________________
28
RENUNCIATION
gaging the attention and interest of the people. One day Mūla Chandra went into the Upāshruya and sat at the feet of the holy hermit, listening to the discourse, which had for its subject the following verse :
मृत्योर्बिभेषि किं मूढ ! भीतं मुञ्चति नो यमः।
अजातं नैव गृह्णाति कुरु यत्नमजन्मनि ॥१॥ Why do you fear Death, 0 Fool? (For) Yama (the God of Death) does not let go the frightened man. He never catches hold of the unborn; (therefore) endeavour not to be born.'
WHAT BINDS MAN TO RE-BIRTH IS DESIRE In this sermon the great sage beseeches the people to cast away every sort of attachment that binds man to re-birth. For that which draws man to re-birth in this world is desire; the desire to obtain and enjoy the things that here may be obtained and enjoyed, the desire to possess and achieve the things that here may be possessed and achieved. Every man who sets before him some earthly aim, every man who makes the goal of his life some earthly object or ambition, that man is evidently bound by desire; and, so long as he desires that which the earth can give him, he must return for it; so long as any joy or any object belonging to the transitory life is a thing that has power to attract, that has power to tempt, it is a thing that has also power to bind, power to hold and constrain. It is the desire that ties or enchains the soul to re-birth, and therefore it is written that only when the bonds of the heart are broken' can the soul reach liberation.
