By Dada Vedaprajinananda

“Cleanliness is next to Godliness.”  Everyone has heard this expression and most would people would probably agree with it.  The ancient yogis felt the same way and that is why they listed Shaoca, which means cleanliness and purity of mind, as the first of five principles of self-controlled conduct (Niyama) which are designed to bring an individual into harmony with his or her internal environment.

If your goal is to reach a higher state of consciousness, then it is important to maintain a degree of cleanliness and order in your immediate surroundings.  Keeping your body, clothing, living and working areas in a clean state have an immediate effect on your mind. So, for a yogi, and indeed for most people, it is well understood that attention has to be paid towards these external factors.

Try to meditate in a messy and dirty place, and then compare it with your meditation in a clean and pristine setting.  You will notice a difference. If you are not a meditator, you can make another kind of experiment. Sit at a messy and cluttered desk and try to do some intellectual work, like writing as essay such as this one.  Then, clean up your work area and try it again, you may find it easier and more efficient to work in the more orderly environment.  Your work and your meditation, and your life in general will all be more rewarding when you pay attention to your external environment and do whatever you can to maintain its cleanliness.

Cleaning your body or clothing, or sweeping your room are easy enough to do, but there is another dimension of shaoca which is not so apparent and may be more difficult to practice.  Our internal environment, the thoughts in our mind, should also be kept clean and pure.

Jealousy, hate and selfishness are not the kind of thoughts and feelings that will help in our quest to expand our minds and perfect our consciousness.  They are impediments that have to be tackled.

Sometimes when little kids say vulgar words their parents threaten to wash their mouths with soap.  But unfortunately there is no detergent that can clean up a dirty mind. The yogis recommend that we take another approach.

No one is perfect. It is natural that we sometimes have thoughts and feelings that are not in harmony with our stated ideals. Suppose that a birthday cake is being decorated and the candles are lit.  You look at it and think, “I would like to eat the whole cake,” despite the fact that there are five other people with you.  What should you do?

When something like this happens it is important to put an opposite thought in your mind, and think, “I will cut and serve everyone before taking my piece of cake.” After you think this, you should put this thought into practice and serve everybody.  When you are finished doing this, your selfish thought will have been cleansed from your mind.

Thus one of the best means of maintaining internal purity of mind is to counter any negative thoughts with their opposite counterparts and then bring those good thoughts into fruition.

There are also some other factors that affect psychic purity. The environment around us, which we cannot always control, has a profound effect on what we think. For example, if you continuously watch movies with “bad people doing bad things” then it is going to have an effect on how you think, and possibly on how you speak and behave.

That is why Buddha gave his disciples a few simple guidelines to help them maintain the balance and purity of their minds.  He said that if you see something that is degrading, something that will “bring you down” then take your eyes away from it. If you hear something that is not good for your mental and spiritual well-being, then take your ears away from that sound.  If you smell something that is not good, then take your nose away from that smell.  If you taste something that is not good, then take your tongue and your mouth away from that substance. He told his monk disciples that if they could maintain all-around self-control they would overcome all sorrow.

We cannot avoid seeing a vulgar billboard once, but it is our choice whether we will linger and continue to look at it, or move on to something more uplifting. Making this kind of choice is an important aspect of following the yogic principle of shaoca.

If you make an effort to strive for cleanliness and purity in both your environment and your mind, you will be well-rewarded with serene and blissful thoughts.