Swami Bapa knows that true happiness comes from Maharaj, and that  anything we perceive  through our senses is just temporary. Therefore, he finds joy not in the physical comforts of the five senses, but in realizing the love Maharaj has for all of us in his heart.

What always comes to your mind when we say tapa (austerities)? We usually remember Nilkanth Varni, who did tapa for months in the Himalayas. But do you know that there are three types of tapa? In the Shrimad Bhagwad Gita, Shri Krishna Bhagwan explains the three different types of tapa. The first type is physical tapa, where we should try to forget the body and dedicate it to Maharaj and Swami. The second type is verbal, where we should never say things to hurt others and be honest and caring. The last type is mental, where we try to focus only on Maharaj and Swami and nothing else.

Swami Bapa has shown all three types of tapa throughout his entire life. One such example is his total control over the sense of taste. Once, Swami Bapa was in Sarangpur on a hot summer day. A sadhu came up to him and offered him some sweet, cool sugarcane juice. It was the ideal drink for a hot day. However, Swami Bapa turned down the drink. Instead, he asked why he had brought it, telling him he had not wanted it yesterday either. He said that if he drank it now, someone would offer it to him again tomorrow, and then it would become a habit. Swami Bapa thus shows us that to only accept what we need, or else we will start to think too much about what we want and then lose our focus on Maharaj and Swami.

Once, a devotee brought some flour that had been freshly grounded using his new hand-mill. He was so excited to provide flour for Swami Bapa that he forgot that the new hand-mill had to be used a few times before the ground flour can be edible for cooking. Yet the flour was used to make rotlis. Swami Bapa finished his meal and when the sadhus sat down to eat, they realized that the rotlis made from the new flour was full of very small grains of stone. Swami Bapa had eaten the rotlis without the slightest complaint.

Such prasangs show how little Swami Bapa pays attention to pleasures for the body. Instead, he prefers to only please Maharaj and his guru. This is where he finds his true, eternal happiness. Like Swami Bapa, we should try to control our mind, body and speech.