The Gifts of Life

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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.

This blog 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.

Set aside a little time each day to write in your journal and respond to the prompts in the blog.

The benefits of a strong tarka practice will reveal themselves over time, particularly if you take some time out each month and reread what you have written in your journal. You will find patterns in your life and your examination of these patterns will help you make the changes in your life that you are striving for. The wisdom you gain will help you live the life you seek.

Daily Reflection and Journaling Prompt

What you have done in the past does not matter. Every day is a great gift that you can choose to use wisely and harmoniously.

What will you do today to add to the bounty of life?

Swami K

Day 26 - Beginning to Know Your Dharma

 

Today's Tarka Practice

Our focus this week will be on the Bhagavad Gita. The Gita is one chapter out of the Mahabharata, which is one of the longest Sanskrit epic poems from ancient India. If you have not read Monday’s and Tuesday’s posts, you may want to start there before reading this post.

 

 

For the last two days, we have been talking about our own life’s song or our life’s meaning or purpose. We have discovered that the overall meaning is to serve – to serve others, to serve ourselves and to serve life. How can we serve life? The answer to this question brings us to the next part of the Gita.

In the Gita, there are many key players. Today, we will talk about the two most important players – Arjuna and Krishna. Arjuna symbolizes the human being, a person, or even more literally, you – the person you are in this life. Krishna symbolizes God incarnate but can also be seen as symbolizing the oversoul or our higher self or spirit.

So, what is happening in the Gita is this – a conversation between Arjuna (your earth self) and Krishna (your spiritual self). Depending upon your religious beliefs, you can also see this as a conversation between you and God.

The conversation that is taking place is this: Arjuna is trying to figure out his life’s purpose or his life’s song and he is asking Krishna for help. Krishna’s response to Arjuna is this: your life’s song is your dharma.

In yoga, dharma has many meanings. For the purpose of our discussion here, you should think of dharma as the nature of life. Krishna is trying to help Arjuna understand the nature of life, more specifically, the nature of his life.

For today’s journal entry, I want you to think about the nature of your life. What is your dharma or purpose in this earthly life? Most people do not know the answer to this question or are uncertain. That is fine, for this is the place to begin. Many people come to yoga to find out the answer to this question, so for now, if you do not know your life’s purpose, make a list of your strengths and what you feel you do well.

 

Shanti

Day 27 - Your Dharma Part 2

Today's Tarka Practice

Our focus this week will be on the Bhagavad Gita. The Gita is one chapter out of the Mahabharata, which is one of the longest Sanskrit epic poems from ancient India.

 

Yesterday, we ended our tarka practice with the question, what is your purpose in life or your dharma? Today, we continue on with that question to a second level of the word dharma. Dharma also means duty. So here, we could also ask ourselves the question, what is my duty in life?

 

The word duty often calls up thoughts of responsibility or questions like what am I responsible for? This is a question of ethics. So now, if we yoke together both purpose and duty within the word dharma, we come to understand that we each have an individual purpose to fulfill and a way to fulfill it. Not only should we fulfill our purpose but we should fulfill it in a responsible and harmonious way.

 

This is one reason that I asked you yesterday to make a list of your strengths in your journal. Your strengths tell you about what you do well. We are meant to do these things. It is our duty to do them. For example, if you think you are very good at teaching others but not very good at woodworking, this is a hint from the universe. One might say here, it is your purpose to teach or your duty to teach. It is not your purpose to be a woodworker. So, another way to find our purpose or our dharma is to make a list of what we do not do well. If you are still searching for your purpose, you can eliminate those things from the list that you have difficulty with and those things that you do not enjoy doing. We are given strengths and talents and we are meant to use them to fulfill our purpose.

 

In your journal today, I want you to make a list of things that you don’t think you do well and things you are not interested in doing. Now, you have to be careful here because sometimes we have weaknesses that we are meant to develop into strengths and sometimes we are afraid of success. When making your list, make sure that the things on your list are not there because you are running away from them.

 

Shanti

 

Day 28 - Your Dharma Part 3

Today's Tarka Practice

Our focus this week will be on the Bhagavad Gita. The Gita is one chapter out of the Mahabharata, which is one of the longest Sanskrit epic poems from ancient India.

Yesterday, we were talking about the relationship between dharma, duty, and purpose. Today, we will continue that discussion here, so if you missed yesterday’s post, read that one before reading this one.

 

A second way to understand the relationship between purpose and duty is this – it is our duty to fulfill our purpose. Hence, our task in life is to find our purpose and then to do it. The deeper message here is that when we are off the path - we are not finding our purpose or doing our purpose (we are not living our dharma), we will experience pain and unhappiness. However, when we are on the right path – we are moving towards our purpose and beginning to practice our purpose (we are fulfilling our dharma), we will experience joy and happiness.

So, our next task is to now write down in our journals those things that bring us pain and unhappiness and those things that bring us joy and happiness.

 

Finally, over the weekend, you can examine all of your journal entries this week in order to begin to get a sense of what your purpose in life is or what your duty is or what your dharma is. Go ahead and write those things down. Keep this list. Build on this list and notice some of the changes you begin to make in your life over the next few weeks.

Shanti

Day 29 - The Meaning of Karma

Today's Tarka Practice

In the west, people tend to think that karma means "what goes around, comes around" or "you should watch your actions because if you don't, you will get what's coming to you." However, this is not actually what karma means, so I thought I would discuss karma in greater depth here in order to clear up the misunderstandings.

Karma is not the law of retribution. Instead, it has many different meanings and is associated directly with our traits, characteristics, personalities, desires, habits, and tendencies. Karma is both a direct result of things or actions we take in all of our lifetimes as well as the genetic characteristics we are born with. For example, being right handed is a type of karma. The desire to be rich is also a type of karma.

In the yoga philosophy of the east, there are 3 different broad categories of karma. I will discuss the first one today - San-chitta karma. San-chitta karma is all of the karma you have collected from each life you have lived. Now that is a lot of karma.

This can be hard to picture so think of yourself as the ocean - all of the karma from all of your lifetimes is contained here. Each of the waves within the ocean is your karma manifesting. Not all of the karma manifests at one time or even in this lifetime. Not all waves in the ocean come all at one time. Sometimes the waves are big and sometimes they are small. Who you marry would be a big wave, what you choose for breakfast would be a small wave.

In order to begin to get a better understanding of karma, let's take a look at some of the karma that has manifested in this lifetime. In your journal, write down all of the characteristics you were born with - hair color, eye color, right or left handed, gender, weakeness or strengths within your body (for example - a weak stomach or a strong heart), sexual orientation, lifestyle choices (smoking, drinking, eating, etc).

Tomorrow, we will discuss this list futher. So, until tomorrow...
Shanti

Day 31 - Turning the Negative into a Positive

Today's Tarka Practice
We have now talked about two different types of karma - San-chitta karma and Pralabdha karma. The next type of karma it is important to understand is Kriyamana karma.

 

Kriyamana karma is the karma that you are creating in this lifetime. To clarify, Pralabdha karma is all of the karma in this lifetime but Kriyamana karma is the karma you are constantly creating and adding to the Pralabdha karma tank or ocean if you will. For example, on Wednesday I talked about one of my traits - teacher as a part of my Pralabdha karma. Now, when I teach I am creating something and this act of creation creates karma.

 

In other words, karma can also be described as a cause-effect relationship. In my essence, I am a teacher; therefore, I teach. This act of teaching creates an effect on myself and on others. Remember, it is not a good effect or a bad effect, it is just an effect. Someone might see my teaching as either good or bad but this is not karma. Instead, this is someone bringing their own attitudes onto what I am teaching and assigning it a meaning of their own. Most likely, they will interpret my teaching in a way that is harmonious with their own karma.

 

To simplify this idea, what I mean here is that everyone has their own personal lens through which they see the world. This personal lens effects one's attitude towards things. What is important to understand is that you can change your attitude about something at any time. You have the power to see things in any way that you want to see them.

 

For today's journal entry, think about a time in which you experienced something you didn't like and had a negative attitude about it. Now, think about how you could have changed your attitude in order to experience this same thing more positively. I'll give an example for further clarity.

 

When my daughter was born, my pelvis separated and I couldn't walk or take care of my daughter without help. I couldn't carry her or get her a bottle or get up with her in the middle of the night. I couldn't do anything that one normally does with a newborn. I could have seen this as a very negative experience (and on some days I did). However, I thought mostly about what a great gift it was because it allowed me to spend time with my newborn. All I could do was sit in a chair all day long so this is what I did. I sat with her on my lap, holding her for the entire day. This was precious bonding time for us both. If I had been able to move around more, I might have missed out on this bonding time because I would have been very busy cleaning and cooking and tending to things.

 

Think of this example and write about a time when you turned a negative experience into a positive one.

 

Shanti