When the true Self is known the jigsaw puzzle of the world gets solved, doubts end, and all misery vanishes. In Atmabodha, a lyric of sixty-eight mellifluous verses, Shankara gives us a lucid analysis of the nature of the Self and explains step by step how it can be realized. Swami Nikhilananda prefaces his delightful English translation with a masterly survey of the Upanishadic view of life.
What about this marvelous experience of standing alone, discarding all help, breasting the storms of life, of working without any sense of recompense, without any sense of putrid duty, and of working a whole life, joyful, free -- not goaded on to work like slaves by false human love or ambition?Nature grinds all of us. Keep count of the ounce of pleasure you get. In the long run, nature did her work through you, and when you die your body will make other plants grow. Yet we think all the time that we are getting pleasure ourselves. Thus the wheel goes round.
-Swami Vivekananda
Empty
