This talk is based on the question put up by Prof. Anil Kumar to Swami, which is as follows:
"It is most necessary that we mix with people, and sometimes even intimately. We have to interact with one another in our daily life. How are we to speak and what is good for us to speak?”
It is now available on the YouTube on,
https://youtu.be/MFUv5LIboFI
Jai Sairam
For a student seeking Liberation, infatuation with the body and so on, is a 'tragic death'. He who has totally conquered this attachment deserves the state of Liberation. (85)
To him who is aspiring to rise above the fascination of the sense organs for the sense objects and the calamitous confusions of emotions and thoughts, it is indeed a dire tragedy, if he were to allow himself to be tempted, by the fields of immediate pleasures which the body experiences in the midst of objects.
Sankara emphasizes that deha abhimana is equal to spiritual death. So mohaha eva mahamr ̥ tyu; here mohaḥ means deha abhimanaḥ, is not ordinary mr ̥ tyuḥ; but mahā mr ̥ tyuḥ; because it leads to spiritual death of a person; because he will not be allowed to attain spiritual knowledge.
For a materialistic person, this discussion is not relevant at all; because he does not believe in spirit or Brahman or atman or heaven or hell and nothing; he leads an animalistic life; his only belief is that as long as he lives, he should enjoy maximum. To such a materialistic person, we have nothing to talk; but if a person is a spiritual seeker, we would like to give him a statutory warning; that deha abhimana is spiritual death.
Therefore, the more abhimana a person has, the greater is the fear and frightened man dies several times and therefore, even in that sense, it is figurative death; whereas in spiritual sense also, it is death because, he dies to his original spiritual nature, because of his pre- occupation with the external body.
Suppose a person conquers this delusion by his clarity of understanding that the body is a medium; it does not deserve raga; equally it does not deserve dveṣa also; because dveṣa is as much dangerous as raga; because if I neglect the physical body and physical health that is also dangerous because, even spiritual sadhana requires a healthy body. Therefore, negligence of the body is as much a problem as pampering the body.
Therefore, it is like rope-walking; neither should I have attachment, nor should I have hatred. This middle path is extremely difficult; but if a person manages to transcend both raga and dveṣa; moha eva vinirjitaḥ; saha, here also the word mohaḥ means deha abhimana only
To turn our attention away from the sense world and to seek diligently the experience of the Transcendental is the path by which the Higher can be unfolded.
He who has won a victory over his own delusory misconceptions (moha) and is not tempted by the outer world, discovers in himself a steadiness of contemplation with which he can certainly learn to withdraw himself from the whirlpools of matter and come to experience the pure Self.
This is the condition of utter liberation from the entanglements and fascinations of one's matter vestures.
The one who has conquered, saha mukthi padam arhati; for him mokṣa is easiest because physical mortality he will not look upon as his mortality.
Just as the destruction of a medium; destruction of the spectacle is not my destruction. Thus, conquering the fear of physical mortality itself is a great mystery for a human being; so saha mukti padam arhati; he deserves liberation.
Love
.jpg)
Whoever seeks to rediscover the Self by devoting himself to the care of the body is like one who proceeds to cross a river , holding on to a shark which one has mistaken for a log of wood.(84)
Sankara here strikingly brings out how dangerous and suicidal is the attempt of the individual to perfect himself through physical indulgences and enjoyments. Anxiety for the body is an expression of our identification with it. This can come only when, in our delusion, we have totally forgotten our essentially divine nature.
Dealing with anatma, Sankara has first taken up the stula sariram; as the first anatma for the study. He talked about the source of the physical body, in the form of five elements, and incidentally while talking about the physical body, he talks about the physical universe also, because both the body and the world are also born out of the five elements alone.
And he said that the physical world is called visayi; because it has the potential of binding a person. pointed out that one has to be extremely careful while handling the world, because if a person is not alert, he may easily develop powerful raga or dvesa; either of this is a big bondage. Not only raga-dvesas are direct bondage, indirectly also, they become a big obstacle for liberation.
And having talked about the binding nature of the external world, now Sankara talks about the binding nature of the very physical body itself; one's own physical body, because that is also as much a viṣaya as the external world.
Just as one can develop raga-dvesa towards the external world; one can develop raga-dveṣa towards one's own body; and therefore one should be careful and of these two rāga and dvēṣa; the generally pre-dominant weakness is raga or attachment;
Therefore Sankara criticizes here deha abhimana or raga towards the body and he says, as long as a person has got deha-ragah; then he is never going to cross the ocean of samsara; because once there is a deha-raga; attachment to the body; he will be more and more interested in physical nourishment, physical decoration; physical entertainment.
The whole time and energy will be dedicated to this alone, there will be no time for higher pursuit at all.
If such a Jiva has got two-fold desires, one is nourishing and entertaining the body or bodily attachment and simultaneously he has spiritual desire also; he says it will never work together; because it is like what?
sa nadi tartum gacchati. He is attempting to cross a river with the help of what; ragam graham; by taking hold of a crocodile, assuming the crocodile is a log of wood, he wants to cross over the river holding on to that; and how it will not work.
Not only he will not reach the shore, at least without the log of wood, he could have survived in the river for sometime, but with a crocodile, his death will be sooner. Similarly, dēha abhīmāna will only cause only imminent spiritual death; it can never take a person across saṁsāra; and therefore dēha abhīmāna has to be handled.
Ignorance and knowledge cannot exist at the same place and the same time. Where the ghost is recognized, there the post is non-existent, and one who recognizes the post, to him the ghost is not available at all. Similarly, one's beloved in a dream is non- existent in the waking state.
So, he who is attached to his body and is wasting his time and energy nourishing and fattening it is indeed a fool. He is as far removed from the goal as the recognition of the rope is from one who is dying in delusion of being bitten by a serpent.
Love
