Light Of Life

Author(s): Padmasagarsuri
Publisher: Arunoday Foundation

Page 52

Brahmacharya. Otherwise they are not useful. If you carry out a spiritual austerity, without Brahmacharya it wil be like a dead body; and from such spiritual austerities, you can get no benefit.
Many times, people become infatuated with the idea that they have carried out spiritual austerities; but the austerities they have carried out are like a dead body. When we ask them if they have carried out any spiritual austerity, they would say arrogantly that they have carried out such austerities,
A gentleman married a girl in a village. The people ot that village had a convention according to which his wife could not be sent with him for a month. They requested him to take his wife with him, one month later. When he returned alone to his village, his friends made fun of him. They said :
"You think you are making a joke. You say that you are married. You are only boasting. It cannot be true that you are married".
One said, "If you are really married where is your wife ?"
"My wife is in her father's house. She will come here a month later".
"You are merely uttering a lie. You are boasting that you are married but you are not".
The man felt very unhappy. His pride was offended. He thought : "I am speaking the truth; but these people say that I am uttering a lie". He went back to the village of his wife. He asked his wife whether she would accompany him to his village. She expressed her readiness to go with him. His father-in-law and mother-in-law also said "Since you are insisting upon taking your wife to your place now, we have no objection". At last, his wife set off with
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