Bhavana Bodh

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

Page 48

BHAVANA BODH
form to adopt and maintain the strict discipline of the ascetic. As you cannot weigh the meru mounatin in a balance so it is next to impossible to observe the ascetic discipline of (Das Lakshan Dharma) ten sorts of spiritual virtues with firmness and doubtlessness. As difficult it is to swim the ocean namely Swayambhu Raman by one's arms, so difficult it is to swim the ocean of quiet repose for one whose mind has not yet achieved a quiet repose.
O son! You should enjoy all five sorts of sense pleasures viz., hearing, sight, smell, taste and touch relating to human form and then after getting full satisfaction in them, you observe religious discipline in oldage.
Hearing this advice of his parents for enjoying sense pleasures in youth and follow religious ascetic discipline in oldage, their son Mrugaputra replied to parents as under:
It is not at all difficult to maintain ascetic discipline for one who has no attraction for sense life. This soul has suffered and gone through bodily and mental tortures innumerable times in result of his sins. This soul has suffered much by way of going through extremely painful and heart rending experiences; birth, oldage and death are the repositories of fear and I have gone through all these experiences while moving from one worldly life to another. O you elderly persons! I have suffered the heat far more intense than that of burning fire while living in hell, similarly I have gone through cold more intense than that of snow or ice in hell; I have suffered extreme pain while crying with tied legs above and head down in the midst of turning blazing fire; I have been roasted many times in the extreme heat of burnt sand of Kadamb river, that like found in desert of Marudesh.
I have been tossed and turned many times in the frying pans as if I was to be cooked; the denizens of hell had bound my hand and foot with legs up and head down to make me suffer the fruits of my evil deeds; I was torn into two by a sharp saw with no friend nearby to save me from such tortures; they gave me much pain by tying me to a Shalmali tree full of sharp pecrcing brambles;