Pravachanasara

SR No.: 003289
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: A N Upadhye
Publisher: Shrimad Rajchandra Ashram
Publication Year: 1964
Total Pages: 612
Language: Hindi, Sanskrit
Classification: Book_Devnagari
File Size: 16 MB

Page 565

400
Translation of
[II, 51
51. This is the essential nature of kālānu (the unit of time), all the while, that it undergoes what are called origination, permanence and destruction at one and the same moment.
52. That, which has not many space-points, nor even one spacepoint in order that it might be known (?), should be known as void, which is something other than existence.
53. The physical world is stable, eternal and (filled) complete with entities endowed with space-points; he, who knows it, is the soul endowed with four life-essentials.
54. Life-essentials of Jivas or souls are senses, bala (i.e., the channels of activities), duration of life and respiration.
*3. Life-essentials (in details) are ten: five senses, three channels of activity viz., of mind, speech and body, respiration and the duration of life.
55. That which formerly lived, lives now and will live in future with the four life-essentials is the Jiva, the sentient principle; these life essentials, moreover, are fashioned by material substances.
56. The soul endowed with life-essentials, bound by infatuatory and other Karmas, and enjoying the fruit of Karmas, is bound by other additional Karmas.
57. If the Jiva, through delusion and hatred, causes harm to the life-essentials of living beings, this results into the bondage of Karmas such as knowledge-obscuring.
58. The soul tainted with Karma, so long as it does not give up attachment towards external objects the foremost of which is the body, possesses other life-essentials again and again.
59. He, who has conquered his senses etc. and meditates the pure manifestation of consciousness of his self, will not be tainted by Karmas; how then can the life-essentials follow him?
60. The transformation of one condition into another, in the case of the soul (when coming into contact with matter whose exis
1. The life-essentials do not form the nature of the soul-stuff, but they are the indications or the signs of the presence of the soul in an embodied condition. We do not perceive the soul, but it has certain essential features in this mundane existence; and they are four in number (and the same would be ten when their details are taken into consideration). The four life-essentials are typically selective and mutually exclusive to a great extent. The signs of soul given by Vaišeşikas, namely, prānapana-nimisonmesa-jīvana-mano-gat indriyantara-vikārāh sukha-duhkhēccha - dvesaprayatnāscâtmano lingāni (V. S. III, 2, 4), look more like a descriptive enumeration.
2. Compare P. 30.