Bhavana Bodh

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

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BHAVANA BODH
enjoyed the pleasures, you invite me to enjoy and I find these pleasures as fruits of a cactus tree or a poisonus tree. These enjoyments result in bitter pain and they are always the causes of miseries. This body is transient and totally impure; it has originated from impurity and it is the temporary abode of the soul and it is the source of infinite pain and unhappiness; it is the store of disease, oldage and afflictions. Why should I feel attracted to such a body? There is no rule about it as to whether one will leave it in his childhood or oldage. Such a body is like the drop of the foam of water. How meet it is to have affection on such body! By obtaining such human body, one has to suffer disease like lucoderma, fever, leprosy etc and then there comes oldage and consequent death. How meet it is to love such body?
This worldly life is full of such miseries as birth, oldage, disease and death. One has, compulsorily, to leave this body in sorrowful state one day at death leaving land, farrs, house, wealth, family, sons and daughters, wife, brothers and all such worldly relations. Just as the eating fruit of a poisonous tree is not giving any pleasure or happiness, similarly the result of enjoying worldly pleasures is also not yielding any joy or happiness. Just as a traveller in a long journey would suffer with hunger and thirst if he does not arrange to take meals and drink water, one while departing from this life for adoption of another birth would experience much pain by not following a soul-saving religion, he may again suffer the cycle of birth, oldage and death. Thus when a traveller makes his long journey light and enjoyable when he takes wholesome food and water and does not experience hunger and thirst; similarly a follower of soul-saving religion meets with happiness on his journey from this life to the other one; he might lighten his burden of bad deeds, he may have to answer for very few deeds he was forced to engage in, while leading the life of strict religious discipline; he would be free from experiencing the painful results of bad deeds which he has refrained from doing. Oyou, my elderly respectable persons! Just as a householder, when his house is ablaze, takes up his valuables with him and leaves the house alongwith his old