An encounter between a saint and an untouchable provides the background to the Manisha Panchakam, a set of five verses by Shankaracharya. Swami Ranganathananda extracts a radical social message from this encounter. This book thus not only educates the reader about the true import of Vedanta, but can also help mitigate our social problems.
Desire, want, is the father of all misery. Desires are bound by the laws of success and failure. Desires must bring misery. The great secret of true success, of true happiness, is this: the person who asks for no return, the perfectly unselfish person, is the most successful.
-Swami Vivekananda