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Verse 122
When a man turns his consciousness exclusively to the Ideal of the pure soul, he is saved from indulging in activities that result in perennial entrapment in the world. Knowing the body as unconscious, mortal, and a product of karmas, one who does not undertake activities pertaining to the body performs the essentials of detachment from the body. The soul has the intrinsic attribute of darting upward and the body, being physical matter, is an instrument of pulling the soul downward. The body, being a direct outcome of karmas, is absolutely worth dissociation and detachment for anyone who is treading the path to liberation. Only with such discrimination between the soul and the body can one develop interest and inclination towards the soul and disinterest and disinclination towards anything that is antithetical to the soul.
The way to make human birth meaningful is through renunciation of worldly pleasures, and taking recourse to meditation, austerities, propagation of true faith, and finally attaining a pious and passionless death (samadhi marana) by relinquishing the body through the method of sallekhanā the gateway to the path to liberation.
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