Tapah, a principle of niyama: austerity, the ability to give up what we want now for what matters more, and to do good for others even at the cost of our own comfort. The four kinds of service.
Tapah belongs to the group of principles called Five principles for shaping oneself: cleanliness, contentment, service despite hardship, uplifting study, keeping the Supreme as life’s goal., which restore or maintain inner harmony. Tapah is austerity: the ability to do something good for another being even when it means giving up your own comfort.
When a person follows the principle of tapah, a spiritual fire awakens within them. It can be seen in their eyes, it shows in the clarity of their mind, and it has a good effect on every sphere of life.
The name of the principle is connected with fire and means "to undergo heating" or "to burn away all impurity by heat." Say, for example, a collective meditation is planned for today, but you want to go to the cinema at that time. Your friends are inviting you to see an interesting film on the last day it is showing. What should you do?
The collective meditation takes place every week, but you may never get another chance to see the film. If you decide in favor of the cinema, you deprive yourself of a small step toward spiritual progress and of keeping your mind in an elevated state so as to make the right decisions in the week ahead.
When you are on a spiritual wave, meditating regularly and taking part in collective meditation, all your actions, words and thoughts will be intuitively right. And for the sake of this you can sacrifice what, on the whole, matters less.
This is the principle of tapah: to sacrifice what is most desired at the moment for the sake of what matters more later on.
One measure of a spiritual seeker's level is their readiness for tapah. When a person makes sacrifices and cultivates austerity, they have to deny themselves something, making a choice. Self-discipline is constantly present in their life. By these signs one can judge the level of a spiritual seeker. If a person runs only after pleasures, cannot organize themselves and seeks comfort at any cost, they are still only a beginner on the spiritual path.
There are two directions of tapah:
The first is giving up, renouncing something for the sake of one's own development and spiritual elevation.
The second is giving up something for the sake of the development of other people. This is selfless service.
Any service to other beings must be wise, because otherwise it can harm them. It often happens that a person trying to serve others does not stop to think what kind of help is needed and how much. Service always means selflessly helping all living beings move from imperfection to perfection. Through contact with you, other people should become better and purer, stronger and freer. That is why we need to know what kinds of service there are and which of them is fitting in a given situation.
Four kinds of service are distinguished:
- Physical service: helping people with physical work. For example, caring for the sick, cleaning a house, working in a vegetable garden and so on.
- Protective (warrior) service: rescue, protection from danger, creating a safe atmosphere in which everyone feels at ease.
- Intellectual service: helping people with your knowledge. For example, a person has gained practical experience and understanding of a subject and teaches it to others so that they can change their lives for the better.
- Material service: giving material goods: money, food, clothing.
It is held that intellectual service gives the most lasting results. If you simply feed a person, after a while they will be hungry again. But if you teach them, the knowledge will stay with them for life. For such service, however, you need to be ready: to gain experience, live through it, apply it in various situations, and only then pass this priceless knowledge on to others. Once you have some experience in meditation, you can advise a friend to meditate. This will be service of the third kind. When one person inspires another to follow the spiritual path, the positive effect grows exponentially. The highest form of service is intellectual service in the spiritual sphere. In the East, teachers are always shown respect. They are considered the greatest benefactors.
Ideally, all four kinds of service should be done every day. In doing so we spend our time, energy, money and resources, even though we sometimes want to spend all this on ourselves. And tapah lies in the right decision: choosing in favor of serving other people and of one's own self-realization.
The result of the right decision is a fire of inspiration in the heart. If you meet a person in whom a fire is burning, they are surely practicing tapah. They are certainly following self-discipline and giving up personal interests to help others. The inspiration needed for meditation can be gained only by observing tapah.
Try practicing tapah. Start with discipline: meditate systematically twice a day.
Also practice A yoga posture held steadily and comfortably; it balances the glands and quiets body and mind for meditation., fasting and proper diet. And do something good for others every day. Then you will feel the fire of inspiration, which will kindle the sleeping hearts around you.