68 VIVEKACHUDAMANI
�� ��154. This body of ours is the product o\ food and comprises the material sheath ; it lives on food, and dies without it ; it is a mass of skin, flesh, blood, bones and lots of other filthy things, and can never be the eternally pure, seif-existent Atman.
[ Product of food — that went to build up the parent-body. ]
155. It does not exist prior to birth or posterior to death, but lasts only for a short (intervening) period ; its virtues are transient, audit is changeful by nature; it is manifold, inert, and is a sense-object like a jar (or any other thing) ; how can it be one's own Self, the Witness of changes in all things ?
{^Manifold — not a simple, and subject to constant transformations. ]
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