In this talk, Zach explores part two of his exploration of tapas, fire, burning, discipline, and purification on the spiritual path. We can also see the sun as the essence of tapas, providing the warmth and energy for life to continue on this earth. Finally, we can see a willingness to be with suffering as a crucial part of the path.
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“Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.”
“Blessed are the lowly, for they shall inherit the earth.”
“Blessed [inwardly peaceful, spiritually secure, worthy of respect] are the gentle [the kind-hearted, the sweet-spirited, the self-controlled], for they will inherit the earth.”
“Blessed are the humble, for they will inherit the earth.”
“The gentle are blessed, for they will inherit the earth.
– Different ways to Translate Matthew 5:5
People, then, should live with great patience and constancy in all the tribulations and trials God places on them, whether they be exterior or interior, spiritual or bodily, great or small, and they should accept them all as from God’s hand as a good remedy and not flee from them, for they bring health.
The combat of trials, distress, and temptations deadens the evil and imperfect habits of the soul and purifies and strengthens it. People should hold in esteem the interior and exterior trials God sends them, realizing that there are few who merit to be brought to perfection through suffering and to undergo trials for the sake of so high a state.
– St. John of the Cross, Living Flame of Love
Jñānatapas (ज्ञानतपस्) – penance consisting in the acquisition of true knowledge.
“A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot live without love”
– Max Muller
“I asked for strength and God gave me difficulties to make me strong. I asked for wisdom and God gave me problems to learn to solve. I asked for prosperity and God gave me a brain and brawn to work. I asked for courage and God gave me dangers to overcome. I asked for love and God gave me people to help. I asked for favors and God gave me opportunities. I received nothing I wanted. I received everything I needed.”
– Hazrat Inayat Khan
“The love of God does to the soul what fire does to material things: the longer it remains in this divine furnace, the purer it becomes. This fire, ever making it more pure, ends by annihilating it in all imperfection and all stain, leaving it wholly purified in God.”
– Catherine of Genoa, Treatise on Purgatory
“A yogi is one who trusts in the truth of pure love, one who drops into all experience as it arises, trusting the essence of the heart, which enables the yogi to offer all experience, particularly the core experience of the mind, into the fire of awareness. It is this fire of awareness that is the true guru.”
– Richard Freeman
“Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames”
― Rumi
“You have no light to guide you except the one burning in your heart.”
– St John of the cross
“The kingdom is now, is here, is the inmost heart-core of reality itself, the fire of love and justice blazing at the heart of all things and beings.
An extraordinary demanding transformation is needed to create the fully Christed self. Everything has to be devoted, given, surrendered to the fire of the Sacred Heart; everything–every faculty of thought, emotion, will–has to be utterly penetrated by the fire of divine love and divined.”
– Andrew Harvey, Son of Man
“I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.”
— Blessed Teresa of Calcutta
