Sādhanā

''Sādhanā'' (; ; ) is an ego-transcending spiritual practice. It includes a variety of disciplines in Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions that are followed in order to achieve various spiritual or ritual objectives.

Sadhana is done for attaining detachment from worldly things, which can be a goal of a Sadhu. Karma yoga, Bhakti yoga and Gnyan yoga can also be described as Sadhana, in that constant efforts to achieve maximum level of perfection in all streams in day-to-day life can be described as Sadhana.

''Sādhanā'' can also refer to a tantric liturgy or liturgical manual, that is, the instructions to carry out a certain practice.

Definitions

The historian N. Bhattacharyya provides a working definition of the benefits of sādhanā as follows:

B. K. S. Iyengar (1993: p. 22), in his English translation of and commentary to the ''Yoga Sutras of Patanjali'', defines sādhanā in relation to abhyāsa and kriyā:

Paths

The term sādhanā means "methodical discipline to attain desired knowledge or goal". Sadhana is also done for attaining detachment from worldly things which can be a goal, a person undertaking such a practice is known in Sanskrit as a sādhu (female ''sādhvi''), sādhaka (female ''sādhakā'') or yogi (Tibetan ''pawo''; feminine yogini or dakini, Tibetan ''khandroma''). The goal of sādhanā is to attain some level of spiritual realization, which can be either enlightenment, pure love of God (prema), liberation (moksha) from the cycle of birth and death (saṃsāra), or a particular goal such as the blessings of a deity as in the Bhakti traditions.

Sādhanā can involve meditation, chanting of mantra sometimes with the help of prayer beads, puja to a deity, yajña, and in very rare cases mortification of the flesh or tantric practices such as performing one's particular ''sādhanā'' within a cremation ground.

Traditionally in some Hindu and Buddhist traditions in order to embark on a specific path of sādhanā, a guru may be required to give the necessary instructions. This approach is typified by some Tantric traditions, in which initiation by a guru is sometimes identified as a specific stage of sādhanā. On the other hand, individual renunciates may develop their own spiritual practice without participating in organized groups.

Sādhanā in Yoga

The ''Yoga Sutras'' has 196 sūtras with ideas and wisdom that a sādhaka can take for a path towards self-realization. B. K. S. Iyengar (1993: p. 3) notes that:

Kriyāyoga gives us the practical disciplines needed to scale the spiritual heights.....the four padas of the Yoga Sūtras describe different disciplines of practice, the qualities or aspects of which vary according to the development of intelligence and refinement of consciousness of each sādhaka.

In the ''Yoga Sutras'' II.1, Patañjali and his commentators write that the Kriyāyoga (action-oriented type of yoga) is to be undertaken by those whose mind is not already fixed. The fixing or "stilling of the changing states of mind" (''Yoga Sutras'' I.2) is the goal of yoga, for which Kriyāyoga is necessary as a first step for a sādhaka. There are three aspects of Kriyāyoga:

# Discipline - ''tapas,'' comprises the "''sāttvicizing''" of one's sensual engagements or controlling one's senses and making sure that what they consume is amenable to a ''sattvic'' mind.
# Study - ''svādhyāya,'' is taken by Vyāsa, the main commentator on the ''Yoga Sutras'', to refer to the chanting of ''mantras'' (an act which is usually termed j''apa'') and the study of scriptures (''jñāna'').
# Dedication to God - ''Īśvara-praṇidhāna'', meaning dedicating all of ones actions to God ('' Īśvara''), which the commentators implicitly refer to the ''bhakti''-centered karma-yoga that is described in the second chapter of the Gita.
Vachaspati Mishra, an influential commentator on the ''Yoga Sutras'', notes that these three aspects of Kriyāyoga are necessary in order to purify the mind, making it more ''sāttvic'' than ''rājasic'' or ''tāmasic''. Such purity of the mind allows one to then cultivate practice (''abhyāsa'') and dispassion (''vairāgya''), which are prerequisites for achieving the stilling of the mind.

Tantric ''sādhanā''

The tantric rituals are called "''sādhanā''". Some of the well known ''sādhanās'' are:

# '' śāva sādhanā'' (''sādhanā'' done while visualizing sitting on a corpse).
# ''śmaśāna sādhanā'' (''sādhanā'' done while visualizing being in a crematorium or cremation ground).
# ''pañca-muṇḍa sādhanā'' (''sādhanā'' done while visualizing sitting on a seat of five skulls).

Buddhism

In Vajrayāna Buddhism and the Nalanda

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