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the above three factors. They are therefore mentioned here as principal knots of bondage. That bondage can be removed by breaking the knots.
Everything moves smoothly if there are no knots. For instance, when one is sewing, the thread moves smoothly so long as there are no knots. As soon as a knot occurs, the sewing stops. The person has to remove the knot before going ahead with the work. In routine life also we can maintain good relations with others, so long as there are no knots in the mind. Once there is a knot, the relation gets strained. In order to make it smooth again, we need to get rid of the knot.
Similarly the task of overcoming Karma could be smooth but for three knots of craving, aversion and ignorance. We need to strive hard to remove those knots. Since the time immemorial we are used to harbor likes and dislikes for different individuals. That happens even when we come across some one for the first time. It shows that we have good or bad impression at the internal level. If the impression is favorable, we start liking him, and that can lead to attachment for him. If the impression is unfavorable, we detest and try to avoid him. Such attachment and resentment constitute the knots that lead to the bondage of Karma.
Likes and dislikes occur in other situations as well. We get various types of favorable or unfavorable situations as the result of our previous Karma. None of those situations is going to last forever. If therefore we stay equanimous in all the situations, we do not acquire new Karma. But by virtue of our conditioning we happen to crave for the situations that we perceive as favorable, and detest those which we perceive as unfavorable.
The third factor is ignorance. The term ignorance does not mean devoid of knowledge. No soul can ever be entirely devoid of knowledge. One can, however, be short of knowledge. Such shortage occurs on account of the influence of knowledge-obscuring Karma, which can be overcome by making enough efforts. But that Karma is not relevant in the present context.
Here ignorance denotes wrong or misleading knowledge, which is expressed in spiritual terminology as Mati-Ajnän, Shrut-Ajnän, etc. It means that the person concerned is intelligent enough to learn, and he might also have studied scriptures. But what he has learnt does not lead him to the truth or to the right path. In other words, he has not correctly understood or grasped what he has learnt. A bare knowledgeable person, whose state has been described in the first and second chapters, generally belongs to this category.
