Tapas

(No, we’re not talking about Spanish appetizers, kids…)

Self-discipline burns away impurities and kindles the sparks of divinity. — Yoga Sutras

“Now” he thought, “that all these transitory things have slipped away from me again, I stand once more beneath the sun, as I once stood as a small child. Nothing is mine, I know nothing, I possess nothing, I have learned nothing….” He had to smile again. Yes, his destiny was strange! He was going backwards, and now he stood empty and naked and ignorant in the world. But he did not grieve about it; no, he even felt a great desire to laugh, to laugh at himself, to laugh at this strange, foolish world. — Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

The next niyama is tapas, or burning zeal in practice…. Tapas is simply an enthusiasm for health. All of us have it in our nature. The genius of yoga is that it encourages us to cultivate this enthusiasm. Rather than cloak our childlike wonder in cynicism, we are encouraged to develop an appetite for life.

…

Most of us begin a spiritual practice having known only our false selves. And so, as those layers begin to fall away, it actually feels as if we are going backwards at first, instead of forward; our practice strips away the edifice we built to our false self. Suddenly our whole way of knowing, of doing, of being comes into question. .. Many of us find that we have built our houses on sand, that the lives we’ve created cannot stand up to the heat of our practice. We may lose a job, relationships, the old playmates and playthings. We stand once more as a child in the world, open and empty. This too, is tapas.

In my own life, I felt just as Siddhartha did– amazed at all I had lost, and at the same time just as amazed that I no longer valued what I had lost: my old self, the old world, the old friends… When two people who have experienced this aspect of tapas discuss it, it is invariably an occasion for much laughter — the laughter of relief at no longer needing to be our false self, and the laughter of joy at such good fortune — Rolf Gates, Meditations from the Mat

I read Siddhartha years ago as a teenager, and have to say it was probably one of the formative books of those years for me. I think even then I knew not to hang on to anything too tightly, since it might slip away.

Of course over time and in the midst of my undiagnosed bipolar disorder, I forgot that lesson, and my manic episode came about as almost a direct result of the depth of those losses when I clung too tightly to friends who slipped away. Or rather, that I drove away by my maddening clinging.

One of the best things about coming out of the other side of the bipolar rabbit hole though is that freedom and that laughter. It’s not that I don’t value the things and the people in my life now, but I don’t cling to them too tightly. I don’t try to control anyone’s life, including my own, really. I know things will happen that are simply out of my control and am all right with that.

I suppose some people consider that childlike, to simply let your life exist and appreciate all it has to offer you each day. To me, it’s simply the way I am now.
Yes, I still plan things and make things happen, but with enthusiasm rather than out of a sense of trying to manage everything around me. And I do love to meet someone else who has been through that hero’s struggle and come back to the world – and we do laugh when we meet. Anyone who knows how hard life can be and appreciates how easy and simple life can be on the other side of that struggle — that is a person worth knowing. Listen to the stories they tell, and how much they can laugh about them, and you’ll find someone with a true zest for life.