Wednesday 13 November 2013

No Spiritual Practices are Required - Asceticism & Austerity

Asceticism, Austerity

You need not don ocher robes, sport long beards and matted hair, or renounce your worldly duties and live in seclusion for the sake of Truth.
Will one find Him by growing matted locks, putting on saffron robes, becoming an ascetic? So much one's own is He, so close to one! Does He stay on mountains and in jungles? Environment is in the mind. Are desire, anger, etc., finished by becoming an ascetic, going to mountains, eating vegetarian food? Everything moves under the control of Nature. Making a big house necessitates paying of its taxes. Will the creditor leave one? Is what Nature has given false? Can one get Him by imposing any conditions? Can one reach Him through so many disputations? He is above all this. Nothing of this touches Him. Our own ego alone is involved in all this. How calamitous! We have not realized one does not get Him by donning deception. Putting on deceptive garb means self-deception. Through the help of the garb, you show others what you are not.
Colored robes and matted hair are but expressions of your vanity.
Old age, disease, and death are bound to come to everyone. Can matted locks save one? Will saffron robes keep one safe? To find one's Self, why should one put on a disguise? What kind of conduct is that? Seeing your stupidity, He is pained.
Fundamentally there exists only one Being and that is within you. To realize Him, to come into communion with Him, you need not go against Nature by self-repression. You need not do any undue torture to the body or the mind. Saints and ascetics experience a kind of delight through the practice of austerity, but that delight pertains to the mind.   

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