NIYAMA THE ' DOES ' OF EIGHT FOLD PATH

     We talked in past about the things or the rules of the things that we should not do . Now we will mention the things that we should do . As mentioned before these are 1. Saunch (cleanliness), 2. santosh (satisfaction ) 3. Tap(control on sense organs )4.Swadhyay (study of the scriptures).5. Ishwarpranidhan ( offering all these to the God ).
     It is easy to see , how all these changes in our behaviour will help us on controlling our thought s and help us to meditate. . Saunch , which means cleanliness . This does mean both the body and mind both . To take a bath and then not have 'clean ' thoughts is not going to help . If our body is not clean , we may catch infection or may have things that would take our attention away from the meditation . e.g . itching or stuffy nose or belching etc , these things will divert our attention . So will the bad or unclean thoughts . These may be related to out day to day conflicts or 'attachments ' or attraction etc . So we need to be careful . If we get too involved in politics or sports or anything else , we will be thinking about and it will divert our mind .So we need to be 'clean'
     Santosh or satisfaction with whatever we 'get ' or not get. If we think too much about money or lack of it and are not happy with what we got it will create agitation in our mind . It may be our health or job or house or car or any other things that we normally we feel are ' essential ' for living  , all of these can cause problem . This does not mean we should do no attempts to get better . But we should be happy or satisfied with what we get . We can continue to try , but not get attached to it to a point of being unhappy  , if we don't get it .
    Tap . or control over the sense organ satisfaction  .Again this is same as before ,i.e..  not to get attachment with these things . We tend to complain about too hot or too cold . We also tend to eat to satisfy and not to survive. Same with all the other sense organs . We need to have control on all these sense satisfying activities.
     Swadhyay or the study of the scriptures Then Ishwarpranidhan, which means offering all these to the God . These last 3 are together called 'kriya yaga'. The last one when we do 'every ' action for the God and offer him the fruits of it , it takes away the
"I -ness "away and this will set us free from the attachment and in turn freedom from the law of karma and ultimately from the cycle of death and birth .
 I just want to clarify one thing about the study of the scripture . This does not mean just reading , but it means understanding  and practicing the principles in these Scriptures .