Sivananda's Personality-72.

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25/01/2017.

1.
Underlying these many facets of the Master’s personality was his spirit of renunciation.

One day, when he saw his disciple, Savitri Asopa, gaze with wonder at a particularly arresting portrait of his, he himself commented, "You can sit like that only if you have renunciation."

Renunciation was the key to the Master’s personality. It was his very essence. He was a Sannyasin first and last.

2.
Sharada, one of the Master’s many biographers, put it beautifully in her Vignette of Sivananda: "His is a face of renunciation," she says, "and to understand that face is to understand Hinduism."

3.
But to the Master, renunciation did not mean untidy dress and unkempt hair.

He was scrupulously clean and showed by personal example that decency should be maintained even in the standard of a Sannyasin’s dress.

To him renunciation meant renunciation of the ego, of "I" and "mine".

It meant giving up attachment.

True renunciation belonged to the mind.

Sri N. Ananthanarayanan
 To be continued ...
                                                              Sri N. Ananthanarayanan

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