Full Life-span is our Right

Meaning: As explained in the line of Rigved 8/67/20 – our life should be such that we should live the full life span. We should live a life of restraint to avoid premature death.

Message: There is a never-ending treasure of powers in man’s body and mind. If these can be saved from destruction and put to good use, then promising success can be achieved in the expected direction. By not understanding this fact, we go on unnecessarily wasting our invaluable powers and with emptied powers, lead a hollow, diseased, weak and unsuccessful life, waiting for death to overtake us.

The body and the mind go on producing their powers constantly through their diet and the store of our powers gets restored. If this production can be used in the proper direction by saving it from worthless spending, then promising progress can be decidedly achieved in any field. Restraint means to avoid worthless depletion of powers. This worthless expenditure is mostly through our organs, the chief among them being the tongue and the organ of sex.

We waste our power through the tongue by absurd talk, slander, back-biting, boasting and gossip. If the tongue is restrained from untruthful and bitter speech, then our speech can be astonishingly influential. It will develop the capacity to bless. ‘Maun’ (observing silence) is considered an austerity. It is not possible for everyone to observe silence like the sages, but absurd talk can be controlled. Let our speech be properly controlled so that it is beneficial for us and others. The other indiscipline of the tongue is because of its desire for new and exotic tastes. As the tongue gets jaded we start eating undesirable foods to tickle the taste-buds. We overeat some very tasty food and because of over-eating, develop indigestion. This leads to fermentation and decay of food in the digestive tract and makes it weak, causing overall weakness. The toxins produced ultimately reach various organs and produce disease. We forget the fact that health is more important than taste and then suffer from the bad effects of this fault.

Discipline of the sex-organs is of utmost importance. Its overindulgence destroys the essence of the body. It is only because of this essence that there is alacrity in the body and luster on the face, authority in the speech shine in the eyes, intelligence in the mind and daring in the nature. Man becomes physically and mentally weak in proportion to the waste of this essence of the body. A man with sexual lust is not able to remain healthy and cannot enjoy along life-span.

The meaning of self-restraint is accumulation of energy. Indiscipline means ruin of one’s capacity. It is a major fact of life that a man becomes bankrupt through such ruin and the man who saves regularly drop by drop, ultimately gains.