What is the difference between austerity and penance?

From Rambhadra Priya P:
Prabhupada uses both words in Gita 17.15 purport.

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
large snowball now is Hare Krishna question from Rambhadra Priya Prabhu what is the difference between austerity and penance answer austerity generally refers to tapasya and penance refers to prayaschita so austerity is usually although both involve the giving up of certain forms of pleasure or the acceptance of certain forms of pain for example when we fast so at the time of fasting we give up certain pleasure that is the pleasure of eating and they accept certain pain the pain of abstaining from food or there may be further abstaining from water or whatever depending on the kind of fast that we are doing so in terms of action quite often both have the similar two components of giving up something pleasant and accepting something unpleasant however the intention on the two is different usually prayaschita or penance is done as a act of atonement for some wrongdoing so penance is usually used in that sense but Srila Prabhupada sometimes groups the two of them together and he sometimes use the word penance in the sense of austerity also but technically speaking the word penance is has a more of at least the word as it used in English and as it is being usually translated from Sanskrit to English it is more used in the sense of atonement so atonement can be done in various ways atonement can be done by say um we go to some holy place and then we take bath in the Ganga over there or we feed the sadhus over there or we give some charity over there so all those can also be formed of atonement but penance is a specific form of atonement where one accepts some usually bodily discomfort bodily pain as a voluntarily accepted reaction for one’s wrongdoing so that one does not get eventually the sinful reaction in future on the other hand austerity is usually used in the sense of it is done with the intention of gaining something positive that means it can that positive gain can be material or spiritual so we can have somebody like Hiranyakashipu or Ravana performing severe austerities for the sake of gaining god-like powers so Hiranyakashipu performed austerity to gain immortality so that is what he did was not exactly penance it is not that he was thinking I am sinful and I want to avoid sinful reaction no he is his goal was positive not in the sense that it was a glorious goal in terms of the spiritually glorious but positive in the sense that it was not that he was avoiding something like some negative he was not fearing some reaction and doing it Indra for example after he said uh does some brahmatya like when he did he killed Vishwaroopa and then Vithrasura then he had to suffer because of that and that suffering was the consequence of that suffering which had to undergo and which he underwent by doing some doing some atonement that can in one sense be called as penance so austerity is the deprivation of bodily necessities bodily pleasures and necessities for the sake of gaining something higher when Maharaj Yushabdev talks about tapasya he talks about transcendental austerity for the sake of gaining eternal happiness so in general penance has a more of a sense of being done to avoid some negative reaction whereas austerity is done for gaining something positive and although both may involve similar actions so generally speaking for a posterity will be correlated tapasya and atone and penance is correlated more with atonement uh which has a which is which is the equivalent of prayaschita and now there is a third word pashyatap is more of internal feeling of repentance of remorse it is not exactly equated with that pashyatap may be expressed as prayaschita so that feeling of remorse and repentance will be expressed through doing of some atonement which may involve some penance so we shouldn’t get too caught up in linguistics because sometimes the sanskrit words are not translatable in a equivalent sense and that’s why we have to when such words are used we have to look at what the original sanskrit is and then we can get a clearer understanding but broadly speaking this is the understanding of the difference between austerity and penance that one is more austerity is more for gaining something positive whereas penance is usually in the sense of atonement of wanting to avoid something negative thank you.
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