Ras-Parityaga

A friend has asked: What does “ras-parityaga” mean? Does it mean that attention should not connect with any sense-born vibration? If so, then a ras-tyagi ought to go about with eyes, ears, etc., closed. The blind, the deaf, the mute would be the supreme renouncers. Is this what Mahavira and you think?

A room is empty. Lao Tzu said: a room is empty—you say “empty.” But you can also say: the room is full of itself, not full of things. You can say: it is filled with emptiness. Emptiness too is a fullness. But those who consider furniture to be fullness will find the room empty. The cause of seeing emptiness is not that the room is empty, but your definition of fullness. We have taken things as fullness. The soul has no things. Therefore the soul looks empty. So we try to fill it with things. Greed’s madness begins—never fullness. Mahavira says: one who goes within sees the soul is already full—full of itself, not of something else. The day you sense that fullness, greed disappears. With greed gone, the mad race to collect ends. Those who keep the habit of hoarding—whatever the object—are householders, not monks. What you hoard is…

Verse (Sanskrit): धम्म-सूत्र: बाह्य-तप-- धम्मो मंगलमुक्किट्‌ठं, अहिंसा संजमो तवो। देवा वि तं नमंसन्ति, जस्स धम्मे सया मणो।। Transliteration: dhamma-sūtra: bāhya-tapa-- dhammo maṃgalamukkiṭ‌ṭhaṃ, ahiṃsā saṃjamo tavo| devā vi taṃ namaṃsanti, jassa dhamme sayā maṇo|| Translation: Dhamma-sutra: Outer Austerity-- Dharma, the loftiest blessing, Nonviolence, self-restraint, austerity. Even the gods pay him homage, whose mind is ever in Dharma. The fourth step of external austerity is: renunciation of rasa. Tradition has kept taking rasa-renunciation to mean a prohibition, a control of certain rasas, certain tastes. Rasa-renunciation is not such a gross affair. In the world of sadhana, even what appears very gross is not gross. However many gross words we employ, the matter itself is subtle. We are forced to use gross words because there are no words for the subtle. For that inner world we have no words that can point with precision. The inner world has no language.

Do not drop the senses; drop the cravings. The senses drop away by themselves. But we find it easier to drop the senses. Someone leaves food; someone gives up salt; someone gives up ghee; someone gives up sugar; someone walks with eyes lowered; someone becomes frightened of the touch of a woman; someone refuses the touch of fine cloth. All this is giving up the senses. It is like someone disgusted with life committing suicide. But suicide does not end life; only the body changes. No sooner are you dead than a new body is taken up. The one who commits suicide is even more likely to obtain a deformed body—because the mind of one who wished to destroy himself is in a distorted state, and the imprint of that distortion—the suicide—will remain upon him. You set yourself on fire. You will not burn in a moment.

Visarjan means dissolution, dissolution into the divine, immersion in the divine, the state of being lost.... One has to learn how to disperse oneself, how to come to a point where one is not. Only then god is. You and god cannot exist together; that's not possible. That's why so many people go on missing god -- because they are asking for the impossible: they want to remain themselves and they want to see god. God can be seen only when you are not. That nothingness can encounter god, not you. So the whole process of sannyas is the process of visarjan, dispersion. Slowly, slowly, one loses, goes on losing, goes on losing. The more one loses, the more one understands how beautiful it is not to be. Then more courage arises, a little bit more.