Both in infancy and in childhood, the individual suffers. Due to non-fulfillment of desires, he has outbursts of anger during adolescence. This is another type of suffering. Along with age, lustful desires increase in the body. Simultaneously anger and grief also increase.
He mingles with other lustful, wicked persons and brings about his own downfall. Ignorance, the evil sinful thoughts in his head and his extreme weakness towards wicked deeds cause him to believe that this gross body made up of the 5 elements is his true Self (atma). They intensify the feelings of ‘me and mine’ within him.
Tad-arthaṁ kurute karma yad-baddho yāti saṁsṛtim
Yo ’nuyāti dadat kleśam avidyā-karma-bandhanaḥ
In order to sustain the gross body, the living being engages in varied types of actions. However these actions, which he performs for the body, further bind him and throw him into the cycle of re-births. It is a perpetual cycle. Actions performed due to spiritual ignorance (ajnana) are the cause for the existence of the body. This body is nothing but the source of all suffering. It continuously follows him.
Even a virtuous pious person who interacts with wicked, unrighteous persons either for the sake of earning his livelihood or for fulfillment of his desires and who, through this association, succumbs to sensual lustful needs will end up in hell as before.
Due to bad associations, qualities such as truthfulness, cleanliness, compassion, silence, mental calmness, discriminatory knowledge, humbleness, wealth, fame, patience, mind-control, sense-control and good knowledge totally deplete. Due to extreme obsessions and passions, immoral persons never experience mental peace.
It is imperative to discard friendship with ignorant fools who consider this body to be the Self and who are puppets in the hands of women. Such persons are neither worthy of friendship nor compassion. Such friendships and associations should be given up in totality.
Amongst all, friendship with women is the worst. It is very important to distance from unethical women and from those men who associate with such women. It is dangerous. It is the most terrible noose. The type of bondage that is caused due to friendship with such women will not be obtained from any other object.
Once upon a time Brahma saw his daughter and was suddenly obsessed with her bodily beauty. Noticing this, his daughter transformed herself into a female deer and began to run swiftly trying to escape from him. Lord Brahma took on the form of a male deer and began to chase her. From this the caution to be exercised in this matter is to be understood. This story explains the dangers of excessive passion. Brahma is the creator. It explains how the creator got trapped into the illusion that he himself had created.
At the outset, Brahma created Marichi and other Maharishis. They created Kaśyapa and other Prajāpatis. These Prajapatis created Devatas and human beings. In such a creation, the only being who did not get infatuated with the illusion called ‘woman’ is Maharishi Narayana!
O Mother! Observe the power of illusion (maya) that I have created in the form of a woman. By the mere movement of her eyebrows a woman can control even the most powerful conquerors of the world. She can make them fall at her feet.
The person who is desirous of serving Me, obtaining discriminatory knowledge of things permanent and impermanent in this creation and who is desirous of reaching the pinnacle of Yoga should necessarily distance himself from evil minded women!
The same rule applies to woman as well and she should distance from such men. Such friendships are only gateways to hell.
When a man is approached by illusion (māya), which manifests in the form of woman, he should realize it to be a blind well covered with grass. With extreme vigilance he should distance from her. Deep pits are covered with grass and an image of female elephant is placed on it. This is a trap to catch male elephants. In the same way, men and women, due to attraction for opposite sex, fall into this deep trap called illusion.
Until now men were cautioned. In the below para, women are cautioned.
Due to attachment with a woman in the previous birth, a man is reborn as a woman in this birth. It is the outcome of attachment and sin. The woman should realize that the man, whom she looks up to as her husband and as the giver of her money, children, house and other needs, is nothing but illusion (māya) in a male form.
Here understand that both male and female forms are nothing but illusions (maya) to trap the person. A man should be cautious realizing that woman is nothing but illusion created to trap him; women also should understand that man is an illusion.
Enraptured by the hunter’s music, the deer falls into a deathly trap laid by him. Likewise illusion, which exists in the form of the husband, wealth and children, is nothing but death sent in those forms by God. Every woman should realize this.
A being travels from one plane to another and also from one body to another through the medium of his subtle body (sookshma śareera). On the one hand he experiences the results of his past fruitive actions and on the other he constantly indulges in newer actions, the fruits of which will need to be reaped later. This subtle body travels along with him till liberation.
This gross body made up of senses, 5 elements and mind is only a tool for enjoying worldly experiences! The body gradually shrinks and depletes. Both life and body eventually get destroyed. As long as the ability to perform action exists in the body, it does not die. When the body loses the ability to perform action, it is called death.
Sankarśanāya namah
