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Chapter 16: Guru's Exposition about the Path and Means of Liberation
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That happens even when we come across some one for the first time. It shows that we have harbored a good or bad impression at the internal level. If the impression is favorable, we start liking him, and that can lead to an attachment for him. If the impression is unfavorable, we despise and try to avoid him. Such attachment and resentment constitute the knots that lead to the bondage of Karma
Likes and dislikes occur in the case of 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 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 is not used here in the sense of being devoid of knowledge. No soul can be entirely devoid of knowledge. What we call absence of knowledge really means the shortage of it. Such shortage occurs on account of the influence of knowledge -obscuring Karma, which can be overcome by making more 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 perceived what he has learnt. The bare knowledgeable person, whose state has been discussed in the first and second chapters, mostly belongs to this category.
Such ignorance arises on account of perception-deluding Karma, and in turn it becomes instrumental in acquiring new deluding Karma. Because of delusion, one forsakes his true nature and identifies himself with the conditions that he gets
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