Page:Ramakrishna - His Life and Sayings.djvu/130

112 was separate from His physical shell, and consequently the sufferings of the body did not affect Him.

63. Once a holy man, while passing through a crowded street, accidentally trod upon the toe of a wicked person. The wicked man, furious with rage, beat the Sddhu merci- lessly, till he fell to the ground in a faint. His disciples took great pains and adopted various measures to bring him back to consciousness, and when they saw that he had recovered a little, one of them asked, * Sir, do you recognise who is attending upon you?' The Sidhu replied, *He who beat me.' A true S&dhu finds no distinction between a friend and a foe.

8. The swan can separate the milk from water; it drinks only the milk, leaving the water untouched. Other birds cannot do so. Similarly God is intimately mixed up with My; ordinary men cannot see Him separately from My! Only the Paramahaa0sa (the great soul here is a pun on the word 'ha*sa,' which means both soul and swan) throws off Miya, and takes up God only.

65. The wind carries the smell of the sandal-wood as well as that of ordure, but does not mix with either. Similarly a perfect -man lives in the world, but does not mix with it

68. A perfect man is like a lotus-leaf in the water or like a mud-fish in the marsh. Neither of these is polluted by the element in which it lives.

67. As water passes under a bridge but never stagnates,