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were a time of complete spontaneity, of uninhibited freedom.
Those were the years in which I soared, a bird-heart, through the fathomless night. My days were filled with dreams and smiles. Where is that songbird now? It must be somewhere hidden in me!
As an aspirant, he felt the meaning of his aspiration in a new way. It was none other than to go back to himself, to return to his original nature, to let it blossom fully. For that he had to lift the burdens still weighing from time to time on his mind.
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To help him break through lingering feelings of melancholy and intermittent frustration with his progress, he selected one stanza to recite. It gave him vastness of vision, a sense of equanimity, and the way to disidentify mind from soul.
एगो हं नत्थि मे कोइ नाहमन्नस्स कस्सइ । एवं अदीण मणसो अप्पाणमणु सासइ ।।
"Ego aham natthi me koyi Nāha mannassa kassayi Evam adina maņaso
Appānam anusasayi.” "I am alone. Nothing belongs to me. No one and no thing can I call my own. In this way I keep my mind above self-pity. By soul alone am I governed.”
It was a meaningful step to freedom. He saw that if nothing belonged to him, then at the same time, he too belonged to nothing.
There is nothing in the world I can possess. That means that nothing in the world can possess me. I don't want to be possessed. In the same way, no one wants to be possessed. Oh, this is the very principle of ahimsa, to live and help let live. So, belonging to no one makes me a part: of everyone. Belonging to no place makes the whole world home. Being alone in the real sense is being all one.
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