Passage 10

From the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, 7.5.23

Also in his talks (48)

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In plain words

When we recognise this truth, wherever we go, we remain one. Even when your son is studying in America, you send money there to him by money order. He is living there in America. You are in India. The bond between the two of you is the bond of the heart alone. We must keep up this bond. Be wherever you like. Do whatever work you like. Enter whatever path you like. My bond of the Ātma is one alone. My God is one alone. My God alone is my bond. The body has only worldly bonds, not a spiritual bond. There is the master of a house; that master is only one. The wife comes. She speaks to him: ‘Listen, dear.’ The son calls him ‘Father’. The daughter-in-law calls him ‘Father-in-law’. The grandson calls him ‘Grandpa’. Whether the wife calls him ‘Listen, dear’, the son calls him ‘Father’, the daughter-in-law calls him ‘Father-in-law’ or the grandson calls him ‘Grandpa’, the master is one and the same. These relationships come in only on account of the body's ties. Through the body so many differences arise. The bond of the body is never lasting for us.

A hovel of filth, a servant's basket wasting with diseases, a tuber tossed about by pity, a thorn-bush that cannot swim the sea of birth, a quiver of arrows: rise and look; whenever we think of it, this body, do not trust it to stand firm, O mind! Take refuge at Hari's feet!

Do not rot away in attachment to the body. Do not fall into many bonds through attachment to the body. This attachment to the body comes and goes. But your attachment to the Ātma is always one and the same. That alone is real and eternal. To make for ourselves such a bond, real and eternal, we must do so many kinds of sādhana.

Listening, singing, remembering Viṣṇu, serving His feet, salutation, worship, service, friendship and offering of the self.

When does the offering of the self come about? There must be surrender. When there is friendship, the offering of the self happens of itself.