Sannyasa Dharma

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Champat Rai Jain

Page 10

or by disease, or violence, accidental or designed. These bodies, the inner and the outer, are beld together by very subtle forces of attraction, springing from the energies of the individual's desires and appetites and cravings, and can only be got rid of by the complete eradication and destruction of all forms of desire.
How, then, are desires to be destroyed ? By wishing that they were gone ? No! By hypnotizing oneself to imagine that they are gone ? No! By praying to some superhuman agency for their removal ? No! They cannot be destroyed by any of these or similar means. There is only one way of their eradication ; by simply refusing to allow oneself to be swayed by them. In other words, one has to become desireless, in the fullest sense of the word, if one wishes to be rid of the crippling companionship of matter. The mind, speech, and the body have, thus, to be brought fully under control, in respect of voluntary as well as involuntary activity, both. This cannot, however, be achieved except through severe tapaścharūna (austerities) which will enable one to defy all sorts of temptations and longings and the cravings of the flesh, The mind, too, must be filled with the right kind of knowledge, since it cannot become a blank, and since wrong knowledge is itself the greatest of hindrances on the path. This leads to 'dhyāna ' (meditation) which gradually rises to pure self-contemplation, that is, to the actual feeling or realization of one's own Divinity, and the enjoyment of the bliss appertaining to Self-realization, Other accessories of vairāgya (de.