Ishtopadesh (The Discourse Divine)
Pujyapad Swami
Translated by Champatrai Jain
1. He who has attained the purity of his nature by the destruction of all his karmas by his own effort-to such an Omniscient Paramatman salutation is offered.
2. As gold in the ore is held to become pure gold on the intervention of the real causes of purification, in the same manner on the attainment to self-nature the impure (unemancipated) soul is also regarded as pure Spirit.
3. Observance of vows leads to birth in the heavens, therefore their observance is proper; the vowless life drags one to a birth in the hells, which is painful; therefore, vowlessness should be avoided; when two persons are waiting for the arrival of another person, but one of them waits in the heat of the sun and the other in the shade, great is the difference between the conditions; precisely the same difference is to be found between the condition of him who leads a life regulated by the vows and of him whose life is not so regulated.
4. The soul that is capable of conferring the divine status when meditated upon how far can the heavens be from him? Can the man who is able to carry a load to a distance of two Koses feel tired when carrying it only half a kos?
5. The happiness that is enjoyed by the residents of heavens appertains to the senses, is free from disturbance [literally, disease], enjoyable for very long periods of time, and is without a parallel outside the heavens!
6. The experiences of pleasures and pains of the samsari jivas (unemancipated souls) are purely imaginary; for this reason the sense-produced pleasures give rise, like disease, to uneasiness on the approach of trouble!
7. Deluded by infatuation the knowing being is unable to acquire adequate knowledge of the nature of things, in the same way as a person who has lost his wits in consequence of eating intoxicating food is unable to know them properly!
8. All the objects, the body, the house, the wealth, the wife, the son, the friend, the enemy and the like are quite different in their nature from the soul; the foolish man, however, looks upon them as his own!
9. The birds gather together to pass the night, on a tree, from various places in different directions in the evening; but at the earliest moment at the break of day they depart in the pursuit of their diverse purposes, for different places in all directions!
10. Why should the evil-doer become angry with him who takes revenge on him? He who pulls down the trangura with both his feet in himself felled to the ground through its instrumentality! This is but just! It therefore, does not become one to get angry!
11. Tied to the long rope in twined with [the strands of] attachments and aversions, the soul is whiled about in the ocean of samsara (transmigratory existence) for immeasurable time, led by ignorance!
12. The samsara (transmigratory condition) is like a wheel at a well, where before one bucketful of distress is got over a large number of afflictions overtake the soul!
13. He who regards himself as happy on account of the possession for wealth and other like objects of desire, that are obtained with great trouble, that require a lot of botheration in their protection and that are after all perishable, is like the fool who eats clarified butter when suffering from fever and then thinks that he is enjoying good health!
14. The fool is not warned by seeing distress overtake others, he acts like the man who, seated on the top of a tree in the midst of a burning forest, sees deer and other living things perish, but does not think that the same fate is soon to overtake him!
15. Time is the cause of the shortening of the duration of life as well as of the increase of wealth: the amassers of wealth [thus] love money more than their lives!
16. The poor man who accumulates wealth so as to be able to acquire merit and the destruction of evil karmas by spending it in charity is like the man who covers himself with filth in the expectation that he is going to bathe his body thereafter.
17. What! will any wise man indulge in the pleasures of the senses which cause trouble in their acquisition, enkindle lust and desire at the moment of enjoyment and are very painful at the time of parting? Should a wise man do so, he would not abandon himself to the lustful feeling.
18. By the contact of which even pure objects are rendered impure and which is a constant source of affliction, to seek to provide such a body with the objects to pleasure is vanity!
19. Whatever action is beneficial to the soul is harmful to the body, and whatever action is beneficial to the body is harmful to the soul!
20. When the divine wish-fulfilling Jewel and a piece of refuse both are obtainable by meditation, which of these will the man of discrimination choose?
21. This soul can be adequately known by self-contemplation and is of the size of its body, immortal, of an exceedingly blissful nature and the knower of Loka and Aloka!
22. Controlling his senses, with concentrated mind, the knower of the Self should contemplate the Self, seated in his own Self, through the Self!
23. Devotion to ignorance bestows ignorance, and devotion to Gnana (self-knowledge) bestows Knowledge: for it is well established that a thing can grant only that of which it is possessed!
24. By bearing with equanimity, by the power of the soulforce, the trials and hardships consequent on world-renunciation, is accomplished speedily the destruction of karmas and the stoppage of further inflow thereof!
25. In a statement such as `I am the maker of the mat', two objects are implied; but where the soul itself is the instrument as well as the object of contemplation; how can there be duality in that state?
26. The soul involved in the delusion of egoity is enmeshed in the bondage of karmas; he who is free from delusion of egoity is freed from the bondage of karma; this is the order of things; such being the law, one should try in all possible ways to attain to pure self-contemplation, devoid of the delusion of egoity.
27. I am one, I am without delusion, I am the knower of things, I am knowable by Master Ascetics; all other conditions that arise by the union of the not-self are foreign to my nature in every way!
28. The souls involved in transmigration have to suffer a multitude of afflictions, owing to the association of the not-Self, the body and the like: therefore, I [shall] renounce them along with all the activities of the mind, the body and speech!
29. I am not subject to death; `then, what should I fear death for? Nor am I subject to disease, then, what can cause me pain? I am not a child; I am not an old man; nor am I a youth: all these appertain to the flesh (matter)!
30. Again and again, through delusions, have the bodies of matter been enjoyed and thrown off by me; how can I long for them now that I am endowed with true wisdom; for no one likes to eat the leavings.
31. Karma works in its own cause; the soul works for its own good: who is there in the world that will not work for his own good when he has the power to do so?
32. O Witless one! thou art serving this visible show that is not thyself; thou shouldst now renounce doing good to others and take to doing good to thine own Self!
33. He who has acquired the discrimination between the Self and the not-Self, through the teachings of the preceptor, by repeated meditation on the nature of things, or by direct inner Self-perception, that great soul enjoys the happiness appertaining to salvation constantly!
34. Because of its internal longing for the attainment of the highest Ideal, because of its understanding of that Ideal, and because of its engaging itself in the realisation of its Ideal, because of these the soul is its own preceptor!
35. Those not yet qualified for the acquisition of Truth cannot become the knowers of Truth; the knowers of Truth cannot become devoid of it; external Teachers are useful like Ether which is but helpful in the motion (of moving things)!
36. He in whose mind no disturbances occur and who is established in the knowledge of the Self, such an ascetic should engage himself diligently in the contemplation of his soul, in a lonely place.
37. As greater and greater progress is made in the realization of the glorious Self, so is lessened, more and more, the liking for even those objects of pleasure which may be obtained with ease.
38. As even those objects of pleasure which are easily obtainable become increasingly intolerable, in the same measure does the glorious self come into one's enjoyment!
39. The seeker of the self regards the whole world as a product of illusion, and is moved by the desire to attain a self-realization. If he ever becomes entangled in anything else he repents of it.
40. The seeker after the Self longs for solitude, preferring dissociation with men; if he has to speak to men for a purpose of his own, he puts it out of his mind as soon as it is said!
41. He who has firmly established himself in the knowledge of the Self, such a one does speak while speaking, does not move while moving and does not see while seeing!
42. The ascetic immersed in the process of self-realization has no awareness of even his body, being undisturbed by questions such as what is the soul? What it its nature? Who is its matter? From whom is it derived? Where does it reside? and the like.
43. He who abides in a place, becomes, attached to the place, he who takes a liking to a locality does not give it up to go elsewhere?
44. The ascetic, not stirring out of his Self and not attending to the particular natures of the not-Self, does not become their enjoyer; by not enjoying the not-self he is not bound by karmas, but becomes released from them!
45. The not-self are surely never the Self; only sorrow accrues to the soul from them: the Self ever remains the Self; it is, therefore, the cause of happiness; because of this, great personages have exerted themselves for the realization of the Self!
46. Matter which the undiscerning soul attaches itself to, never leaves him wherever he goes in the four gatis!
47. He who is firmly established in his own Self and keeps away from the worldly intercourse, a supreme kind of happiness is produced in the being of such a yogi!
48. Self produced happiness is constant burning up the karmic fuel in large quantities, while the yogi, indifferent to the external pain, is not affected by it in the least!
49. That excellent and supreme light of the Self is the destroyer of ignorance, -- the seekers after salvation should always engage themselves in questioning others about it, in affectionately seeking it and in realizing it by actual experience!
50. The Self is different from matter, matter is different from the Self; this is the quintessence of all the compilations of wisdom; all the rest of knowledge is but an amplification of this!
51. The wise bhavya who has well understood the teaching of the "Ishtopadesha." and who maintains the serenity of mind by the effort of his will when he is respected as well as when disrespect is shown to him, and who has freed himself from the attachment to the non-self, obtains the matchless treasure of moksha, whether he lives in a city or in a jungle.