Page:The Kural or The Maxims Of Tiruvalluvar.pdf/32

position he sees a larger righteousness unfold itself before him. He has to go through a life of stricter discipline than before. He has now to practise mercy to all living beings, abjure flesh-meat, mortify his body and concentrate his thoughts, and thus obtain a higher spiritual power and vision, purify his mind by a strict adherence to truth, and conquer his anger and every temptation to injure or kill even the smallest of creatures. Most of the virtues treated of here should also of course be practised by the householder, though many of them only in a lesser degree; but they are placed in this section on account of their more intimate relation to the ascetic. This life of discipline removes the veils of ignorance covering the soul one after another, the eyes of the ascetic are opened, and he sees that the phenomenal life is no better than a dream and a shadow, a thing that is to-day but passes away to-morrow. He therefore renounces his attachments to this world utterly, and then be realises the Truth. “Heaven is nearer to him than the Earth” now. But there is yet the insidious foe of Desire which, taking a thousand