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Discipline—that is, the disciplining of the mind—is a fundamental prerequisite of spiritual growth. There are those who think that spiritual awakening, or enlightenment, is spontaneous and does not call for any action on our part. Some even regard all effort as an obstacle to enlightenment, but this does not constitute the whole truth. While it is true that the great sages all have testified that enlightenment is our innate condition, they also have always emphasized the need for proper preparation. If some practitioners, such as Ramana Maharshi, have attained enlightenment apparently without effort, we must assume that they prepared for that auspicious moment over many lifetimes. This is the traditional explanation of their instant awakening. Without the notion of rebirth, however, we are left with only one other explanation, namely that their enlightenment was simply a random occurrence; that they “lucked out.” If we were to accept this, we would also have to assume that spiritual effort is a waste of time. In that case, we could live as we will and hope for the best. But this is exactly what most people have opted to do, and their individual destiny is no secret to us: Instead of being free, they suffer from much unhappiness.
Irrespective of the metaphysical debate about the nature of enlightenment and how it is realized, it is an undeniable fact that we grow spiritually—in our awareness and capacity for self-transcendence and happiness—by virtue of our application to spiritual values and ideals. Here application means translating ideals or values into daily practice. This is what the Sanskrit concept of sadhana, or spiritual discipline, is all about. The word is derived from the verbal root sadh meaning “to accomplish.” The same root also yields the words siddhi (accomplishment or perfection) and siddha (accomplished one or adept). Accomplishment comes at various levels, and the ultimate accomplishment is understood to be enlightenment. A siddha is usually an adept who has attained enlightenment. A person practicing a spiritual discipline is called a sadhaka if male or a sadhika if female.
Spiritual practice is first and foremost mind training, that is, the disciplining of those aspects of our inner life that prevent us from realizing our innate enlightenment. What are those aspects?
The most important blockage is our ignorance (avidya) of Reality as it truly is: that is, our basic spiritual blindness, which not only prevents us from seeing Reality but actually distorts it. That distortion is expressed in the illusion that we are separate from everyone and everything else. This is a function of asmita (“I-am-ness”) or ahamkara (“I-maker”), the ego-personality, which makes an island of each of us in the midst of a supposedly hostile world in which we have to struggle for survival. All this can also be summed up as “delusion” (moha).
Part of moha is the notion that thinking about enlightenment is sufficient for realizing it. Not a few Western practitioners have fallen prey to this error, because they failed to understand the distinction between intellectual comprehension and true understanding. The former remains on the abstract theoretical level, whereas the latter represents the influx of wisdom into the mind, which brings about genuine inner transformation followed by appropriate practical changes in our behavior. For instance, we might have understood that we are mostly sleepwalking through life; yet, this understanding in itself will not awaken us. We also must practice self-awareness or self-remembering in every moment. Or, to give another example, we might recognize that we are unhappy and tend to mistakenly seek happiness by external means; however, this recognition in itself is not enough to bring us happiness; we also must cease wresting happiness from people and things and take the appropriate steps to uncover our inner happiness.
Ignorance of our true nature (which is eternally free, blissful, and luminous) and the false sense of self arising from it also create in us a basic mood of fear (bhaya). This fear can be articulated in the form of fear of another, fear of change, fear of the unknown, fear of death, and so on. Fear undermines our innate happiness and freedom. It can also prevent us from taking the leap into spiritual practice.
Another result of our fundamental ignorance and self-centeredness is a grasping attitude toward life: greed (lobha). We pile up things around us to conceal our sense of inadequacy and our fear and to bolster up our false sense of being an independent self or ego-personality. Like fear, greed comes in many forms, including what could be called “spiritual consumerism”—the widespread attitude of accumulating teachers and teachings as if they were valuable collectibles. Since spiritual life is based on genuine self-transcendence and consistent self-discipline, it cannot be “bought.” Spiritual consumerism equips us to come into possession of counterfeit spirituality only, which is never conducive to true happiness and freedom.
Spiritual ignorance and self-centeredness also manifest in anger (krodha), a particularly negative emotion that is destructive of oneself and others. In a spiritual context, anger shows its face in the choleric rejection of actual self-discipline as well as the teachers and teachings standing for such a discipline. The ego-personality by tendency does not want to change or be interfered with. But all of spiritual practice is designed to break down the walls of the ego, so that the light of the Self (atman) may enter and reintegrate the human being with the rest of the universe.
Over the millennia, the great masters of Yoga have developed numerous systems of mind training that serve the purpose of illumination, or enlightenment (bodha). All are meant to remove ignorance, self-centeredness, self-delusion, greed, anger, and other similar obstacles to enlightenment. Whatever the system, each calls for two things: steady practice (abhyasa) on the one side and dispassion (vairagya) on the other. Practice, or consistent discipline, has the purpose of penetrating the ego-illusion and thus revealing Reality, while dispassion is the means whereby we can rid ourselves of undesirable ballast that stands in the way of realizing true freedom and happiness. Together practice and dispassion propel us onward to enlightenment. Step by step we realize our true nature by shedding everything that cloaks Reality. But we must actually take those steps. Thinking alone will not get us there. Only the organ of wisdom—buddhi—has the power to transform us so that our true nature can shine forth. As the masters of Yoga assure us, we are always already enlightened, but this must become our immediate and continuous apperception. And that realization flowers through spiritual discipline.
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