Svadhyaya means self-education, education of the self, study of the self, observe our self, self inquiry. Sva means self and adhyaya means education. Understanding our self is a very large topic. Understanding our self, means understanding this universe.
We are in existence because of the sun, earth, plants, water, sky, soil, Our mother, father and so on. So to understand ourselves we need to understand the whole universe .
If we understand the balance of this universe, the balance of our breath in and breath out, the balance of seasons and cycles of life we have understood the self.
Just think if you eat an apple, how many factors play their role. Apples grow on trees. Trees needs soil, water, earth, sun, air, space, light, carbon dioxide to grow, so on and so forth. Knowledge of these things gives us more clues to knowing ourselves.
Svadhyaya is about giving time to know ourselves. The more we know about ourselves, we live better lives. We start understanding our thoughts, emotions, natural expressions, weaknesses, habits. We start to feel which part of our body is healthy and which part of our body has disease. We start to understand which process or change would improve our diseased body part.
As we understand nature better, we understand ourselves better.
Svadhyaya leads us to self improvement and thus improvement of this world as a whole.
Excerpts of this blog taken from here.
