Lessons on the Upanishads: 21 - Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Tuesday 27, January 2025, 19:30.
Books
Upanishads
Lessons on the Upanishads: 3.7.
Chapter 3: Preparation for Upanishadic Study -7.
Post-21.

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Austerity is very important. Tapas is the pre-eminent prescription of the Upanishads for self-control, which actually means the inhibition or abstraction of the tendency of the mind to move towards things other than the Self. Austerity, or tapas, can be performed or carried on gradually by a systematic adoption of graduated methods.

The first thing you can do in your life towards performance of austerity is to avoid luxury and a happy-go-lucky attitude. You should have or keep with you only those things which are necessary for you, and should not keep those things which are not essential for a reasonably comfortable existence. This is the first step that you can take in austerity. Something is necessary for you under certain given conditions—okay, granted—but you need not ask for more than that. Eating, sleeping and comforts of any kind have to be within the limit of the exigency that you feel under the conditions that you are living, for the work that you are doing, etc, and you need not go beyond that limit. This is the first step that you may take towards austerity.

Austerity is physical, verbal and mental. You have to be restrained not only in your physical appurtenances but also in the words that you speak and the acts that you do. That is, you should not cause any kind of disharmony, incongruity in the atmosphere, and towards that end you may manipulate and adjust yourself ably for being a humane individual, a good person, in the sense that your presence does not cause conflict with anyone. In eating and in other well-known comforts of life, maintain a minimum, to the extent that it is absolutely essential. Here also a note of caution has to be exercised— namely, that austerity does not mean torture of the body, nor does it mean indulgence. The path of the spirit is a via media; the golden mean is the path of spirituality.

There is the well-known incident often cited in connection with an event that took place in the life of Buddha, or perhaps it is also connected with Raja Janaka's life. Some angels were playing a stringed instrument and they said, “Tune not the sitar too high or too low. If the string of the sitar is tuned too tight—hence, high—it will not produce music; it may even snap. If it is too low, it will make a dull humming sound; it will not give music.” Neither this extreme nor that extreme is the path of the spirit. Any kind of suffering is to be avoided. Over-indulgence is also to be avoided. Therefore, austerity is also a cautious exercise of one's demeanour in respect of one's own self as well as in respect of others.

Hence, the Upanishad prescribes sacrifice, yajna, as one method or means of self-discipline, and the other method is austerity, self-control. Self-control is actually taking all necessary steps available for enabling the mind to fix its attention on the root of its own existence—the Self that is behind the mind, the real you that is so valuable to  you. When it is a question of yourself, you would like to abandon everything else for the sake of yourself, meaning thereby that the importance that you attach to yourself, for some reason or other, surpasses the importance that you feel towards anything else in the world.

After sacrifice and austerity, there is the most important teaching—the third, which is study under a teacher, a competent master who has trodden the path, who knows the pitfalls, who knows the difficulties, who treats you as a physician treats his patients. With these methods, the  dirt of the mind is scrubbed off, the fickleness is brought down, the veil covering the Atman is lifted gradually and the light of the sun of the Pure Spirit sheds its radiance automatically from within one's own self. Knowledge will arise from within you. This is why it is said that when you know yourself, you know everything. Know thyself and be free—atmanam viddhi.

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Next
Chapter 4: The Isavasya Upanishad
Continues

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