Steady Wisdom: 108 Verses On Changing My Thinking
DAY 82
The body comes and goes. Since I am the self that neither comes nor goes, there is no reason to mourn.
-Ashtavakra Samhita 15:9
Meditation
The fact that I can say, “The body comes, goes and changes” proves that I, the witness of the body, do not come, go or change. I must exist prior to the thought, “Here is the body” because if I came into existence along with the thought of the body I would be unaware of the thought’s previous non-existence owing to the fact that I too would have been previously non-existent (and therefore not present to recognize the arising of the thought of the body). By the same logic, I must exist after any particular thought of the body otherwise I would disappear along with the thought (and therefore not be present to recognize the disappearance of that particular thought of the body).
Nor do I change when the body changes, such as when the body changes from childhood to adulthood. Because if I were identical with the changing body, then when the childhood body changed into the adult body (and thus no longer existed) I too would no longer exist. And a non-existence entity would not be present and able to say, “Now here is my adult body.”
So unlike the body, I do not come, go or change. I am ever-present and immutable. OM.
End Of Knowledge 