68 Nails of Infinite Effulgence

"As a modern materialistic man comes to study more and more the contents of the Upaniṣads, it is possible that he feels cheated of the cheaper joys of his previous easier life of mental distraction and physical dissipations. This negative feeling of a nameless sad regret saps all enthusiasm in the student. But this feeling comes only so long as one has not fully realised the fact that the enchanting fascinations of usual broadway distractions have a knack of wearing away too soon; one gets quickly bored of such superficialities. An intelligent person very quickly loses all his attractions for such things. He discovers that his mind has a tendency to fly away from all its objects of entertainment and come to torment itself by its own thoughts that are indeed very unpleasant. A man of indiscriminate intellect never questions why it is so but instead he hurriedly discovers a new set of excitements and a fresh pattern of distractions to engage his mind’s momentary fancy. He may even turn to God of the usual formalist religions - visit churches, mosques or temples, give away something in charity, build a house of God or a hospital, run to a hall of sermons and even take up to some forms of prayer. All of them are again, a new variety of distractions to keep his mind away from weeping at itself and thus escape its own suicidal brutalities.

People, who thus follow religion as an escape from themselves, ultimately come to gain nothing except perhaps a lingering sorrow dulled by a blind faith that benumbs the very capacity to perceive their own tragedies of life. Scientific detachment, honest observation, logical conclusions and heroic decisions alone can help an individual to come away from his own life’s fallacies. Ᾱtmabodha supplies all these requisites and Ᾱcārya Śaṅkara has made this scientific treatise a chiselled beauty with a distinct cadence and rhythm of its own. The poet in Śaṅkara revels in these sixty-eight verses. There is no verse here which does not have a simile. Each is a picture, a sure and striking example. These examples are real hammer strokes that nail the elusive ideals of Vedānta on to the immature comprehension of all early students. They are all such striking examples, so pregnant with suggestions that to ruminate upon them is in itself a profitable meditation for the new initiates. May the infinite Effulgence, the silent witness of all our actions, to us all."

-- Swami Chinmayananda, Introduction to Atmaboda