Bhavana Bodh

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

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BHAVANABODH
quite lonely to him. As compared with other nine fingers adorned with beautiful rings, this finger without the ring drew Bharat to reflective thinking. Why should this finger appear thus lonely? and he realised that the finger obtained beauty from the ring it wore and so without the ring it appeared bereft of beauty. To substantiate his this thinking, he took out the ring from another finger and the second finger appeared to have lost its beauty like the previous finger; then he took out the ring from his third finger. This substantiated his thinking still more. Then he took out the ring from his fourth finger, and it appeared also just like previous finger. Thus he took out the rings from the rest of his fingers one by one and all of them without rings appeared having lost their beauty. As a result this great king of kings said with a deep impressive feeling of separation as under :
Oh! how strange it is that from raw gold, extracted from the earth this beautiful golden ring was skilfully prepared by a goldsmith and this ring gave beauty to my finger and when this ring fell out from my finger, it lost its beauty and looked lonely and ugly, quite unpleasing one. Then is it not proved that the ugliness of my finger was due to its losing the ring ? If there would have been ring on my finger I would have not seen this finger as ugly; by wearing this ring my finger got beauty and by that finger my hand gets beauty and with that hand, my this body looks beautiful. Then for whose beauty I should agree ? Much wonder ! My so called fascinating beauty is shining by my colourful dress and ornaments of gold and diamonds and this lustre is the cause of beautiful appearance of this skin, and this skin is covering the privacy of the body which would otherwise appear quite ugly. Oh what a great crudity it is ? The body which I believe as mine, looks beautiful due to skin covering, the skin gains beauty due to lustre and the lustre draws its beauty from dress and ornaments. Then does it not follow that my body bereft of its skin has no beauty of its own ? Then is my body a mere structure of blood, marrow and bones? And I take this structure as mine. What a basic error of my thinking! What an illusion of my understanding! And what a strangeness it is ! I look beautiful by my only externals skin etc. Why should I call my body as mine when it looks beautiful only by skin and the rest it wears? If I