tapas
tapas, in religions of South Asia, particularly Hinduism, ascetic practice carried out to achieve spiritual power, purification, or liberation.
The term tapas has had different connotations through the history of Hinduism. In the ancient Vedic texts, tapas refers to the “inner heat” created by the practice of physical austerities, and it also figured in creation myths as a means by which Prajapati (the main creator god) brought the world into existence. Vedic religion highlighted the use of fire (Agni) in sacrificial rituals. In the early Upanishads, however, the Vedic sacrificial fire was conceptually internalized, and increasing emphasis was placed on cultivating the internal fire (tapas) through asceticism as a means of achieving religious ends. In later Hinduism the practice of tapas was associated with yogic discipline as a way of purifying the body in preparation for the more exacting spiritual exercises leading to liberation (moksha). Among the austerities mentioned are fasting, the holding of difficult and often painful bodily postures (asanas), vigils kept in the presence of fires or extreme cold, and breath control. The practice of tapas is especially associated with the god Shiva, who is often depicted as the epitome of ascetic practice.
In Jainism asceticism is seen as a way of preventing new karma (the effects of good or bad action) from forming and accruing to the soul (jiva), as well as a way of getting rid of accrued karma, and is thus one of the central means of breaking the cycle of rebirths (samsara). Jains distinguish between methods of external tapas—such as fasting (including the most severe form, fasting unto death, or sallekhana), restricting the intake of food, meditating, and living in seclusion—and internal tapas which include contemplation, confession, and repentance of sins.
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At the time of the founding of Buddhism, roughly contemporary with that of Jainism and the composition of the early Upanishads, ascetic movements regarded the monastic life of renunciation, chastity, poverty, and self-mortification as the primary path to enlightenment and liberation. According to biographies of the Buddha, he initially followed the path of severe asceticism. Yet the Buddha renounced the extremes of self-indulgence in pleasures and self-mortification through ascetic practice, insisting instead on the pursuit of the “middle way” as the right path to liberation. In the Dhammapada (verse 184) the Buddha says that the best tapas is khanti (Pali: “patience” or “forbearance”), emphasizing moral discipline over austerity.