One who serves and seeks no recompense finds union with the Lord. Such a servant alone takes the Master’s guidance, says Nanak, As on him is divine grace.
Not knowing the consequence of good and evil karmas, he is afflicted and hurt. Nevertheless, he, due to his egotism, piles up karmas and undergoes births and deaths again and again.
Ignorance is the failure to discriminate between permanent and impermanent, pure and impure, bliss and suffering, Self and non-Self.
The Gods gave a microbe a drop of water, and in it he lived. They gave an ant a half acre of land, and he prospered. They gave a tiger the forest and he formed an empire and became an emperor. They gave man the Universe and all the knowledge therein. He entered of his own free will the dungeon of Dogma, shut his mind to truth and slew and starved his brothers.
There are many people who fast, whose fast is nothing but hunger and thirst. There are those whose prayer is no better than wakefulness and hardship. The eating and drinking in case of the former and sleeping in the latter’s case is a far better option.
Those who are ignorant of the supreme purpose of life will never be able to attain nirvana (liberation) in spite of their observance of the vratas (vows) and niyamas (rules) of religious conduct and practice of shila (celibacy) and tapas (penance).
Perceiving her son endowed with the characteristics of Vishnu, Devaki prayed: You are the Illuminator of all psycho-physical organisms, the indefinable Reality, which the Vedas declare as the unmanifest cause… When the universe is dissolved by force of Time, the gross elements are ultimately merged in ahankara (their cause)…
Even as a mirror reflects an object held close to it, one’s behavior reflects as the ego-sense in one’s consciousness. But if held at a distance, ego-sense does not arise.
