Bhavana Bodh

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

Page 42

BHAVANA BODH
35
beautiful or good to look at only by its covering the skin to be attracted to such a body or to take pride in its form and lustre is really foolish. It is that body, in which Sanat Kumar took pride but that body could not sustain it and to teach a lesson to Sanat Kumar, his body showed the growth of leprosy in it. O lowly human being ! Why should one take pride in such a body? Pride in such a body is not beneficial at all.
Inspite of the above statement about a living body, we shall have to admit that human body is the best of all bodies of living beings because only with the help of the human body, selfrealisation or liberation can be achieved ; to be sure about this utility of a human body, here we are making only a passing reference.
When good deeds of our soul fructified, we obtained the human body. Man is not to be understood as the master of two hands, two feet, two eyes, two ears, one mouth, two lips, one nose; he is to be understood differently. If we do not realise the significance of our having a human body then how to distinguish between a man and a monkey? Both possess the parts of a living body as described above. Why can we not call a monkey a man ? A monkey has a long tail in addition to the parts of a human body described above. But not that way, significance of a human body is that in the mind of a human being discriminative understanding arises and a man is worthy to be called a man only when he has discriminative understanding. Without such understanding, a man is to be called only as a two legged animal. Intelligent persons always emphasize this mysterious meaning of human life. By the rise of discriminative understanding, one enters the royal road to liberation and entrance to that royal road, proves the superiority of human life over the life of all other living beings. Still it is always desirable to constantly realise that our human body, like all bodies of other living beings is totally impure and impurity is in its nature, only soul or self is really pure.
Here ends the example and lesson of the life of Sanat Kumar for teaching the soul saving aspiration of impurity of human living body --Ashuchi Bhavana in the fifth print of first Presentation, in the book of Bhavana Bodh.