People ask me, 'What is tapas (penance)? Is tapas essential in meditation?'🔗

What I am telling you is nothing but tapas!

Working on your body, your thoughts, your emotions – what is it if not tapas?

Tapas does not mean going up into the mountains and undertaking all kinds of spiritual practices, and performing all kinds of rituals!

Tapas does not mean going without food or clothes or living in a dark cave or torturing the body in any way. When you deprive your body in any way, there is always the danger of focusing more on the deprivation than on meditation. If I make you go without food even for twenty-four hours, you may stop eating food, but you will start meditating on food because of the hunger! You will be able to think of nothing but food. Real fasting does not mean meditating about the food that you haven't eaten, it means forgetting about food altogether. But not many people can see this difference. That's why the path of deprivation is not for everyone.

Of course, these are all different routes, just different ways of handling the body. Some meditators take the path of disciplining the body through austerities. But it is not necessary that everyone should follow that path.

The toughest tapas is working on oneself, understanding and transforming oneself.

There is no greater tapas than cleansing your body, thoughts and emotions. And this tapas you can do right now, right where you are. This is all about preparing the ground, about creating the right foundation for meditation.