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THE PRACTICAL DHARMA
a woman or by a female animal or an eunuch, nor recall to mind the incidents of any past experience of pleasure in connection with the female sex, nor decorate one's person,
nor eat highly-seasoned food. (v) The vow of renunciation. All liking for pleasures of touch,
taste, smell, form (beauty), or word (literature), and for all the objects of the five senses, also hatred or loathing for unpleasant objects, must be completely surrendered to the pursuit of the sublime Ideal of the soul. The saint should rid
himself even of the loinstrip. These are the five great vows of asceticism; and, as stated before, they differ in the degree of rigidity from the five similar vows of the layman.
The aim being the attainment of liberation from the liability to repeated births and deaths, the ascetic must ardently and earnestly strive for the emancipation of his soul in every possible way, shunning virtue as much as vice-since they are both instrumental in the prolongation of bondage and trying all the time to establish himself in the purity of contemplation of his own effulgent spirit. It is not to be supposed that the shunning of all kinds of activities of the mind, speech and the body is tantamount to idleness, pure and simple, or leads to stultification of character, as some unthinking writers have urged. The process of selfcontemplation has nothing in common with laziness or the indolent lack of character, and aims at the realisation of sleepless bliss, infinite perfection, immortality and freedom from all kinds of ties and bonds. There is no use denying the fact that what we call character means neither more nor less than a l'esolute frame of mind, in which all sorts of evil passions and emotions are generally allowed to be smuggled under the name. Self-contemplation does not, in any sense, imply the eradication of will, rather, on the contrary, it leads to its development in the highest possible degree, so that if the word character be employed in its true sense, it is only in respect of the Perfect Ones that it can express its full purport. Nor has the non-performance of virtuous deeds the effect of exposing the Holy Ones to blame for not doing good; for the kind of good which flows from the Perfect Ones cannot be equalled by men even
