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DISCOURSE 24
407 “Mister. Why do you yawn here ? You have to pay money for yawning here”.
“How much have I to pay ?” the man asked. “One rupee to yawn once".
The man took out twenty five rupees from his pocket and gave it to the policeman. The policeman went away. The man went home. He was in a state of intoxication. He said proudly to his wife, "Today, I fooled a policeman".
"How? What happened ?” his wife asked him eagerly.
"I yawned fifty or sixty times but I gave the policeman only twenty-five rupees. How cleverly, I fooled him”.
This imaginary story illustrates the effect of intoxication.
In a state of infatuation, a man behaves foolishly but thinks that others are fools. There is the infatuation of attachment; there is the infatuation of hatred and there is the infatuation of ignorance. Be careful. Be wary. Never be careless or unwary. Never intoxicate yourself. Be wary. Be as cautious as thoughtfulness can make you. Keep casting off the impurities that lie concealed in your thoughts. This endeavour implies your effort to inform your heart with the four emotions of amity etc. Every day, in the morning or in the evening, cultivate these four attitudes. If you continue to cultivate these four attitudes, the current of your thoughtfulness keeps flowing like the sacred Ganga. It will make you wary and it will make you cautious.
Now we shall attempt a summary of the four lofty emotions of amity, compassion, love and neutrality.
THE ATTITUDE OF AMITY
You must like one of these two; amity or hostility. If you prefer amity, you assume that attitude. If you prefer hostility, you assume that attitude. There are some people in this world, who take delight in developing enmity and in maintaining enmity and in increasing it. But delight is experienced even by a butcher who kills animals and even by a drunkard who drinks liquors. You should not do something, just because it gives you
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