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I am the Soul
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then? Immediately the struggle begins, the search for the means. But have you ever thought - 'So many people fast, so many poor cannot find anything to eat, and they tolerate it. Why not I watch for a while as to what happens to my body and mind if I do not eat?' But even before the body the mind gets perturbed. Mind is more bothered.
But at such times tell the mind, 'Keep your cool! Why should you bother? It is the stomach that wants, why should you interfere? I want to put myself to test'. Nobody passes without a test - ask the children here! Don't they have to write an examination? In the same way, if we have to achieve tolerance, we have to pass the test. Just as for us the parishahas are the measure of our tolerance, for you in the worldly life there are sorrows which may perhaps be more than twenty-two; suffer them in equanimity and that will build up your tolerance.
Many people ask us, 'Why do you pluck your hair by hand and punish your body so much?" But to us it is like a meter. To measure the extent to which our attachment with our body has diminished, the Lord has asked us to perform the keshalocha (plucking of hair) every six months. Even when one hair is pulled the pain is excruciating. It is not that during locha there is no pain, but the equanimity with which it is endured is to be watched. The measure of the jiva's attachment is deduced by monitoring the feelings at that time. So, the more the jiva endures, the more its worthiness develops.
The smoothened clay is taken on to the potter's wheel, the wheel begins to rotate and after first setting the wheel in motion, the potter begins to shape the block of clay with his handicraft. Rotating with the wheel is not less painful. The various mental worries that arise in our mind also set us on a wheel of sorrow. And in our rounds of the eighty-four (the number of births is so many lakh species), we are always on the wheel and turning. Just as this block of clay cannot get down from the wheel until it
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