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THE NECESSITY OF RENUNCIATION
Swami Parameshwarananda Saraswati
This year Swami Vidyanandaji Giri Maharaj has completed twenty-five years as acharya of Kailash Ashram and, therefore, we are celebrating it in the form of a Silver Jubilee Celebration in India and abroad. This celebration has begun now and will continue for one year. It gives me great pleasure to see two celebrations simultaneously going on, one a Golden Jubilee and the other a Silver Jubilee, just like the two rivers Ganga and Jamuna flowing into each other at Prayag. This is a most wonderful moment. You can very well ask why are we celebrating these personalities? What is so special about them? The answer is that these great personalities have given so much to humanity which nobody else in this world can give. They have given life and momentum to a unique science. We are so much obliged and indebted to these sages that we can never repay them. For the time being by just thanking them every morning and celebrating conventions like this we can show our gratitude to some extent.
If you look at Shankaracharya's story - the great man left home at the age of eight years and travelled from the southernmost corner of India (Kanyakumari) to the mighty Himalayas, and that too, barefooted the glory of his renunciation was such that it made the whole country a holy land. It happens to be a divine coincidence that when Swami Satyananda left his home, in the very same year Swami Vidyananda also left home. Though he was initiated into sannyasa much later, the time of their renouncing worldly attachments to home and family was the same. You ask me the importance of renunciation. Scriptures have said, "If anybody has really been happy in this universe, it is only by renunciation."
Tyagena ekena amritattwa manashu
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Only renunciation can lead to the attainment of immortal bliss which the great saints have achieved. Time stands in testimony to the fact that the person who has renounced something has gained a greater thing. The world has always
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