________________
attain the pleasure of eternal nature and for this purpose man should make strenuous efforts towards self-restraint or control of one's senses."
The self alone should be subdued, for it is very difficult to subdue it. It is far better that a man should subdue his self-control and austerities; rather than be subdued by others with fetters and suffer corporal punishment.
Self-restraint is the rudder of life. Just as for want of rudder a boat cannot sail across the river from one bank to the other safely and punctually. Likewise in the absence of selfrestraint the boat of human life cannot sail across the ocean of the world from one seacoast to the other i.e., attain liberation or salvation. The following metaphoric statement also conveys similar ideas:
"The body is said to be the boat and the soul is said to be the sailor. The samsara i.e., the worldly existence, is said to be the ocean which is crossed only by great sages.'
A man without self-restraint has been compared to an animal:
Sanyamain bina pranri, pashuraiv na sanshay Yogayogayam Na janati, bhaidastra kuto bhavait
Man devoid of self-restraint has been called an animal because without self-restraint a man cannot distinguish between right and wrong, just and unjust. So long as this living creature does not attend the school of self-restraint, he cannot develop a grand and lustrous personality. A great scholar says; 'Good nature can fulfill the lack of beauty, but beauty cannot fulfill the lack of good nature.'
In the grand and illustrious book 'Dhawal' an absolute control or check on self has been termed sanyam (self- restraint) 'samyak yamo sanyam'. The holy soul Shraman, who observes five kinds of samitis - five regulations of walking; the mode of speech; the manner of eating food; actions of taking or using and of putting away anything. He answering the call of nature - practices Samvara - stops the inflow of karmic matter into the soul by keeping the five senses under control or moving about in the world with all his senses properly controlled. He follows the three guptis - regulations of mind, speech and bodily activity for self-control with reference to controlling one's inner nature. Finally he subdues the passions and is endowed Right Belief and Right Knowledge, is called selfrestrained.
To discard the external Parigrah - greed of worldly possessions, and internal Parigrah - freedom from evil actions in mind, speech and body; aversion for sensuous pleasures and destruction of passions have been proclaimed in general as the characteristics of a self-restrained person. Almost all scriptures define self-restraint as mentioned above.
Create PDF with PDF4U. If you wish to remove this line, please click here to purchase the full version
