goaded by instinct. Tapah with discrimination changes the course of action and leads people towards emancipation. Of course, devotion also gives rise to discrimination but such devotion cannot be aroused in those who have not experienced Cosmic bliss.

Satya

Satya implies proper action of mind and the right use of words with the spirit of welfare. It has no English synonym. The word "true" or "truth" would be translated in Sanskrit as "rta" (to state the fact). We are not asked to follow the path of rta. We are to practise Satya. The practical side of Satya is dependent on relativity, but its finality lies in the Supreme Spiritual Entity. That is why that Entity is often referred to as the "essence of Satya."

Even though the objective of a spiritual aspirant is to achieve that ultimate entity, in the process people have to deal with the relativity of their surroundings. Humans are rational beings: they possess in varying degrees the capability to do what is necessary or good for humanity. In the realm of spirituality, such thought, word or action has been defined as Satya.

For example, a person rushes to you for shelter. You do not know whether he is guilty or not, or perhaps you know for certain that he is not guilty. He is followed by a ruffian bent on torturing him. If this terrified man seeks refuge in your house, and then the ruffian comes and asks you regarding his whereabouts, what should you do? By adhering to truth you would inform the ruffian of his whereabouts. Then if he is murdered, will you not be responsible for this murder? Your mistake may have resulted in the murder of an innocent person. By adhering to rta or truth you become indirectly guilty of this heinous crime. What would be your duty if you followed the correct interpretation of Satya? It would be not to reveal the whereabouts of the person and rather to misguide the aggressor so that the refugee may safely return home.

Suppose your mother is taking food. A letter is received about the death of your maternal grandfather. If mother enquires about the contents of the letter, what reply will you give? If you adhere to "truth", you will reveal the news of her father's death, which will cause a great shock to her mind and she would not even be able to take her food. It would be preferable in this case to state that all is well in their family. After your mother has had her food, a mention of her father's illness would prepare the ground for her to bear the news of the tragedy. In this way, even though something other than truth was uttered, the dignity of Satya has been maintained.

Shaoca

Shaoca means purity or cleanliness. It can be subdivided into two parts, one relating to external sphere, i.e., external cleanliness, and the other to mental sphere, i.e. internal cleanliness.

The proper use of soap, water or other cleansers to keep the body, clothes or surroundings clean is external cleanliness. By this cleanliness the physical objects with which people are directly associated are cleaned and made fit for use.

When people, driven by instincts, direct their mental propensities blindly towards the objects of pleasure without taking any help from their conscience -- or when mind ultimately gets crudified by being constantly goaded by selfish motives -- whether or not they think of doing harm to others, their minds get distorted. The complexes by which this distortion occurs are the impurities of the mind. For example, if any acquaintance suddenly earns much name, fame or knowledge, many will develop a feeling of jealousy towards him. People suffer from envy and jealousy at the prosperity of others; they do not give the least thought as to how much potentiality they themselves possess to earn those things or to acquire those qualities. Though that fortunate person did no harm to them, yet being overpowered by jealousy they create trouble for, or think ill of, him or her.

Where selfish interest is hampered, the minds of even the so-called honest people also become distorted within a very short time. Just as one's clothes and houses get dirty very quickly in a dust storm, so also the mind becomes much more polluted by the storm of even insignificant passion in much less time. Therefore, it is a necessity to maintain the cleanliness of body, dress and house, but the need to keep the mind clean is still greater. Cleansing the mind is a far more laborious job than cleansing the body, clothes, house, etc.

Intelligent people should not, therefore, allow their mental purity to be stained. You must always guard against the tempest of passion. You must not yield to such storms. One more difference between external and internal cleanliness is that to remove external dirt - while cleansing the body, clothes or house - one has to come in contact with impurities for some time. But in the mental sphere the cleansing process does not require your coming in contact with any filth. The application of force is necessary to remove the impurities. The weight of the actual gold can be determined only by removing the impurities from the gold.

The application of force must be a special type of action. External shaoca is an external activity and mental shaoca is an internal activity. If the impurity of selfishness, which, by entering into every cavity of the mental body, makes it weak--makes life a heavy burden - it has to be removed, it has to be burnt and melted in the fire of meditation. This meditation must be such that no impurity, no black spot, remains in the mind. The feeling of selflessness, the feeling of universalism is the only remedy to remove mental impurities. People who have fascination or temptation for any material object, can gradually remove that mental pollution arising out of selfish motives by adopting just the reverse course. Those who are very greedy for money should form the habit of charity, and they can serve humanity through such a practice. Those who are angry or egoistic should cultivate the habit of being polite, and they should serve humanity through that practice. Therefore, only selfless service to humanity and the effort to look upon the world with a Cosmic outlook alone can lead to establishment in mental shaoca.

Human beings' desire to acquire things from others knows no bounds. Their hopes are never quenched, but their spirit of giving to others is very meager. Generally when people do give something to others, the intention of charity or service is absolutely secondary; their predominant feeling is to receive something in exchange. In other words, they have extreme greed to garner fame by one hand and give charity by the other. A spiritual aspirant will have to adopt the opposite course to get rid of the burning flames of greed; s/he will have to develop an infinite desire to give to others with no intention at all of obtaining anything from them. You will have to establish yourselves in the realm of infinity by smashing the fetters of unit ego.

You must have seen many people who become angry and sorrowful at the time of their distress saying, "I helped those persons in their adversity, served them so much on their sick-bed, but today they are so ungrateful that they do not even cast a glance at me." They may even curse, "God is witnessing everything -- they will have to reap the consequences of their actions." You know that such remarks are an extremely vulgar expression of mental meanness. Such persons have not done meditation for mental purification, nor have they truly served anybody in adversity or sickness. In fact they took advantage of other people's distress and gave them some assistance as an advance; but the motive behind such assistance was to recover it with full interest.

A question may be raised as to how much people should donate for achieving mental purification. Should they make paupers of themselves? Where service is the goal, people should fully observe aparigraha, acquiring only the bare necessities of life, for themselves and their direct dependents, without which they cannot live, and utilize the rest for the collective welfare of the universe.

But one who is dedicated to an ideal must be prepared to gladly and eagerly give up one's all -- even one's life -- for the collective interest. Even in a house where food is not abundant, you should keep something for the residents of the house to appease their hunger, and donate the rest to the needy. In this case, thinking of the residents' necessities is not narrowness or meanness, because the preservation of life is certainly very important, though not the ultimate aim. When one is fighting for an ideal, however, to accept defeat means to plunge into severe gloom. Where there is not the least possibility to remove the gloom, one will have to sacrifice everything to uphold one's ideal. You should always be ready like an armed soldier to meet such exigencies.