The Moha Mudgara of Sri Adi Shankaracharya paints a picture of the life of the person who is always enjoying life through the sense organs of perception and action. To just remain in the zone of comfort, an individual is constantly enjoying the pleasures of the senses. At the end of it, there is nothing else but disease and suffering.
How does enjoyment of the sense organs result in disease? Through the eyes, we see images, people and objects. When, for instance, the eyes are constantly glued to the film, television, computer or mobile phone screen because we get some delight from what we see through them, the power of seeing leaves the body.
It falls on an inanimate and lifeless object and when it comes back, there is only a dead image and impression in our mind. There is no mutual exchange of life energy as it happens in the case of seeing natural surroundings and circumstances teeming with life.
The same is the case with the ears. For every sense organ, there is our personal energy that is spent and when it is transferred to inanimate objects of pleasure, there is no exchange of life force and hence we feel depleted. The tongue can taste because of the expression of energy. The more we are
indulging in different tastes, the total mental energy expresses itself continuously through this sense organ.
The same is the case of the nose and the skin.
Adi Shankaracharyaji has written a poetic story verse in Viveka Choodamani—the crest jewel of right discrimination between what is real and what is unreal. He says the moth is attracted to the fire through its sense of sight and meets with its death.
The honey bee is attracted to the fragrant flower through the sense of its nostrils. The deer gets trapped by the hunter attracted by the sound of drums, the fish falls into its bait of worms because of its attachment to taste and the elephant is trapped in a camouflaged pit dug to ensnare it, keeping the female elephant inside. The elephant dies on account of its sense of attachment to the sense of touch.
The master concludes this poetic verse with the question—if the attachment to even one sense organ can kill an insect or animal, what to say of man who expresses through all his five sense organs to gain joy?
In this verse of Bhaja Govindam, the master says at the end of all enjoyment lies diseases. Our lifestyle diseases today are all result of enjoyment through some sense organ or abuse of our faculties of thinking. Even if people clearly know that death is the end to which this body goes to, people do not give up this habit of sinful enjoyment of sense pleasures.
The refrain of the song comes to save. Since enjoyment is so preferable and it also leads to trouble, simply withdraw the mind to realise the joy of chanting the name of the lord. Nothing else can ever save the mind from this whirl of change and impermanence.
brni.sharanyachaitanya@gmail.com