| Discourses On Gita By Acharya Vinoba Bhave |
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| Discourses On Gita |
| PRAPATTI OR SURRENDER TO GOD |
Pure joy through bhakti5. If we have bhakti, we can see the skill of the great artist, the brush in his hand. If once we taste the rare sweetness of the stream at its source, all other pleasures become flat and insipid. A man who has tasted real bananas would not be taken in by bananas of painted wood or clay, however beautiful. A man who tasted the sweetness of a mountain stream would not care for syrups.6. Once, some people said to a philosopher, "There is a festival of lamps in the city today. Let us go and see it." He replied, "What, after all, is this festival lights? One lamp, then another, then, a third, and so on, a lakh, a million, a crore - as many as you please. And that is your festival." In an arithmetical progression like 1+2+3 ... ... going on to infinity, once we know the difference between one term and the next in the series, there is no need to write it all down. These lamps are arranged one after the other; what is there in it to get so excited about? But then, man likes this sort of pleasure. He squeezes a lemon, and mixes sugar and water with the juice, sips it and smacks his lips and exclaims, "How delightful this drink is!" What else has the tongue to do, except to taste? We blend all sorts of tastes - and its whole pleasure is in tasting them. When I was a boy, I once went to the cinema. I took with me a piece of sacking in case I wanted to sleep. On the screen appeared dazzling pictures of fire, which in a few minutes tired my eyes out. I went to sleep, asking my neighbour to wake me up when the show was over. |
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