From This Practice

What is Tarka?


Perhaps one of the most important parts of a strong spiritual practice is the practice of tarka or reflective journaling. Reflection upon your inner and outer life is essential if you wish to progress along the path. These reflections on your life can help you see your mind more clearly. Your relationship to yourself, the world, and others is revealed in each journal entry. We can sometimes be blinded by our own beliefs or trapped in a cycle of thinking that is unhealthy for us.

Tarka can help us to illumine the way before us, discard old beliefs, and change our attitudes and ways of thinking.

Tarka is designed to help you reflect upon your life and examine your mind so that you may travel the path of enlightenment with greater ease and harmony.


Today's Tarka

In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras book 1 Sutra 29 it states:  “From this practice all the obstacles disappear and simultaneously dawns knowledge of the inner Self.”

Satchidananda tells us that from this Sutra we can get in tune with the cosmic power, and through that tuning in, I will feel that force in me and will be imbibed with those qualities; I will get the cosmic vision, transcend my limitations and become that transcendental reality.

I will not let the mind and body limit me. I will hold something infinite and raise myself from the finite objects that bind me. This is the way I get rid of all the obstacles and my path is made easy.

This morning, I am thinking about the words “from this practice” – this causes me to ask from what practice? The practice of yoga, of course, but what more specifically?  The answer, for me, is that these words mean, I should focus on the heart and live my life from a heart centered practice. This means, I let my heart speak and make my choices from my heart, not from what my mind is telling me I have to do. 

I think “from this practice” can change depending on where I am in the practice. All the choices still remain from the heart, but I think about what it is that informs my practice in any given moment. For example, perhaps my “from this practice” today is a focus on a different sutra and what that informs or from what I hear someone say to me that I want to reflect further upon. 

Like maybe in this moment I am experiencing grief and I say from this practice I am gaining x,y,z.

I think this type of practice makes the obstacles disappear because I am practicing from a full state of awareness and the knowledge is coming from and giving to my inner Self. It is about being fully present in each moment as it arises. There are no obstacles if I come from this place, only moments.

In your journal today, think about this sutra and what the words "from this practice" mean to you. Where are you in this present moment? How will this inform your practice?

Shanti,

Swami K