Bhavana Bodh

Author(s): Shrimad Rajchandra
Publisher: Shrimad Rajchandra Ashram

Page 18

BHAVANA BODH
worn out pitcher of water exactly where he put them before sleeping. Thus he appeared to him as he was, a beggar in reality no increase or decrease in his real life. Thinking about this vast difference in his wakeful life and the dream he dreamt, he felt awefully dejected, the dream which brought him unusual pleasures was no more. He said to himself I did not enjoy the pleasures of the dream and what I gained in real life is the unhappiness and dejection of losing the dream pleasures. Thus this poor beggar experienced melancholy.
11
LESSON - Just as the beggar in the above example saw all worldly pleasures and happiness in a dream and felt that he really enjoyed them and was pleased with them, the ignorant people in this world feel great satisfaction and enjoyment in dreamlike worldly pleasures but as the dream pleasures appeared to be false to the beggar when he woke up from that sleep, the enlightened and philosophically minded persons realise worldly pleasures like dream pleasures of the beggar. As the beggar felt dejected when woke up, without enjoying the dream pleasures similarly the ignorant people believe happiness in the worldly pleasures and feel as if they are really enjoying them but like that woken up beggar, they in the end endure miseries, unhappiness and disappointments and they invite their own downfall, they gain nothing but dejection, repentance and deterioration. As none of the dream objects is true in real life so none of the objects of pleasure and happiness in worldly life is really true. Both of them, the dream world and the world of our ordinary wakeful life, are evanescent and shortlived with attendant fears of misery and unending unhappiness. Thinking this way, the intelligent and right reflecting persons search for the good of the living soul.
Thus with the example of a beggar's wakeful and dream life giving a lesson of non-attachment on ANITYA BHAVANA - the soul-saving aspiration of the transience of worldly objects, the first print of the first lesson of this book 'BHAVANA BODH' is completed.