VIVEKA CHUDAMANI
Swami Madhavananda Part 8
71. Now I am going to tell thee fully about what thou oughtst to know the discrimination between the Self and the non-Self. Listen to it and decide about it in thy mind.
72. Composed of the seven ingredients, viz. marrow, bones, fat, flesh, blood, skin and cuticle, and consisting of the following limbs and their parts –legs, thighs, the chest, arms, the back and the head: 73. This body, reputed to be the abode of the delusion of ‘I and mine’, is designated by sages as the gross body. The sky, air, fire, water and earth are subtle elements.
74. Being united with parts of one another and becoming gross, (they) form the gross body. And their subtle essences form sense-objects –the group of five such as sound, which conduce to the happiness of the experiencer, the individual soul.
75. Those fools who are tied to these sense-objects by the stout cord of attachment, so very difficult to snap, come and depart, up and down, carried amain by the powerful emissary of their past action.
76. The deer, the elephant, the moth, the fish and the black-bee –these five have died, being tied to one or other of the five senses, viz. sound etc., through their own attachment. What then is in store for man who is attached to all these five.
77. Sense-objects are even more virulent in their evil effects than the poison of the cobra. Poison kills one who takes it, but those others kill one who even looks at them through the eyes.
78. He who is free from the terrible snare of the hankering after sense-objects, so very difficult to get rid of, is alone fit for Liberation, and none else –even though he be versed in all the six Shastras.
79. The shark of hankering catches by the throat those seekers after Liberation who have got only an apparent dispassion (Vairagya) and are trying to cross the ocean of samsara (relative existence), and violently snatching them away, drowns them half-way.
80. He who has killed the shark known as sense-object with the sword of mature dispassion, crosses the ocean of Samsara, free from all obstacles.
