Kathamrita Volume II - Swami Vivekananda

Panchatapa : Practicing japa and meditation seated within fivefiresParamatman : The Supreme SoulParamahamsa : One belonging to the highest order ofknowers of BrahmanParabrahman : Supreme BrahmanPassions, six : Lust, anger, avarice, delusion, pride and envyPestle, story of : The childhood friends of Samba, one ofKrishna’s sons, playfully disguised him as a pregnant womanby dressing him in female clothes and hanging an iron pestlebelow his waist. They presented him before a group ofascetics and asked them what sort of child the woman wouldgive birth to. Enraged that a joke had been played on them,the munis proclaimed a curse that the iron pestle would be theruin of the entire clan of Yadus. Fearfully, the boys took thepestle to the ocean and rubbed it for a very long time. Theparticles that fell from it, on striking the ground, becamestrong willow reeds. The boys threw the last piece of pestleinto the sea.In the meantime Krishna’s clan, the Yadus, had becomeoverbearingly vain and arrogant and they began to fightamong themselves. At last they took the powerful willowreeds sprung from the pestle dust and, with them as weapons,fought each other to the death. Krishna, having decided that itwas time that he also pass on, bade his father and his wivesfarewell and seated himself under a tree for meditation. Onlyone of his legs was not obscured by the leafy and outreachingbranches of the tree. A hunter mistook him for a deer andkilled him with an arrow, the point of which was the last piecefrom the pestle that had been thrown into the sea. Thus did themunis’ curse find fulfillment.Pilau : Fried ricePingala : A spiritual nerve on the right of the spinal cordPir : A Muslim saintPisacha : Unclean spirit, demonPitamah : GrandfatherPitta : One of the humours of the body, caused due to excessof bilePrakriti : Primordial Nature, composed of the 3 gunas, thematerial of the universe of mind and matterPrakriti bhava : Assuming a feminine naturePrana : Vital breath