The Fire of Learning

Over the last week and a half, I have found myself reflecting deeply on spiritual tapas.

It rose up strongly during the eco-printing, botanical printing, natural dye, and block printing course I attended in Mysore. Before I went, I could not have fully imagined how deeply this work would touch me. To work directly with nature in this way felt profoundly connecting. Making colour from plants, printing with leaves, working with the forms and textures of the natural world, and learning through wood, cloth, water, iron, tannin, and time, it all felt awe-inspiring.

Again and again, I found myself overwhelmed by the beauty and intelligence of these traditions. There is so much scientific knowledge held within these ancient practices. The recipes, the methods, the experimentation, the patience, the generations of people who came to understand how nature could be transformed into colour and imprint, it is extraordinary. At times, I felt almost bewildered by it. In the best way.

I was so engaged, so heart-connected to the process, that I could not imagine wanting to miss even a moment of the course.

And yet, this is where tapas entered the picture…

The workshop was held in a large industrial shed with a tin roof and tin walls, open only through wide windows to the natural environment outside. On the very day I arrived, Mysore and much of Tamil Nadu moved into what I can only describe as a heatwave. Every day reached around 37 or 38 degrees, and by 10 o’clock in the morning the shed felt like an oven.

I do not cope well with heat at the best of times. But still, I wanted to stay. The desire to learn was so strong. The pull I felt towards this work was so deep that I kept trying to remain in it, to stay present, to keep absorbing all that I could. Yet heat has a way of changing everything. Concentration becomes harder. The mind goes cloudy. The body starts to strain. Dehydration creeps in. Headaches begin. There is a point where presence becomes more difficult to access because the body is no longer able to support it.

Each day, I stayed as long as I could, and then I left early, because I knew I had to. My health came first.

But the experience stayed with me. It kept turning in my mind and heart. Why this intensity? Why did something I felt so deeply called to also come wrapped in such literal fire? Why was I being asked to learn in these conditions?

And slowly I began to see that the heat itself had become part of the teaching.

There was the outer process of natural dyeing, eco-printing, and block printing. But alongside it, there was another process unfolding in me. The whole experience carried the feeling of tapas, not only in the spiritual sense of disciplined effort, but in the truest sense of being held in a refining fire.

Not because suffering is noble in itself.
Not because everything valuable must be painfully earned.
But because some forms of learning ask something of us. They ask us to stay steady in the midst of intensity. They ask us to meet both beauty and challenge at the same time. They ask us to remain devoted without becoming rigid, and to honour the call without abandoning the body.

That, perhaps, is the part that feels most important to me.

The tapas was not in forcing myself to stay no matter what. It was not in ignoring the warning signs or pushing beyond wisdom. It was in showing up each day with sincerity. It was in remaining as long as I truly could. It was in loving the process enough to endure discomfort, but respecting myself enough to leave when my body said, enough.

There was something deeply spiritual in that balance.

I also cannot help but feel that there was some kind of karmic grace in it. As though this knowledge was not simply being handed to me casually, but received through a process of clearing, refining, and deepening. As though the heat was doing its own unseen work, burning through something old while making room for something new. Not as punishment, but as preparation.

And perhaps that is what spiritual tapas really is.

It is not self-punishment.
It is not hardness.
It is not a test designed to break us.

It is the fire that clarifies.
The fire that strips away what is unnecessary.
The fire that asks, how much do you love this, and how present can you remain while being transformed by it?

I went to Mysore to learn techniques. And I did. I received extraordinary knowledge and skill from highly experienced practitioners, and I feel deeply grateful for that. But I also left with something more than instruction. I left with the feeling that this work had entered me through more than the mind. It passed through the body, through challenge, through humility, through heat, and through devotion.

Maybe that is why it feels so alive in me.

As I looked through my photos to select a few for the blog, I was struck by how much the dyeing process itself mirrored what I had been feeling inwardly.

A pot of marigold petals or onion skins sits over heat, and at first it is simply plant matter and water. But slowly, through warmth, time, and attention, something hidden begins to release. Colour emerges. Change begins. Then the cloth is lowered into that same heat, and what enters plain comes out transformed, carrying a new depth, richness, and beauty it did not hold before. It feels impossible not to see the parallel.

Something in me, too, was steeping in that process.

Working with nature in this way already feels sacred. But now I understand more clearly that the path of learning it may also be sacred. Not always easy. Not always comfortable. But sacred all the same.

Some forms of knowledge do not arrive lightly.
They come through fire.
And when they do, they leave an imprint.