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SANNTABA DAARMA CHAPTER VII,
How to Die ? The one undertaking or business of the sadhu is the overthrow of death, which is held in the utmost, dread by the generality of mankind. The sādhu aims at its destruction from the very commencement --nay, he cannot be said to have any other aim or ambition in life than the mastery of this, the most dreaded of foes. He gave up all undertakings and occupations on the eighth step (pratima) of the householder's path, distributed and gave away all his possessions, excepting a few wearing apparel, on the ninth step, renounced all concern with worldly matters on the tenth step, and dissociated himself with all else except the strip of a langoti, the feather whisk and the bowl on the elevenib. The langoti, too, is gone now! In a word, he has no earthly ambitions and pursuits left to obsess his mind as a sannyāsin. Personal comforts he no longer seeks ; for he has his body completely under control, having risen even above the automatism of bodily functions, such as excretion, urination and the like, to a very great extent. He enjoys the bliss appertaining to his real nature now all the time that he can remain absorbed in the sanādhi (undisturbed attitude) of Self-contemplation, but he knows that the happiness he thus enjoys is but a shadow of the real thing, though enrapturing even as such. He longs to remove the cause which stands in the way of his enjoyment of real bliss. With respect to knowledge also he knows that there are infinitely greater
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