Letter 4:
Obtaining the Perfume of Life
04/05/07
Everyone,
Hello, how are you?
A woman wants to smell nice. She goes to a perfume shop. In the shop, the assistant takes a bottle and sprays a little bit of perfume in the air. The woman takes an empty bottle out of her handbag and goes jumping about, trying to catch all the nice-smelling air in the bottle. Then she goes home and tries to pour the air onto herself so that she, too, may smell nice. And why did she not buy the bottle of perfume, which is the source of the nice smell?
That is a description of ourselves, who are worldly and of little discrimination. We want wisdom and try to get it out from a book instead of grasping the source of the wisdom, which is in the heart. We want to perceive beauty, and we go to a mountain or art gallery, but that perception comes from realisation, when the heart opens. We want love, and look for it outside, but the essence of love comes from the heart, not from another person. It would be much better to open the heart, the source of all these things instead of putting things outside in front of us, when we still cannot appreciate them so much, coloured as they are with attachments, and the heart does not sing its appreciation. When the heart is opened, we will have wisdom always, not just when we are reading a verse uttered by some saint epochs ago, we will perceive beauty all around always, not just in front of the mountain vista, we will experience pure love in the heart always without running the risk of ending up with a broken heart some day.
When we have the realisation, we will have the bottle of perfume, not just a little perfume mixed with a lot of air. If they come on their own, they come, but we should stop going round looking for the manifestations of the essence, and try to grasp the essence itself. Then we will appreciate the manifestations in truth, not just for a while, but always.
Hare Krishna,
Koji