Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Sacrifice means giving up or renunciation...

Sacrifice means "giving up" or "renunciation".
What exactly has to be given up? Riches?
That is easy enough. One's home?

That too is not hard.

Does it mean retiring into a forest,
breaking away from kith and kin?
Many have done so and become proud of it.
The renunciation that the sacrifice demands
is the casting off of pomp, pride, envy, greed, in short, the ego itself.

Every rite laid down in the scriptures
has this aim only - to promote selflessness and Universal Love.

Concentration on sensual gratification,
anger, fury, hatred - these are bestial characteristics.
Man must be ashamed to have even a trace of such traits.

The characteristics of human nature are, and ought to be - love, forbearance, detachment, renunciation and truth.

divinely sent