From IIM Ahmedabad To Happiness

Author(s): Vijay K Jain
Publisher: Vikalp Printers

Page 85

We need to understand, in some detail, the nature of the bonds that our soul is liable to be affected with.
What are these bonds and how to break them to set our soul free? The first thing to understand is that there can be no bondage of pure mental abstractions or purely wordy concepts. The word signifies some kind of real fetters of some very subtle and fine kind of matter. It is well to know that nothing but force, in some form or other, is capable of exercising restraint or of holding living beings in the condition of captivity, and that no kind of force is conceivable apart from a substance of some kind or other. The bondage of soul must, therefore, be bondage of matter, however subtle and fine. The obtainment of freedom must consequently imply the removal of the particles of foreign material from the constitution of the ego.
Our soul is liable to be affected, agreeably or otherwise, by all kinds of actions mental, physical and those concerning with speech. But the union or fusion of spirit and matter cannot take place unless the soul be first thrown into an attitude of desire, i.e., weakness. It is common experience that we fail to notice even the taste of food in the mouth whenever attention is deeply engrossed elsewhere.
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KNOWLEDGE IS THE KEY
The rule appears to be that the stronger the desire the deeper the penetration of the particles of matter into the soul, and closer the union between them and the soul, so that the worst forms of bondage result from the worst types of desires. Our desires and passions principally assume four different propensities and appear as greed, deceit, pride and anger. In order to gratify our greed, we resort to deceit; pride arises from the possession of what is worldly desirable, while anger blazes sup in consequence of being foiled in an endeavour to secure an object of desire, or from wounded pride. These four kinds of passions are the main causes of bondage and their strength or malignity, which will also determine their
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