12 posts tagged with "tapas"

With the Sadhana in place around Raja Yoga I am now at a stage trying to figure out how to orient my life and the gist of this is three things that are absolutely critical to me on a daily basis:

• Meditate two times a day
• Read book for 30 minutes
• Hatha for 30 minutes

Regardless of what else I do these are the goals everyday that I hope to achieve. It is just a single goal as the focus is on meditation and the reading and Hatha are there for improving the meditation.

I am simplifying my Sadhana again. At this point I realize that I am primarily a Raja-Bhakti as my primary and secondary yoga. My work is my Karma and Jnana but my Sadhana is purely around meditation. I find that path fulfilling and making it the core of my focus my life long goal. The reason is that the yogas are to experience Isvara. While Jnana is said to be the highest and experiential I find that it is in my meditation I have the clarity of experiential vision. I don’t need the Jnana analysis.

As part of this practice I am also simplifying my Sadhana and Svadhyaya. Instead of continuously switching focus I am going to focus on a few things. My svadhyaya practice for the rest of my life is as follows:

• Memorize Hanuman Chalisa
• Memorize Bhaja Govindam
• Memorize Yoga Sutras
• Memorize Bhagavad Gita

This represents a significant simplification of my practice. The goal is to just focus on a few texts forever as opposed to continuously changing focus. This also means going slow. Learn the Devanagari, learn the Sanskrit to understand deeply the texts in the original. But these texts exist to deepen and support my meditation and Sadhana at the end of the day.

Secondarily, if my focus is completely on Raja-Bhakti Yoga the challenge becomes simpler. Stilling the mind becomes the primary goal. The citta-vritti-nirodaha becomes the focus of all my practice. The scriptures and texts exist to complement this. The stilling of the mind and figuring out how to calm it and ensure that it doesn’t deviate and switch often becomes the absolute focus.

A continuous improvement of every limb will become the goal. All of this of course simplifies the practice even further since my goal is to now continually return to one of the scriptures. This also means a big change. I will no longer be studying commentary and such during the meditation period. That is purely for stilling the brain not adding a bunch of new things to it. So commentaries and such are outside exercises not part of the meditation.

I am only reading a single book outside of my Sadhana at a time. So I can dive into a single book and get to completion before moving to the next book. It means that the study is completely separated from the practice. I can focus deeply on it and not have to constantly switch between texts. It will make the concentration better instead of my mind constantly battling for the next text and such.

Narrowing my focus to a few things at a time instead of making things expansive is my new goal. The commentaries are not the goal, they exist to clarify my own misunderstanding. They are to be read and reread sure but to improve my own understanding to achieve the stillness.

The rest of all of this is an exceedingly simplified system. It means I have three main work blocks where I can focus on a single task at a time. The meditation time is focused completely on practice and reciting texts. The morning is for cleaning the body and spending time with son. Lunch is short and sweet. Garden & Dinner is focused on gardening and taking care of cooking. The number of moving pieces reduces completely.

This also means there is more time for work and diving deeply into tasks. Study and Work will deepen.

I am simplifying my schedule yet again. One of the issues I realized I had was that I keep jumping. Sastra to work to sastra to gym and I am not getting depth. I am continuously moving here and there. This prevents any sort of depth from being formed and is causing a bunch of issues.

This is actually doing the opposite of what I want which is stilling of the mind. I am continuously moving about never getting into the depth. Some issues I found:

My morning was all over the place as I was trying to do both Hanuman Chalisa recitation and cleaning and reading. I want to just focus on cleaning without additional distractions. Cleaning itself should be a long meditation if there is nothing to clean then reading would be a good use of time. So mornings will not be distracted there will be a singular task which is cleaning the home. This also includes spending time with Naga.

I meditate and read Bhagavad Gita but don’t get into depth and don’t have time to contemplate. It is continuously moving about. I study Yoga Sutras but then get hungry so also don’t have concentration. My morning work routine is half hearted and lazy. So having a solid block of time to study the sastras is good for studying and reflection. Also focusing this time completely on Bhagavad Gita, Yoga Sutras and Hatha Yoga is likely a good way of getting into the depth of things. This period my goal is to solidify my practice with a focus on meditation. Of course I will have work calls and what not but my goal is to return to my study of the sastras. I will keep my focus on just the three texts. Gurus and what not will be studied during the Artha & Kama periods so I can also attain depth.

My work schedules will incorporate both Artha & Kama. So focusing on deep work and study focused on accomplishing the most important tasks first. This will allow me to spend time both in study and work. This means I can focus completely on improving my daily routine and finishing my tasks as fast as possible. I can also incorporate this on weekends for deep reading during this same period.

And my 4-8 is focused on Garden & Cooking. This time will be to garden and practice cooking. While it is time to spend with Naga as well but it is in relation to these two.

So the day is focused:

• Cleaning
• Mind & Body
• Artha & Kama
• Garden & Cooking
• Artha & Mind

My mistake with my process is that I am trying to get to new projects all the time. That is actually not the goal. The goal is to get through the routine as fast as possible. So the process shouldn't be to start new projects. The projects exist for the sake of fulfilling the routine. The routine is what matters the most.

So everyday the focus is to get through the routines as fast as possible. As part of the routine. This means a bit more simplicity in that since we are continuously optimizing each part of the routine. The goal is to make the checklists for the daily to be extremely strong.

What is currently transpiring is that I have three sets of trackers Github, Notes, and Google Docs. I keep looking at the Google Docs even though the place I need to keep track which is automated is Github. So I need to get back to Github as the primary source.

This means I will need to migrate to Github completely and off Google Docs. I know I just moved to it. But it is actually easier to manage the improvements as I go through the tasks rapidly in Github.

Another aspect is to go through the routine list before ever reading.

One of the things I realize about spirituality is that there needs to be distinct times where we spend time in the outside world and time when we are focused completely on the inner world. This distinction is important as trying to mix the two is a disaster. When spending time in the inner world the outside world must be avoided as much as possible. When dealing with the outside world we can also combine with the inner world.

But most of the time should be spent on the inner world. Putting order to the inner world so that when we are faced with the outer world we are quick and efficient. The inner world means family, cleaning, meditation, prayer and so on. The outer world is work and whatever is needed to interact with the world.

I have updated the tapas to incorporate how I am dealing with this changes.

It is easy to ruminate on the past and future of a business but it is hard to see where you are in the present. Data forces you to understand the present. Once you have figured out the present and always clearing out anything in the past or future then you can clear your mind to the capabilities you have and remove anything that does not provide value.

The data fueled present is much like meditation for an individual. It forces a company to also be in th present.

I am updating my routine where I am changing Pray to be Contemplation. I realize that my work time is important to, well, work on Sakha and Samaja related tasks. What I constituted as the Pray time was also meditation, svadyaya, reading classics, and learning Hindi. So I am changing the Pray time to Contemplation time. This allows me to use this time a bit more broadly to improve each of the limbs that I have including studying cooking, exercise and other sadhana adjacent things.

We now have a basic SOP for sakhas. The idea is to have standardized processes for each sakha that sevakas can follow. This will help in scaling the sakhas as we can onboard new sevakas and have them follow the SOPs to run the sakhas.

The initial set of SOPs are:

• Daily Routines. Daily routines that sevakas should follow to keep the sakha running smoothly.
• Basic Flywheel. The engine that each business has to keep improving and growing.

With this start we can now start to improve the SOPs over time by focusing on the input metrics and hope we can generate the appropriate output metrics.

As I setup my day I find that my intellect works better in the morning and midday and by the end of the day it is spent and I do more things based on the heart. That is I don’t have much willpower by the end of the day. My routines need to follow a similar pattern in that they need to rise and fall with my energy levels throughout the day.

Currently, I have a lot of tasks that are both intellectual as heart filled mixed and matched. I need to figure out which are more based on heart and which are based on intellect. As I get tired though the day the intellectually taxing tasks are difficult for me to focus on.

Why have this difference between heart and intellect? They focus on different outcomes. When you are thinking with the intellect I need to be rational and scientific with a process defined. When I am working through the heart I need to be more sensitive and see things through love and devotion. These two modes conflict and continuously context switching between them is not ideal. So the day needs to be setup to be either Heart based on Brain based.

Based on this I am changing the order of some of my routine:

• Start the day with Bhagavad Gita
• Study Yoga Sutras
• Study Sanskrit
• Study Vivekananda, Sivananda, Chinamaya, and Dayananada
• Study Hanuman Chalisa, Ramakrishna, Ramayana and Puranas

I have simplified my daily routine. It was too complex with too many moving pieces making everything I do be shallow. It was hard to know what I was to do when without a schedule. It just made things difficult.

With the simplification of my Sadhana I am also simplifying my routine. I am no longer going to be so intense about my schedule as I was around focusing my energy just on my spiritual practice over everything else. With my goal of memorizing the Hanuman Chalisa, Yoga Sutras and Bhagavad Gita my intent is to have the core scriptures I have become a part of me.

What has changed is that I now have long periods for each task of over an hour each sometimes two. This gives me a lot of time to do tasks.

Lastly, I have combined Study & Work. The reason is a lot of my work is becoming more study than work and I need to take time to just study. This long periods of time to Study & Work are important to get focused work complete.

I’m hoping to keep this schedule for the foreseeable future with the exception that I may wake up at 7 instead of 7:30.