What is night for one is day for the other

When for every thing the night does break, 

then the self-controlled are wide awake; 

and when other creatures are roused to light, 

for the introspective, it is the night. (Gita 2.69} 

yā niśā sarva-bhūtānāṁ tasyāṁ jāgarti saṁyamī 

yasyāṁ jāgrati bhūtāni sā niśā paśyato muneḥ 

 Not so long ago a young friend wrote a little piece on the ten things he had learned from his Krishna bhakti experience after a few years of chanting.First on his list was the benefit of getting up early in the morning and doing sadhana at that auspicious time of day.

It is true that I got a taste in Iskcon for getting up at the Brahma Muhurta and doing bhajan before the sun comes up. I had fallen off a lot before I returned to India, but in Rishikesh I was an eager early riser and present in the meditation hall to enjoy the atmosphere alone at four in the morning or earlier. You get a taste for the darkness, which is truly a rarity in our Kaliyuga.

Early rising a habit that is well worth cultivating--even if one can only scrape together a few minutes of chanting or meditating before tumbling out onto life's daily treadmill.

For the past few weeks I have been getting into the habit of coming to the library and working without distraction from the internet in the way that inevitably happens when I am at home. Mental hygiene is harder to maintain in this current world of constant information bombardment.

And that seems to be have been made even worse by the easy sharing of video and sound. Back in the early days of the internet you could barely get an email and for a long time things were still very much dependent on reading the written word. Now you have TikTok, a new kind of cocaine or crystal meth, perhaps even more dangerous in its potency to bind one to material consciousness or sin.

Ekāgratā, freedom from kṣepa and vikṣepa are almost impossible when the enchantments of novelty await us mere seconds away. And unfortunately this downward trail leads to mūḍha, a kind of total capitulation to the material menu provided by Algorithms.

One needs order in life. And one needs to have purpose and direction. All that is the field of spiritual development governed by karma-yoga, because karma-yoga engages the external senses with the external world, so-called "reality."

And karma-yoga begins with self-discipline and control.

tasmāt tvam indriyāṇy ādau niyamya bharatarṣabha...

The first way to control your senses is through your work, but that self-control ultimately has to serve a higher purpose than the promises and rewards provided by material nature . When one sees the picture in its totality, the work of survival and of self-improvement has to be undergirded with an inwardness, that will be rewarded by the accumulated benefits of discipline and abhyāsa, repetition--the cultivation of beneficial habits, saṁskāras. The transformation of our instinctual being, our vāsanās.

yuktāhāra-vihārasya yukta-ceṣṭasya karmasu |

yukta-svapnāvabodhasya yogo bhavati duḥkhahā ||

"For one who has balanced diet and recreation, balanced effort in work, balanced sleep and wakefulness, yoga will destroy all one's miseries."

Our svadharma, our vocation, is the first path on which one can find the gift of single-mindedness. But one has to keep in mind the ultimate goal of yoga and combine work with an internal practice. In the dark at the end of night, when the world is most asleep.

parāñci khāni vyat ṛṇat svayambhūs

tasmāt parā ṅ paśyati nāntarātman
kaścid dhīra ḥ pratyag-ātmānam aik ṣad
āvṛtta-cak ṣur am ṛtatvam icchan

"The Self-born Creator pierced holes facing outward [i.e., doors of sense perception in the body]. Therefore all creatures look outward and do not see the Soul within. Desiring immortality, one who is wise turns his eyes inward and sees the indwelling Atman." (Kaṭha Upaniṣad, 2.1.1)

Jai Sri Radhe !