Guest guest Posted June 4, 2006 Report Share Posted June 4, 2006 Om Namah Sivaya Man wants happiness. He shuns pain. He moves heaven and earth to get the happiness he wants from sensual objects and, lo, gets himself entangled in the inextricable meshes of Maya. Poor man! He does not know that these objects are perishable and evanescent, finite and conditioned in time, space and causation. And what is more, he fails to get the desired happiness from them. This world is imperfect (Apurna) and there is uncertainty of life. A barrister-at-law talks at the telephone, ascends the staircase to take his meals and, alas, while ascending he dies on the staircase. Such instances are not uncommon to you all. There is not an iota of happiness in objects, because they are insentient (Jada). Even the sensual pleasure is a reflection of Atmic Bliss only. Just as a dog that sucks a dry bone in the street imagines foolishly that blood is oozing out of the dry bone, whereas blood is really oozing from its own palate, so also worldly-minded people foolishly imagine that the happiness they enjoy in everyday life comes from objects only. You can find eternal, infinite, supreme peace and bliss only in your Atma which shines in all its splendour and glory in the chambers of your heart. It is an embodiment of Bliss (Ananda Swarupa). There is mental uneasiness, dissatisfaction, discontentment and restlessness even in multimillionaires and kings. Some kind of sorrow, misery or pain is invariably present even when they are in the height of enjoyment of worldly pleasures. Show me a man who is perfectly happy? When the marriage of his second son is being celebrated, the remembrance of the death of his first son who passed away only sometime ago torments his mind. Mind is so constituted that the rhythm of pleasure and pain is kept up like the rhythm of systole and diastole of the heart. You entertain the fear that the happiness will pass away soon, when you are in happy surroundings. This adds pain, when you are in the enjoyment of sensual pleasures. Even if you remove the pain by some means or other, it again manifests in some form or other such as loss of property, disease, death, hostility and disappointment. There is no hope of immortality by means of riches. Such indeed is the emphatic and irrefutable declaration of the Upanishads. "Na karmana na prajayana dhanena tyagenaike amritatvamanasuh. Neither by rituals, nor by progeny, nor by riches but by renunciation alone one can attain immortality." Mere giving up of objects will not constitute real renunciation. Dear friends, remember this point well. True Tyaga or renunciation consists in renouncing egoism, "I-ness,mine-ness," selfishness, desires and cravings of all sorts. ---Sri Swami Sivananda Sivaya Namah Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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