Acharya Mahaprajna
I read a small book called Terah Dwar (thirteen doors) in childhood. It said whatever man eats, drinks, dresses, wraps up, hears, and sees is all matter. All things visible and usable are matter. The seer and the user is spirit.
A little thought revealed that the spirit neither eats nor drinks, neither dresses nor wraps up, neither hears nor sees. Nor does the body, for it lacks consciousness. Having ruled out both the body and the spirit, the question arises: Then who is the agent of all these activities?
Philosophers reply that it is neither body, nor spirit, but a combination of both; that further complicates the matter. Once you bring in the spirit, you have to believe in the whole rigmarole of rebirth, heaven, hell, God, the karmas and their bondage, deliverance and so on. By believing in all these things, man has literally handed over his present to the future, has made the visible and the immediate a prisoner of the invisible and the remote, and has allowed his fancy to undertake flights into the unknown. Not surprisingly, truth remains evasive.
There is a story that proves, how ignoring the present proves disastrous for imaginary gains.
Long ago, a farmer from Marwar travelled to Mewar. There he drank sugar cane juice and ate sweet preparations. He was greatly fascinated by this land of sweets, for back home they grew nothing but millet. He bought sugar cane seeds and returned home. There, despite wise counsel to the contrary, he insisted on planting sugar cane without even waiting for harvesting the nearly ripe millet crop. He had his way but since the place had scarcity of water all his efforts went up in smoke.
