SAIVA-SIDDHANTA

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TREE OF KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL.
joys ot this world which ever create a flaming desire, a thirst
after them, more and more like the unquenchable thirst of the
confirmed drunkard. This supreme and resistless Joy as
shown in other stanzas of the House 4 of God
,
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fills our hearts, like the flood brooking not its banks, when, in
all
humility and love, our body and heart melt in His service.
The contrast between the transient world s joy and the
Joy that transcends all states without end, &*nfuujimiitl tunm^
a/ i-Kfi @sJruLc, is well brought out in the following stanza by
the same Saint Manickavachakar.
TuQU n
Taste not the flower-borne honey drop tiny as a millet seed,
Sing thou of Him who showers honey
So as to melt one s very marrow-bones,
of bliss
While thinking, seeing and speaking aye and ever.
When this joy fills him, then does he sport in God, delight
in God as the Muncjaka says, then does he love God, delight
in God, revel in God and rejoice in God as the Chhafldogya
puts it. In this condition of Svaraj, when he can exclaim lam
the glorious of the glorious neither pain, nor pleasures of this
world, nor the fruits of the forbidden tree, can touch or attract
him, though he desists not from doing his duty,
such as truth
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fulness, meditation, tapas &c., and in this condition, even
moves about there, laughing or eating, playing or rejoicing (in
if he
his mind), be it with women, carnages, or relatives," (chandog
viii. 12. 3) these acts will not affect him, as fire cannot burn a
man who is practised in agni-stumbha (see the principle stated
in Sivajnana Siddhiyar. X 5
& 6.)
Compare this with the Christian aspiration to divine joy.
"If to any the tumult of the flesh were hushed, hushed
the images of the earth, and water and air, hushed also the ruler
of heaven, yea the very soul be hushed to herself, and by not