Chapter 78 Higher Law - 5

All lust, though it has many forms, is one thing, and all that is pure is one thing.It is one thing to eat and drink alone, to live with a man and a woman, or to sleep lasciviously.It belongs to the same appetite, and we only need to see one thing in a man to know what a womanizer he is.The unclean and the pure cannot stand and sit together.We only need to hit the snake at one end of the cave, and it will appear at the other end.If you want to be chaste, you must be temperate.What is chastity?How does a man know that he is chaste?He can't know.We've only heard about it, but don't know what it's like.We illustrate it according to the legends we have heard.Wisdom and purity come from action, but from laziness come ignorance and lust.To a student lust is the result of the laziness of his mind, and an unclean man is often a lazy man: he sits by the hearth to warm himself, he lies in the sunshine, he is not weary, he rests.If impurity and all vices are to be avoided, work zealously, even in cleaning the stables.It is difficult to restrain nature, but it must be restrained.If you are not purer than the heathen, if you are not more restrained than the heathen, if you are not more pious than the heathen, what does it matter if you are a Christian?I know of many religious institutions which are considered pagan, and whose dogmas shame the reader and require him to make new efforts, though the effort is merely to observe the rites.

I hate to say these things, but not because of the subject matter—I don't care how obscene my words are—but because, by saying them, I betray my own uncleanness.We can often talk freely about one form of lust and be silent about another.We have fallen too far.So we cannot simply talk about the necessary activities of human nature.In earlier epochs, in some countries, every activity could be discussed seriously and controlled by law.The Indian legislators are not at all trivial, though moderns may think otherwise.He taught people how to drink, eat, live together, how to defecate, etc., elevating the humble, instead of treating them as trivial things and avoiding them.

Every human being is the architect of a holy temple.His body is his temple, in which he worships his god in his own way, even if he cuts marble, he still has his own temple and god.We are all sculptors and painters, using our blood, flesh, and bones as materials.Any noble quality first improves a man's form, any vulgarity or lust immediately turns him into a beast. John Farmer sat at his door one September evening after a hard day's work, his mind still racing more or less over his work.After bathing, he sat down to give his reason a little rest.It was a rather cold evening, and some of his neighbors feared a frost.Not long after he meditated, he heard the sound of the flute, which was in harmony with his mood.He was still thinking about his work, and although he was thinking about it, planning and planning involuntarily, he didn't care much about these things anymore.The big deal is dander, which can be removed at any time.And the music of the flute is blown from an environment different from his work, urging his sleeping senses to work.The soft music blew away the street, the village, and the country where he lived.A voice said to him,—why do you stay here, to live this life of menial servitude, when an honorable life is possible?The same stars shine over the land over there, and not over here—but how to get out of this situation and actually migrate there?All he could think of was to practice a new ascetic life, to let his mind descend into his body to rescue it, and to treat himself with increasing respect.