The Sacred AUM

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.”

Here, Patanjali is referring us back to book 1 Sutra 28. The practice he is referring to is the practice of meditating on and repeating the mantra AUM. This mantra can become the center of our lives, not only while we are meditating or practicing asana, but also in our daily living. Patanjali speaks of AUM as the word that refers to God’s name. When taken in this context, our practice of the word AUM helps us to become one-pointed on our surrender towards God. It is this surrender that can remove all of our obstacles and help us transcend our mind and our body. We merge with God. 

However, some people do not believe in God and many that are drawn to the path of yoga have different spiritual beliefs. If that is the case, can we still find meaning in this Sutra and can we still apply it in our practice in a more secular way? I believe we can, particularly when we focus on the last part of the Sutra, “the inner Self.”

Our practice of yoga is meant to yoke us to our essence or inner Self. That Self that is unchanging. That Self that remains stable despite what happens internally with the fluctuations of our mind and externally with the fluctuations of our world. So, by continued practice or repetition of AUM, we can tune in to our essence, our Self. Again, this brings us to the same place. We surrender to Self. We merge with Self. We become pure Self. This grounds us and helps us to achieve a calm center. This center is like an un-moveable mountain. The mountain remains in some form even while things from the world attempt to disturb it.

In your journal today, reflect on this Sutra and your relationship to it. Do you identify more with surrendering to God, surrendering to Self, some variation of both, something completely different? What is the meaning of AUM to you and how is it useful in your life?

Shanti,
Swami K