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Main Index
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day, strength goes on decreasing every day. Enjoyment and passion go on sucking our energy every day, go on aging us. Passions and desires are like holes, and our energy, our being, goes on flowing out through them. In the end our pail is empty -- this is what we call death.
Have you ever seen? -- if you throw a bucket full of holes into a well, as long as it is submerged in water it seems to be full. Pull on the rope and lift it out of the water and already it has started emptying. It creates a great noise. Is this what you call life? Falling streams of water -- is this what you call life? And as the bucket draws closer to your hands, it becomes more and more empty. When it reaches your hands it is empty... not a single drop of water. This is how our life is.
When a child is not born yet, he seems to be full. Just born, he starts emptying. The first day of birth is the first day of his dying. He starts emptying: one day dead, two days dead, three days dead. What you call your birthday would be better called your deathday -- it would be nearer the truth. You have been dying for one year and you say a birthday has come. You have been dying for fifty years and you say you have lived for fifty years: "Let's celebrate my golden anniversary." But you died for fifty years. Death is drawing nearer and life is receding further and further: the bucket is emptying. Do you base your thinking about life on what is receding or do you base it on what is drawing nearer? What kind of inverted arithmetic is this? We are dying every day, death keeps creeping closer.
Ashtavakra says passions are poisonous, because by indulging them we simply die. We never get any life from them.
"Oh Beloved, if you want liberation then renounce the vishayas, the passions as visha, poison, and take forgiveness, innocence, compassion, contentment and truth as nectar."
Nectar means that which gives life, that which gives immortality, ambrosia -- when one has found it, one will never die again.
Then forgiveness. Anger is poison -- forgiveness is ambrosia.
Innocence. Deviousness is poison. Simplicity -- innocence is nectar.
Compassion. Hardheartedness,
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