Passage 12

Tap any word for its meaning.

In plain words

We must achieve this with effort at this very age:

We must also recognise the nature of speech. Speech is very sacred. Jayadeva said:

O tongue, you who know taste and love what is sweet, I tell you what is true, good and supreme: recite the sweet syllables ….

O tongue that knows taste! O sacred tongue! Tongue joined with divine words! Tongue that develops the power of speech! Tongue that is the very form of Sarasvatī! You are so sacred a tongue, yet you use such unholy words; this is not good for you. To atone for this sin, he told it to remember "Govinda, Dāmodara, Mādhava." What sacrifice the tongue has! What honour the tongue has! What dignity the tongue has! What breadth the tongue has! We must think this over well. When the tongue tries to eat a fruit and it is sour, it is not right to send it to the digestive fire. Which is the digestive fire?

Becoming Vaiśvānara, I dwell in the bodies of living beings; joined with prāṇa and apāna, I digest the fourfold food.

God is present in the form of Vaiśvānara. "This is not a fruit to be offered to God. This is not a sweet fruit." So thinking, it spits that fruit out, telling the goddess Earth, "You yourself created it; you yourself take it back." If that same fruit is sweet: O sweet Mādhava, You enjoy this sweetness. O Lord of sweetness, sweet, sweet. It does not enjoy it at all itself. The good it gives to God. The bad it throws away to nature. Such is the sacrifice of this tongue. What patience! What is that patience? With thirty-two teeth like sharp arrows around it, how well and how carefully the soft tongue moves in their midst! Vibhīṣaṇa too said this very thing to Hanumān. "O Hanumān! Between these teeth that are like rākṣasas, I live like the tongue that remembers the Name. If I slip even a little this way or that, my life will be destroyed between these teeth. So, before this destruction comes, I am remembering the Name; show me the form too," he said, and prayed to Hanumān.