Talks on the Gita -Vinoba 13

Chapter 2 THE TEACHING IN BRIEF: SELF-KNOWLEDGE AND EQUANIMITY 7. Awareness Of The Self That Transcends The Body 10. But, instead of using the body as an instrument, we lose ourselves in it and stunt our spirit whereby the body, which has little intrinsic worth, is made of less worth. That is why the saints vehemently say, ‘देह आणि देहसंबंधें निंदावी। इतरें वंदावी श्र्वानसूकरें ।’ ।’ (‘One should censure the narrow confinement to the body and the blood-relations and venerate others, even the pigs and the dogs!’) Do not, therefore, worship the body and its ties all the time. Learn to relate to others as well. The saints are thus exhorting us to broaden our horizon. Do we ever open our hearts to others outside our narrow circle of friends and relatives? Do we ever try to identify ourselves with others? Do we let our swan-Self—the bird of the spirit—escape from the cage of the body and breathe freedom? Does it ever occur to us that we should widen the circle of our friends continually so as to ultimately encompass the whole world and feel that the whole world is ours and that we belong to the whole world? We write letters to our relatives from the jail. What is special about it? But would you write to a thief convict—not a political prisoner—whom you have befriended here, after his release? 11. The Self is ever restless to reach out to others. It longs to embrace the whole world. But we shut it up in a cell. We have imprisoned the soul and are not even conscious of it. From morning till evening, we are busy minding the body. Day and night we worry about how fat or thin we are. One would think that there was no other joy in the world. But even beasts experience the pleasures of the senses. Will you not like to taste the joy of giving, the joy of controlling the palate? What joy there is in giving away your full plate of food though you too suffer from hunger? A mother, when she works hard for the sake of her child, knows something of this joy. In fact, even when one draws a small circle around the ‘I and the mine’, one is unconsciously striving to experience the joy in the enlargement of the self. Thereby the self, otherwise encased in the body, is released to a limited extent and for a little while. But what sort of a release is this? It is like a prisoner coming out of his cell into the prison courtyard. This hardly satisfies the self’s aspirations. It wants the joy of unbounded freedom. 12. In short, a seeker after truth should avoid the by-lanes of adharma (unrighteousness) and paradharma (the dharma which is not his own) and take to the natural and straight path of swadharma. He should follow it steadfastly. Bearing in mind that the body is transient, it should be used for the sake of the performance of swadharma and should be given up for its sake when the need arises Remaining ever aware of the eternal and all-pervading nature of the Self, the distinction of ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ should be removed from the mind. The Lord has expounded these three principles of life. One who follows them would undoubtedly have, some day or the other, the experience of ‘नरदेहाचेनि साधने, सच्चिदानंदपदवि घेणें।’ (using the human body as an instrument, one can reach the exalted state of sat-chit-ananda.).