Having obtained the great boon of human birth, do not waste a single moment. Plants, trees, animals and birds also live for some time and after generating other plants, trees, animals and birds of their own species, pass away. If you too live in a similar manner, what difference is there between them and yourself? Everyone should make a strenuous effort not to leave this world with a “return ticket.”
Everyone without exception will have to put in strenuous effort. Men and women are equally endowed with the capacity to realize God. It is the duty of a human being to make human birth, which is such a rare boon, successful. Otherwise he has to continue in the round of births and deaths.
You will have to turn your mind to dharma, for dharma is the life of your life, the Self (Atma), established in eternal Truth. Who is that Self? You must certainly get to know this. For how much longer will you reside in inns and journey on the road that leads astray and is beset with dangers and adversity? It is imperative to find one’s own path, to start out on the pilgrimage to one’s Self—to renounce the merely pleasurable and adopt what is for one’s highest good.
-Anandamayi Ma
From Matri Vani, V. 2
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