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Developing Good Samskaras > Page1
1. Human life is full of the play of samskaras - tendencies developed by repeated actions. Innumerable actions are going on through us all the time. If we started counting them, we should never come to an end. Even if we take a superficial look at the activities that go on in twenty-four hours, do you realize how huge the number would be? Eating, drinking, sitting, sleeping, wandering, a little work, writing, talking, reading - besides these, how many dreams, likes and dislikes, honor and dishonor, pain and pleasure in endless variety! And they all leave associations, impacts, and build up tendencies in the mind. Hence, if someone asks me what life is, I should explain it as an aggregate of samskaras.
2. Samskaras can be bad as well as good. And they both have their effects on human life. We cannot even recollect the actions of our infancy, our childhood is like something written on a slate and rubbed off. The samskaras of a former birth are like a writing completely rubbed out - so much so that one wonders whether there was a former birth at all. When we do not remember our childhood even in this birth, why talk of previous births? Let apart former births, let us think of this one. It is not as if only those things which we remember took place. Many are the things done, and many the things known; but all this action and knowledge disappear, leaving only a trace of samskara behind. If when we go to bed at night we try to recollect all our actions of the day, they don't all come back. What actions do come back before our mind's eye? Only those which were vivid and distinct. If we had a quarrel with someone, the impression lasts, for that was the day's earnings.
About Author : Acharya Vinoba Bhave
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