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Chapter 13
Distinction between The Self And The Not-Self
69. Attachment To The Body Wastes Life
11. Nowadays, medical science is performing all kinds of miracles. Germs are injected into the bodies of living animals, multiplied there and diseases produced there to watch their effects. Living animals are thus tortured and the knowledge gained is then used to prolong the life of this worthless body. All this goes on in the name of compassion and humanitarianism! Inoculation is only one among the many horrid things invented by medical science. But the body for whose sake all this is done is as fragile as glass. It can break at any moment. All these efforts are being made to sustain the body; but what is the outcome? Even as we are trying to sustain this fragile body, we see that it goes on disintegrating. Yet we keep trying to pamper the body. 12. It never occurs to us to find out the kind of food that would make the mind and intellect sattvik. Man never considers what should be done and whose help should be sought to purify the mind and the intellect. All that he is anxious for is to make the body plump, to increase layers of flesh thereon. But these layers are bound to peel off in course of time. Then what is the use of letting the fat accumulate in the body till it becomes a burden and an encumbrance? The body is an instrument at our disposal and we should certainly do whatever is necessary to keep it in order. We take work from a machine, but do we identify ourselves with it? Why cannot one have the same attitude towards the body machine? |
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