6.BODY WORSHIP:-THE CULT OF THE RAKSHASAS.

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The body is everything:-

In short, to spend one's entire lifetime in sheer body worship, in earning more so that this  futile worship may be made more elaborate, is one of the abominable intellectual stupidities into which humanity readily sinks.  For, if the body be the altar  of worship, it may not remain permanently there as the days of decay and old age are not far away even for today's young bodies. To sweat and toil, to fight and procure, to feed and breed, to clothe and shelter the body--are all in themselves necessary, but to spend whole life time in these alone is a criminal waste  of human abilities. For, era long it is to grow old, tottering, infirm and, in the end die away.


At least the animal body has some value when it is dead; a human body, when once dead, has only a nuisance value. It is to maintain and to fatten such a bundle of despicable filth that wealth is earned, hoarded, many throats cut, low dissipation practiced and cruel wars waged! "Even the nearest and dearest, your own life's partner,"points out Swami Sankaracharya, "dreads and fears the darling body of her beloved husband, when once life has ebbed away from it."


To meditate on this significant fact of life is to develop a healthy disregard for, and a profitable spirit of detachment from, the body-vanities. No doubt, the body is to be looked after for it serves us. Body is a tool for us. Keep it clean and useful, feed it clothe it, wash it, -just as we serve the body- but always with a firm and steady understanding that this is only an instrument with  which we may win the ampler fields. This will not remain for ever, nor will it serve with equal efficiency for all times. It will perish, and it must.


The Rishies, with an ideal scientific detachment had observed life as it is, and with a relentless honesty had painted it all with shattering realism only to help the student to realise it all fully.  This culminates only in a healthy optimism, and where the student's old values are shattered, teachers are very careful to substitute for him a set of healthier and more enduring values of positive living.


Swamiji in the 6th slokam beautifully draws our attention on this.


    

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