Bondage and Freedom

Author(s): Chitrabhanu
Publisher: Divine Knowledge Society

Page 17

seclusion of the cloister; in a prosperous town or in a poor village; enjoying the freedom of action outside a prison, or shut up behind prison bars. For wherever he is, he can feed his soul with the right food and liberate it from physical bonds.
Once, there was a sage who was giving a discourse to villagers on the body and the soul. The people listened to him attentively. There was a gentleman who attended his lectures regularly, and when he returned home he would talk about what he had heard at the lectures. Now this gentlemari had a parrot who heard all that his, master talked about at home and one day as his master was leaving for the sage's lectures, he said to him, '"If Maharaj talks so much about liberation, why doesn't he ever say anything about liberating me: I, too, am à prisoner in a cage. Liberating the body from the soul is a farfetched philosophical topic, has he not anything to say about such a practical topic. as how a parrot can be liberated from his bondage? Will you ask him on my behalf how I can gain my liberation :" The gentleman wondered how this question of liberation from bondage had occurred to a parrot while it had never occurred to him: He did not realise that only those who feel life as a bondage have the longing to liberate the soul from the body. But those who are used to this kind of life, do not feel the bondage at all and are quite content to go on living as they are. How, then, should they think of any liberation? Let me give you an instance.