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SOME OBSERVATIONS AS TO FOOD OF SAINTS 111
anumodana. This he does by not hurting living matter' himself (krita), by not asking any one else to do it for him (karita), and by refusing to help himself to the product of another's activity, when the act is done, not in the ordinary routine of daily life, but for the benefit oi a Saint or Saints (anumodana).
As already stated, Saints who attain to Omniscience reírain from eating and drinking, for they become Gods. As Omniscient all-perceiving Gods they have before them the full panorama of suffering and misery every moment of the day, untold millions of living beings writhing in agony and pain all round, subjected to all conceivable forms of cutting, piercing, baking, boiling and tearing, on all sides. Who that is the embodiment of Mercy and Love can think oi eating under such conditions ? We, too, find it impossible to swallow a morsel if we see some living being, not necessarily a inan, in extreme suffering and pain. On such occasions the emotions of syınpathy and compassion, surging up in the heart, put an end to all feeling of hunger for the time being. We, however, have to eat later, to keep the body and the soul together, when we have left the scene of the tragedy and when its horrors are shut out from our view. But the case of the Omniscient Soul is dillerent. He beholds not one isolated case of suffering, bui the entire tragedy of embodied life and the whole panorama of suffering and slaughter and tyranny and injustice all over the totality of the worlds' at the same time. He also cannot shut out any sight, however ugly, from his view, íor he is everywhere, so to speak. Then with respect to the physical body which the ignorant man regards as himself, and which is held even by the pious householder, who is aware of its inimical nature, as the instrument of enjoyment of the joys of life, it is the one thing which the Saint knows to be the enemy's stronghold, and which he seeks to destroy, so that it should not be formed again. The Omniscient Soul would certainly never care to fatten such a
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