Passage 4

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In plain words

With such Prema you can offer sacrifice and gain grace. What is the wealth you must earn? Not currency notes. You must earn the wealth of Jñāna and the wealth of grace. For this, Prema and sacrifice are what matter most. Only when these two become one is the fitting result obtained.

Ānanda comes only from the right use of the senses

The Buddha practised many sādhanas. But no result appeared. “Alas, how much time I have wasted!” he grieved. He recognised that the right path is to put to good use the five senses God has bestowed. “If I had recognised this truth at the very start, how much happiness I would have enjoyed!” he thought. God has given the five senses to all human beings, with no distinction of poor and great. Only when they are set on the path of Prema does divinity reveal itself. But man today misuses the five senses God has given, for the sake of physical pleasures and joys. Recognising that the pleasures of the senses are worthless and that they lead to bondage, the Buddha gave them up. He came to know that the misuse of the senses roots out humanness. Leaving the wife he had married and the son born to him, he developed Vairāgya. He recognised the principle of the one Ātma. Only then could he experience Ānanda.

Ānanda, the son of the Buddha's aunt, always stayed close beside the Buddha. The Buddha to him: “Ānanda! You were born to experience Ānanda. Only when you put to good use the five senses God has bestowed can you experience Ānanda; you can share that Ānanda with many,” he said. “The Ānanda of Brahman, the giver of the highest happiness, absolute, the form of Jñāna, beyond the pairs of opposites, like the sky, the goal of ‘That thou art’ and the like, one, eternal, spotless, unmoving, the Sākṣī of every mind, beyond all states, free of the three guṇas …”

Man, who should experience such Ānanda, has become a slave to his senses and enjoys the pleasures of the senses that dogs, jackals and monkeys enjoy. Then what use is it that he was born a human being?