Bairag : The Taste Of Renunciation

The life of an ordinary man is a life of consumptions. From something as tangible as a heavy meal, to something as subtle as an orgasm, it is nothing but a hunger and a gratification; a desire and a consumption. During most of the day, if he is not eating or drinking something then he is reading, watching or listening to something and thus feeding his senses on subtle diets. He is always consuming something or the other and when he is tired of all these consumptions, he finally shuts off everything and settles down to consume sleep. The momentum of the day frequently expresses itself in the form of dreams and the subconscious creates new ways of feeding the senses.

More than 90% of the human beings have cultivated a lifestyle that is based upon the gratification of the various hungers. They cannot even contemplate a life beyond sensual pleasures. For them, such a life is analogous to death and absolutely dull as well as tasteless. They can imagine the lack or loss of senses when they look at the deaf, dumb, blind, paralyzed and sick but the conquering of these senses by an ascetic is beyond their comprehension. They think of an ascetic as someone who is willfully depriving himself of the flavors of life and starving his body, mind and soul, thereby converting his surroundings into a graveyard. They fail to see that he is simply feeding on diets more subtle than theirs, consuming for a different purpose and from a different dimension.