Atma Dharma

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Champat Rai Jain

Page 33

( 26 ) helpful in meditation. Certainly, one should not hold converse with another at the time. When reciting aloud, you should be careful not to be too loud to interfere with the meditations of others, if any happen to be in your vicinity. If whatever you read or recite is not intelligently grasped and understood by you, it means only a waste of valuable time.
The mind should be withdrawn from all other pursuits and occupations and applied with determination to the acquisition of self-knowledge. But the mind is a very fickle thing; its very nature foredooms it to vacillation and unsteadiness. One should not suffer oneself to be distressed when it begins to play its pranks or goes off after undesirable things. If you remain cheerful at the time and maintain an attitude of indifference towards the subjects which it alights upon, it will soon cease to play the truant. In this way, serenity, equanimity and mental equipoise will be obtained and meditation itself will become easy.
The physical body, too, is not to be ignored or neglected by the aspirant for spiritual progress. It must ever be kept attuned to vitality and health. An indolent, unwieldy, cumbersome body is an obstacle to the practising of holy communion between the mind and the soul. Neither is one afflicted with cough, fever, asthma or any other