Tapas literally means “heat,” and can be translated as catharsis, austerities, self-discipline, spiritual effort, change, tolerance, or transformation. Tapas has the sense of “cooking” ourselves in the fire of discipline to transform ourselves into something else. It is our determined effort to become someone of character and strength. Much like cooking an egg denatures the egg, changing it into a different structure, Tapas eventually changes our nature, turning us into a cauldron that can withstand any of life’s challenges. Tapas is the day to day choice to burn non-supportive habits of the body and mind, choosing to forsake momentary pleasures for future rewards.
In India some spiritual renunciates practice extreme austerities. In the dead of winter they sit for three hours in the cold dressed only in a loincloth. They rig a container so that it will drip cold water on their heads and run down their almost naked bodies for the entire three hours. They do this practice for forty-five days in a row. In the heat of summer, they build five small fires around themselves and one in a container on their head. Then they sit for three hours in the blazing heat. They build these fires daily and sit for three hours for forty-five days. This is done to establish themselves in a firm, unmovable center that is not rocked or disturbed by any extremes the external world may bring. They practice staying still no matter what thoughts or fears are running through their own minds.
Our practice does not need to be this daunting; however, the example of these spiritual ascetics might inspire us to a little more depth in our discipline. And, much like a controlled burn, we need to pay attention to what is possible, what is safe, and what is timely for us in our current life context. When we have “tested the wind” we can light the match, willingly burning away our laziness and our selfish desires. Whether we practice Tapas by showing up at our mat for a regular posture practice or through constant acts of selfless service, we offer ourselves to the next higher version of us. We willingly stand the heat so that we might produce “luscious bounty” with our lives.
This guideline not only speaks to our personal effort, but also to those cathartic times of almost hopeless desperation when we find ourselves in the pain of unexpected loss or debilitating sickness, or in the throes of a life that seems like it has been turned upside down. It is almost as if God has checked the winds and started the fire and we ourselves are the field that is being burned. And, like my husband who watched his father burn a field, none of it makes sense to us at the time.
And yet it is these times that shape and mold us into someone of depth. Our debris gets burned away and we are left more humbled and strengthened by the mystery of what is beyond our grasp of control or of understanding. It is these darkest times of pain, loss, and confusion that weave something profound in us.
Spiritual teacher Ram Das speaks eloquently to this jewel of Tapas. When he experienced a debilitating stroke, something he never expected to happen to him, he found a new opportunity for himself and for others as he began to wrestle with the possibilities and effects of aging. He chose to speak of his experience as “being stroked” by God, rather than as having had a stroke. And he termed the phrase “fierce grace” to speak of his experience of being burned by the fire of divine love.
There is a bumper sticker which states, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” We can chuckle all we want, but there is great truth to this statement. Tapas can take us to the place where all of our resources are used up, where there is nothing left but weakness, where all of our so-called “props” have been taken away. It is in this barren place, where we have exhausted all that we have and all that we are, that new strength is shaped and character is born if we choose to fearlessly open ourselves to the experience. It is perhaps the greatest gift life could offer us.
Charlene Westerman speaks truthfully to the danger and the possibility of catharsis when she states that during these times we have two choices: to break down or to break open. We can’t prevent these times of catharsis in our lives or know their shape or outcome, but we can prepare ourselves for them through our daily practice, through building our ability to stay in unpleasantness, and through the small, daily choices we make.
Tapas as Daily Practice
When I lived near the shores of Lake Sacajawea, I had the grace of time to take long walks on miles of land that held the promise of seeing no one. One day I stumbled upon a large nesting site for blue herons along the banks of the lake. I became a constant visitor until the herons accepted me as part of what belonged. I watched as eggs were laid and tended; I watched as young chicks poked and maneuvered their way out of their shell homes, now become prison; I watched as these newborns were tended and fed. I watched as they grew to look more like herons than fuzzy masses. Finally the day came, when I was privy to their flying lessons.
It had never occurred to me that a bird wouldn’t automatically know how to fly perfectly. What I watched was a comedy in errors. I watched the parents strategically fly off (but not too far) and leave the young ones seemingly unattended to figure flying out for themselves. I watched as the brave ones began to try their wings and hover ever so slightly above the nest. And then I watched them get braver and fly out of their nests and begin to play with the wind and landings. I watched as attempt after attempt was made to land back in the nest, only to be misjudged over and over again. Whoops! I don’t think I have ever laughed so hard in my life, nor been so touched by the beauty of this mastering of flying.
Somewhere we forget that we had to learn how to walk, like these young birds had to learn to fly. We forget how many times we fell. We forget that things take practice. Ray Charles was asked later on in his career if he still practiced and prepared for concerts. He replied that he played scales everyday, because when the scales were in his fingers, he could play anything. The question becomes for us, what are we practicing for? When is the last time you even asked yourself this question?
Our granddaughter Tiana, at the very young age of three, knew she wanted to be on stage as a singer and dancer. She forsook all kinds of childhood pleasures to practice for hours, mimicking her favorite singer’s words, gestures, and dance steps. And then she would delight us by performing a perfect routine. Tiana understood that to become something in the future takes effort in the now.
In yoga, having a daily disciplined practice is referred to as Sadhana* and is much like doing a small controlled burn on ourselves. It is the discipline of putting ourselves in places where the old debris that has collected in us can be removed. We engage in this process when we pay attention to the amount and kind of food we put in our body, when we move and exercise our bodies through walks, yoga, and other activities, when we expand our mental ability, or study scripture with like-minded people. This process begins to remove unwanted pounds, lazy habits, an unexercised heart and body, a stale mind, and an unheard spirit. As Pattabhi Jois reminds us, “Practice, and all is coming.”
St. Francis of Assisi, in his well-known prayer, speaks eloquently to the possibilities of transformation for each human being.
Lord make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.
This is a profound plea to change us from haters to lovers and from disturbers of peace to makers of peace. This is the prayer of Tapas, and it invites us to be in life in a different way.
Tapas as Staying Power
One of my favorite stories in the Bible is the one that tells of Jacob wrestling with the Angel.** Jacob had had a bad day. Actually he had had a string of bad days since he cheated his brother out of the family birthright and had to flee for his life a great distance to find refuge with his Uncle Laban. After many years, Jacob returned home with wives, children, and livestock. As he got close to home, he
saw his estranged brother with a band of warriors in the distance. This was the brother he had cheated. He figured he knew what was going to happen, and it wouldn’t be pretty.
As things go when we’re having a bad day, Jacob’s day got worse. He had camped along a stream, by himself, when a stranger appeared and started fighting with him. You can almost hear Jacob say, “Good grief, what now?” Jacob had no choice but to fight back and the seemingly even match lasted until daybreak. Imagine Jacob’s exhaustion – this on top of everything else.
At dawn the tide quickly turned, and Jacob realized the magnitude of who he was fighting with. It was someone of great power and strength who had merely been toying with Jacob all night. At this realization, instead of recoiling in fear and running for his life, Jacob did something quite amazing. He held on to this Being and begged for a blessing. Knowing full well the power of the Being, Jacob held on. And the Being, who had been wrestling Jacob all night, gave Jacob the blessing he sought. Jacob, in that moment renamed Israel*** by the Being, was to be a great man, the leader of a great nation that would impact the world.
The Biblical text is vague in this passage. At the time, Jacob does not know who he is fighting with, nor do we. Is it a man, an angel, a supernatural being, God, Satan? Without knowing who or what has him in its grip, Jacob holds on until he knows he is blessed by the encounter.
So often we don’t even know what has us in its grip; it seems dark and overpowering. In those times when we don’t know how to get through the next minute of what seems unknown and overwhelming to us, can we, like Jacob, hold on? Can we hold on to what has us in its grip, gripping it back, and not letting go until we are somehow blessed by it? Can we grow our ability to stay in the fire and let ourselves be burned until we are blessed by the very thing that is causing us the pain and suffering?
Jacob does not leave this scene with only a blessing. During the wrestling match, the Being had touched Jacob’s hip, dislocating it. Jacob walked with a limp the rest of his life. Catharsis does not leave us untouched nor unscarred. We will be bearers of the wound, as well as the blessing.
St. John of the Cross writes meaningfully about Tapas in his treatise entitled The Dark Night of the Soul. St. John knew the harshness of catharsis when he found himself imprisoned in a monastery, treated with extreme deprivation and abuse by his fellow monks for his more liberal views. In his writings, he uses the example of a log being thrown into a fire to describe the process of being transformed by fire. He says that at first the log doesn’t look anything like the fire and if the log has some impurities on the outside, the log will initially stink as it burns. But after a time, the log begins to look more and more like the fire, eventually becoming the fire itself.
Like Jacob, St. John of the Cross knew both the blessing and the resulting “limp,” as the experience left him plagued with ill-health for the rest of his life. It also left him in constant communion with the Divine, for his dark night of catharsis had picked him up and taken him into the arms of God. Tapas is growing our ability to stay in the unknown and the unpleasantness, rather than run in fear. It is the willingness to be both burned and blessed.
Tapas as Choice
A friend tells the story about leaving a partnership of eight years. At the same time she changed careers and moved to a new town; it was a daunting change for her. She writes, “I didn’t start out with the clarity that I ended with. I started out not being able to breathe or eat. Struck with fear, anxiety and a feeling of being frozen, I needed to find something to help me move through the intensity of my life. My partner had a similar change. He too left the partnership, began a new career, and moved to a new town. He too, needed to find something to move through the intensity of this change. I found yoga and created a deep practice and did two-hundred sit ups a day. He chose drinking, smoking, and promiscuous behavior. At the end of that year of transition, our outcomes were very different. I had this silent strength that felt like it was emanating from my core; he was fragmented, exhausted and spiraling out of control.”
The story above is about the choices we make, in and out of crisis. If we, like my friend, can choose to strengthen our inner depth rather than medicate and run, we will find ourselves in a land of new possibility. Much like those turbulent teen years, where life has the awesome job of moving us from childhood to adulthood, the promise of a crisis is that it will pick us up and deposit us on the other side of something. Will we trust this process or will we hide from it?
Each moment is an opportunity to make a clear choice of right action. Quite often the choices that prepare us for the fire are options that vote against immediate satisfaction and pleasure. When we listen to our inner voice and surrender to staying present to the unknown, the unpleasant, and often to the grief and pain, we are preparing ourselves to benefit from and be blessed by Tapas.
The discipline of Tapas will mold us into someone of great depth and profoundness if we let it. Can we stand the heat of being dismantled and changed forever by the fire? Can we prepare ourselves daily through our practice, our staying power, and our choices? Can we stay in the burning with integrity? Can we hold on for the blessing?
Questions for Exploration
Living with these questions, taking time for reflection, and journaling will give you new insights into your life and the practice of self-discipline. For this month, frame your exploration in the following statement by the mystic Rumi:
If you are a friend of God,
fire is your water.
You should wish to have
a hundred thousand sets of mothwings,
So you could burn them away,
one set a night.
The moth sees light
and goes into fire.
You should see fire
and go toward light.
Fire is what of God is world consuming.
Week One: Remember the cathartic times in your life and how you were shaped by them. Notice the times you may have “checked out” from the pain, and others where you were fearless in the fire and held on for the blessing.
Week Two: This week choose a practice of nourishing eating, meditating, contemplating, or something else that impacts the quality of your essence. Can you put yourself in the heat with enthusiasm?
Week Three: This week practice staying “one minute more” in whatever unpleasantness presents itself to you. Can you stand the heat of unpleasantness? Can you let the heat begin to burn away your judgments, opinions, and expectations?
Week Four: This week pay attention to your daily choices. Are you making choices that are indulgent, or making choices that build your strength and character? Listen to your inner voice and make choices that prepare you for the heat of life.
For this month ponder the words of Rumi and welcome the heat.
*Sadhana means spiritual discipline. It implies a dual aspect that the discipline itself is the fulfillment. Like a drop of water eventually shapes a rock, the consistency of practice over a period of time brings the change and fulfillment. Sadhana is the consistency of our daily practice.
**This story in the Bible is referred to as “Jacob wrestling with the Angel” but we never really know clearly who the Being is.
***The name Israel means “one who has striven with God and man and has prevailed.”
Svadhyaya
Know yourself so well
That you will grow into your
Wholeness and greatness.
~ C.L.
Self-study
Svadhyaya
When my older brother and I were in grade school, we decided that our dad got cheated every Christmas by not receiving appropriate gifts for the love we felt for him. We decided to do something about that, and so, for a year, we saved all of our babysitting money and gift money until it was nearing Christmas. Then we had mom drop us off at a jewelry store where we proceeded to buy my dad the most beautiful diamond ring w
e could afford. We were delighted with ourselves.
When we got home, we decided such a gift needed to be wrapped in a special way. And so we set about gathering several boxes, seven to be exact, and, wrapping the diamond ring in its original box, proceeded to place it in the next size box, and then the next, until only one huge box remained. We wrapped the last box and placed it under the tree so our dad could spend the necessary time wondering what was in that huge box for him.
When Christmas arrived, my brother and I were beside ourselves with excitement. This was the day our dad would get his special gift that we had prepared for the whole year. He unwrapped the big box, only to find another box, and then another, and then another. Before too long, our dad had decided we were playing a grand practical joke on him and he moved into “good sport” mode, pretending to be exacerbated and delighted all at once. By the time he got to the last box, he was sure there was nothing waiting. But he was wrong. I don’t think my brother or I will ever forget the look on his face when he opened that beautiful, sparkling diamond ring, purchased with the love of two adoring children.
The yogis teach that we, as human beings, are packaged much like this diamond ring. We are, at the core, divine consciousness. Around this pure consciousness, we are packed in “boxes” of our experience, our conditioning, and our belief systems. These boxes are things like how we identify ourselves, what we believe to be true, our preferences and dislikes, our fears and imagination. All of these boxes are informed by country, culture, gender, town, ancestors and family history, groups we belong to, and our personal experience.
This packaging is portrayed in a story told in the East. It seems God had just created human beings. Realizing that He* had made a terrible mistake, God called a council of the elders to get some help. When the elders were gathered, God reported, “I have just created humans and now I don’t know what I am going to do. They will always be talking to me and wanting things from me and I won’t ever get any rest.” Upon hearing God’s dilemma, the elders made several suggestions telling God he could hide on Mount Everest, or the moon, or deep in the earth. God responded hopelessly to all of these suggestions saying, “No, humans are resourceful; eventually they will find me there.” Finally, one elder walked up to God and whispered something in his ear. Then God shouted in delight, “That’s it! I’ll hide inside of each human; they will never find me there!”
The Yamas & Niyamas Page 10
