/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11513043]

>Here is the Self-effulgent Atman, of infinite power, beyond the range of
conditioned knowledge, yet the common experience of all - realising which alone this
incomparable knower of Brahman lives his glorious life, freed from bondage.

>Satisfied with undiluted, constant Bliss, he is neither grieved nor elated by sense-objects,
is neither attached nor averse to them, but always disports with the Self and
takes pleasure therein.

>A child plays with its toys forgetting hunger and bodily pains; exactly so does the
man of realisation take pleasure in the Reality, without ideas of "I" or "mine", and is
happy.

>Men of realisation have their food without anxiety or humiliation by begging, and
their drink from the water of rivers; they live freely and independently, and sleep
without fear in cremation grounds or forests; their clothing may be the quarters
themselves, which need no washing and drying, or any bark etc., the earth is their bed;
they roam in the avenue of the Vedanta; while their pastime is in the Supreme Brahman.

>The knower of the Atman, who wears no outward mark and is unattached to
external things, rests on this body without identification, and experiences all sorts of
sense-objects as they come, through others’ wish, like a child.

>Established in the ethereal plane of Absolute Knowledge, he wanders in the world,
sometimes like a madman, sometimes like a child and at other times like a ghoul,
having no other clothes on his person except the quarters, or sometimes wearing clothes,
or perhaps skins at other times.

>The sage, living alone, enjoys the sense-objects, being the very embodiment of
desirelessness – always satisfied with his own Self, and himself present at the All.

>Sometimes a fool, sometimes a sage, sometimes possessed of regal splendour;
sometimes wandering, sometimes behaving like a motionless python, sometimes
wearing a benignant expression; sometimes honoured, sometimes insulted, sometimes
unknown – thus lives the man of realisation, ever happy with Supreme Bliss.

>Though without riches, yet ever content; though helpless, yet very powerful,
though not enjoying the sense-objects, yet eternally satisfied; though without an
exemplar, yet looking upon all with an eye of equality.

>Though doing, yet inactive; though experiencing fruits of past actions, yet
untouched by them; though possessed of a body, yet without identification with it;
though limited, yet omnipresent is he.

[Anonymous No.11513044]

>Neither pleasure nor pain, nor good nor evil, ever touches this knower of Brahman,
who always lives without the body-idea.

>Pleasure or pain, or good or evil, affects only him who has connections with the
gross body etc., and identifies himself with these. How can good or evil, or their effects,
touch the sage who has identified himself with the Reality and thereby shattered his
bondage ?

>The sun which appears to be, but is not actually, swallowed by Rahu, is said to be
swallowed, on account of delusion, by people, not knowing the real nature of the sun.

>Similarly, ignorant people look upon the perfect knower of Brahman, who is
wholly rid of bondages of the body etc., as possessed of the body, seeing but an
appearance of it.

>In reality, however, he rests discarding the body, like the snake its slough; and the
body is moved hither and thither by the force of the Prana, just as it listeth.

>As a piece of wood is borne by the current to a high or low ground, so is his body
carried on by the momentum of past actions to the varied experience of their fruits, as
these present themselves in due course.

>The man of realisation, bereft of the body-idea, moves amid sense-enjoyments like
a man subject to transmigration, through desires engendered by the Prarabdha work. He
himself, however, lives unmoved in the body, like a witness, free from mental
oscillations, like the pivot of the potter’s wheel.

>He neither directs the sense-organs to their objects nor detaches them from these,
but stays like an unconcerned spectator. And he has not the least regard for the fruits of
actions, his mind being thoroughly inebriated with drinking the undiluted elixir of the
Bliss of the Atman.

>He who, giving up all considerations of the fitness or otherwise of objects of
meditation, lives as the Absolute Atman, is verily Shiva Himself, and he is the best
among the knowers of Brahman.

>Through the destruction of limitations, the perfect knower of Brahman is merged in
the One Brahman without a second – which he had been all along – becomes very free
even while living, and attains the goal of his life.