|
|
The Food Kosha
154. This body is the product of food, and
constitutes the material sheath. It depends on food and dies without it.
It is a mass of skin, flesh, blood, bones and uncleanness. It is not fit
to see as oneself, who is ever pure.
155. The body did not exist before birth, nor will it exist after
death. It is born for a moment, its qualities are momentary, and it is
inherently changing. It is not a single thing, but inert, and should be
viewed like an earthen pot. How could it be one's true self, which is
the observer of changing phenomena?
156. Made up of arms and legs and so on, the body cannot be one's
true self as it can live on without various limbs, and other faculties
persist without them. What is controlled cannot be the controller.
157. While the body of the observer is of a specific nature,
behaviour and situation, it is clear that the nature of one's true self
is devoid of characteristics.
158. How could the body, which is a heap of bones, covered with
flesh, full of filth and highly impure, be oneself, the featureless
observer?
159. The deluded man makes the assumption that he is the mass of
skin, flesh, fat bones and filth, while the man who is strong in
discrimination knows himself as devoid of characteristics, the innate
supreme Reality.
160. 'I am the body' is the opinion of the fool. 'I am body and soul'
is the view of the scholar, while for the great-souled, discriminating
man, his inner knowledge is 'I am God'.
161. Get rid of the opinion of yourself as this mass of skin, flesh,
fat, bones and filth, foolish one, and make yourself instead the self of
everything, the God beyond all thought, and enjoy supreme peace.
162. While the scholar does not overcome his sense of 'I am this' in
the body and its faculties, there is no liberation for him, however much
he may be learned in religion and philosophy.
163. Just as you have no self identification with your shadow-body,
reflection-body, dream-body or imagination-body, so you should not have
with the living body either.
164. Identification of oneself with the body is the seed of the pain
of birth etc. in people attached to the unreal, so get rid of it with
care. When this thought is eliminated, there is no more desire for
rebirth.
The Vital-Breath Kosha
165. The vital energy joined to the five activities
forms the vitality sheath, by which the material sheath is filled, and
engages in all these activities.
166. The Breath, being a product of the vital energy, is not one's
true nature either. Like the air, it enters and leaves the body, and
knows neither its own or other people's good or bad, dependent as it is
on something else.
The Mind Kosha
167. The faculty of knowledge and the mind itself
constitute the mind-made sheath, the cause of such distinctions as 'me'
and 'mine'. It is strong and has the faculty of creating distinctions of
perception etc., and works itself through the vitality sheath.
168. The mind-made fire burns the multiplicity of experience in the
fuel of numerous desires of the senses presented as oblations in the
form of sense objects by the five senses like five priests.
169. There is no such thing as ignorance beyond the thinking mind.
Thought is itself ignorance, the cause of the bondage of becoming. When
thought is eliminated, everything else is eliminated. When thought
increases everything else increases.
170. In sleep which is devoid of actual experience, it is the mind
alone which produces everything, the experiencer and everything else, by
its own power, and in the waking state there is no difference. All this
is the product of the mind.
171. In deep sleep when the thinking mind has gone into abeyance
there is nothing, by every one's experience, so man's Samsara is a mind
creation, and has no real existence.
172. Cloud is gathered by the wind, and is driven away by it too.
Bondage is imagined by the mind, and liberation is imagined by it too.
173. By dwelling with desire on the body and other senses the mind
binds a man like an animal with a rope, and the same mind liberates him
from the bond by creating simple distaste for the senses as if they were
poison.
174. Thus the mind is the cause of a man's finding both bondage and
liberation. When soiled with the attribute of desire it is the cause of
bondage, and when clear of desire and ignorance it is the cause of
liberation.
175. By achieving the purity of an habitual discrimination and
dispassion, the mind is inclined to liberation, so the wise seeker after
liberation should first develop these.
176. A great tiger known as the mind lives in the forest of the
senses, so pious seekers after liberation should not go there.
177. The mind continually presents endless coarse or subtle sense
experiences for a person -- all the differences of physique, caste,
state and birth, and the fruits resulting from attributes and actions.
178. The mind continually confuses that which is by nature
unattached, binding it with the fetters of body, senses and faculties so
that it thinks in terms of 'me' and 'mine' in the experiences he is
achieving.
179. Man's Samsara is due to the error of additions (to his true
nature), and it is from the mind's imagination that the bondage of these
additions comes. This is the cause of the pain of birth and so on for
the man without discrimination who is filled with desire and ignorance.
180. That is why the wise who have experienced reality call the mind
ignorance, for it is by that that everything is driven, like a mass of
clouds by the wind.
181. So the mind must be earnestly purified by the seeker after
liberation. Once it is purified, the fruit of liberation comes easily to
hand.
182. Completely rooting out desire for the senses and abandoning all
activity by one-pointed devotion to liberation, he who is established
with true faith in study etc., purges away the passion from his
understanding.
183. What is mind-made cannot be one's true nature, because it is
changeable, having a beginning and an end, because it is subject to
pain, and because it is itself an object. The knower cannot be seen as
an object of consciousness.
The Intellect Kosha
184. The intellect along with its faculties, its
activities and its characteristic of seeing itself as the agent,
constitutes the knowledge sheath which is the cause of man's samsara.
185. Intellectual knowledge which as a function is a distant
reflection of pure consciousness, is a natural faculty. It continually
creates the awareness 'I exist', and strongly identifies itself with the
body, its faculties and so on.
186. This sense of self is from beginningless time. As the person it
is the agent of all relative occupations. Through its proclivities from
the past it performs good and bad actions, and bears their fruit.
187. After experiencing them it is born in all sorts of different
wombs, and progresses up and down in life, the experiencer of the
knowledge-created states of waking, sleeping etc., and of pleasure and
pain.
188. It always sees as its own such things as the body, and its
circumstances, states, duties, actions and functions. The knowledge
sheath is very impressive owing to its inherent affinity to the supreme
self, which, identifying itself with the superimposition, experiences
samsara because of this illusion.
189. This knowledge-created light shines among the faculties of the
heart, and the true self, although itself motionless, becomes the actor
and the experiencer while identified with this superimposition.
190. Allied to the intellect, just a part of itself, although the
true self of everything, and beyond the limitations of such an
existence, it identifies itself with this illusory self - as if clay
were to identify itself with earthen jars.
191. In conjunction with such additional qualities, the supreme self
seems to manifest the same characteristics, just as the undifferentiated
fire seems to take on the qualities of the iron it heats.
192. The disciple questioned: Whether it is by mistake or for some
other reason that the supreme self has become a living being, the
identification is beginningless, and there can be no end to what has no
beginning.
193. So the state of a living being is going to be a continual
samsara, and there can be no liberation for it. Can you explain this to
me?
194. The teacher replied: You have asked the right question, wise
one, so now listen. The mistaken imagination of illusion is not a
reality.
195. Outside of illusion no attachment can come about for what is by
nature unattached, actionless and formless, as in the case of blueness
and space (the sky).
196. Existence as a living being, due to the mistaken intellect
identifying itself with its own light, the inner joy of understanding,
beyond qualities and beyond activity does not really exist, so when the
illusion ceases, it does too, having no real existence of its own.
197. So long as the illusion exists, it too has existence, created by
the confusion of misunderstanding, in the same way that a rope seems to
be a snake so long as the illusion persists. When the illusion comes to
an end, so does the snake.
Vivek Chudamani
- 1
| 2
| 3
| 4
| 5
| 6
| 7
| 8
| 9
| 10
| 11
| 12
| 13
|
|
