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Practical Wisdom

Commentaries on various scriptures and other wisdom

Tapasya: How You Can Burn Your Karmic Seeds

Tapasya: how to burn your karmic seeds

A selection from the book The Bhagavad Gita for Awakening,
available for reading online, as a free PDF download, or as a paperback or ebook.

Tapasya is practical (i.e., result-producing) spiritual discipline. Literally it means the generation of heat or energy, referring to spiritual practice and its effect, especially the “roasting” of karmic seeds, the “burning up” of karma. It also refers to the heat necessary for the hatching of an egg. Without tapasya there is no significant spiritual progress. So Krishna tells us of three levels of tapasya as well as its characterization according to the dominant guna of the persons engaging in tapasya..

Tapasya of the body

“Reverence for the devas, the seers, the teachers and the sages; straightforwardness, harmlessness, physical cleanliness and sexual purity; these are the virtues whose practice is called austerity of the body.” (Bhagavad Gita 17:14)

Reverence (pujanam) is internal, so why does it come first in the list of physical austerity? Because Krishna is not thinking of mere philosophizing or abstraction–in other words, empty words. He is thinking of action, of kriya, which creates positive karma in the form of purification and enlightenment. Puja is the word usually translated “worship,” and some translators use it rather than reverence. Worship in Krishna’s view is not mere verbal praise or glorification, but a living out of the interior attitude of reverence.

As Jesus once asked: “Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46) So to reverence a spiritual authority is not to flatter, grovel, and promote them or shower them with money and gifts. Rather, it is faithfully and seriously applying their teachings. Krishna speaks of four kinds who deserve our reverence: devas, seers, teachers, and sages.

Devas are gods–not the Supreme God, but highly evolved beings who can affect our life. We might think of them as angels or saints, bodiless beings that interact with humans and help them in many ways. All viable religions have some form of devas.

The dwijas (seers) are the “twice-born.” Often this term applies to those who have undergone the upanayanam ritual and received instruction in the Gayatri mantra, but here a wider sense is meant.

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Awaken with the Tao Teh King for Awakening

Tao Teh King for Awakening ad

We are happy to announce that Abbot George’s latest book, The Tao Teh King for Awakening: A Practical Commentary on Lao Tzu’s Classic Exposition of Taoism, is now available as a paperback and ebook at Amazon.com and other online outlets.

With penetrating insight, Abbot George Burke illumines the the wisdom of Lao Tzu’s classic writing, the Tao Teh King (Tao Te Ching), and the timeless practical value of China’s most beloved Taoist scripture for spiritual seekers. With a unique perspective of a lifetime of study and practice of both Eastern and Western spirituality, Abbot George mines the treasures of the Tao Teh King and presents them in an easily intelligible fashion for those wishing to put these priceless teachings into practice.

It is said that the Tao Teh King is the work of the great Chinese sage Lao Tzu. Disgusted with the degeneration of Chinese society, he decided to leave and vanish forever, which he did. But as he was leaving the capital, the warden of the gate asked him to set down his realizations since he would no longer be accessible to truth seekers. He did so, and then went out the gate into the lost pages of human history.

If a person wishes he can immerse himself in the stewpot of scholarly speculation as to who Lao Tze really was, whether he ever existed, and whether he wrote the Tao Teh King, or who did. None of this means anything. Taoist masters through the centuries have proved the truth of the Tao Teh King, and that is all that matters. For truth seekers it stands as a monument to Truth. Even those who understand it imperfectly will reap great gain from its study.

This week buy the ebook now for only 99¢ at theses universal book links: for all Amazon stores, and for all other online stores.

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An excerpt from The Tao Teh King for Awakening

The Spirit of the Valley

The valley spirit dies not, aye the same;
The female mystery thus do we name.
Its gate, from which at first they issued forth,
Is called the root from which grew heaven and earth.
Long and unbroken does its power remain,
Used gently, and without the touch of pain.
(Tao Teh King 6)

Swami Rama of HardwarOne of my most cherished memories of India was a day I visited the great Kashmiri yogi, Swami Rama, in his simple ashram on the banks of the Ganges in Hardwar. I had known Swamiji for several years and found that each visit to him opened new and wonderfully clear vistas. This would be no exception.

I had brought with me a young Austrian who had taken advantage of his parents’ vacation to take a plane to India without their having any idea of where he might be. Actually, he had not much idea either. His reading of purely theoretical books on nothing but the abstractions of Non-dual Vedanta had not prepared him for what he was finding in contemporary, Puranic Hinduism. Seeing his utter bewilderment at all this, I had invited him to go along with me to see Swami Rama, a total contrast to the intellectual backwater he had been struggling to comprehend. (He gave up. A wise decision.)

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Build a Foundation for Understanding Yoga

A selection on Yoga, from Perspectives on Yoga, a new book to be published later this year.

Keeping in mind that the body and the self are not the same is not just a matter of holding a philosophical concept. Rather, it is a matter of maintaining spiritual awareness throughout external experience, to center our identity in the Self and not in the body. This is accomplished through yoga.

“Knowing thus, the ancient seekers for liberation performed action. Do you, therefore, perform action as did the ancients in earlier times” (Bhagavad Gita 4:15).

In the thirteenth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna speaks of the difference between the “knower of the field,” the Self, and the “field,” which is the body, saying:

“The knowledge of the Field and the Knower of the Field I consider to be the knowledge” (Bhagavad Gita 13:2).

The only truly learned person is the one who has learned the secret that he is the jivatman, one with the Paramatman. As the Skanda Upanishad says: “Jiva is Shiva and Shiva is Jiva; when bound by husk it is paddy, unbound it is rice. Thus the bound one is Jiva; released from karma he is eternal Shiva. Bound by ropes, he is Jiva; unbound, Shiva” (Skanda Upanishad 6-7).

The school of true education is yoga. We enroll as jiva and graduate as Shiva.

Yoga and Dharma comprise the spiritual and material psychotherapy that all human beings desperately need. One of the reasons so little comes of people’s becoming yogis is their assumption that their life is fundamentally sound and all right, that yoga will be the oil that stops their life-wheels from squeaking so they can be peaceful and “happy.”

The real truth is that human beings are spiritually insane, actually not just potentially, and need profound correction and reorientation of intellect and consciousness. But this must not be taken in a mistaken way. Yes, we are “crazy” in the superficial levels of our being, but in our true Self we are always perfect, and it is the discovery/recovery of our Self that is the answer to our dilemma.

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