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Liquid Beauty
=============
Once upon a time there was a prince who met very beautiful young
girl. He visited her house to see her but she was very chaste. The
prince wanted to marry this beautiful girl but she didn't want to
marry him. So she said to the prince, "Alright, you want to marry
me, you are attracted by my beauty, so I will distil my beauty in
the next ten days, I will distil my beauty into liquid form and
then you can come and see this distilled form of my beauty." So
the prince said, "Alright." Then she said, "If you still want to
take me as your wife then you can take me." The prince replied,
"Alright, that's fine, I'll come back in ten days and certainly
I'll take you as my wife my beautiful young maiden."
As soon he left the beautiful young girl started to take very
strong purgatives, medicine which would cause her to vomit and
pass stool. She kept all the vomit and stool in a big pot. She
didn't eat anything, she was simply passing stool and vomiting, so
within ten days her whole beautiful body was destroyed. She was a
grey colour, she was very skinny, very weak, you couldn't
recognize her as the same person.
After ten days the prince came back to visit the beautiful girl.
She opened the door for him. When the prince saw her he said, "I
have come to see one very beautiful lady who I am about to marry."
So the girl said, "I am that beautiful young lady." He replied,
"No it isn't true. How could it be possible?" She said, "Yes I am
that beautiful young lady, I have distilled my beauty, come and
see it." The prince thought, "This will be interesting." She took
him to the place where she was keeping the big pot containing all
of her stool, vomit and urine and she said, "Here is my beauty."
This is the story of liquid beauty, and it is a fact. That is
actually the beauty of the material body, it's simply a bag of
pus, stool, urine, blood, mucus, horrible things. And we are just
attached to the skin and as soon as the skin is no longer
beautiful we are not attracted any more.
This is why in Western society, which is simply going on the basis
of this "skin disease," there are so many divorces and so many
marriages. A man is being attracted to a woman on the basis of the
skin. He thinks, "Oh, here is a very nice woman. She has very nice
hair, a very beautiful complexion, a very nice bodily structure.
She is a very beautiful woman." The woman is thinking in the same
way, "This is a very handsome man, he is very strong, very
beautiful, a very attractive man." Then they come together and for
a short time enjoy sex life and soon there is some discrepancy in
the sex life, some difficulty, so they say, "I'm sorry darling
it's just not working any more, the magic is not in our
relationship any more. I have to go and find somebody else." Then
they have a divorce.
Everything is based on the skin, and the skin is temporary. We can
never be satisfied, we can never be happy with a relationship
based on the skin only because our skin is a very temporary thing.
A beautiful girl is beautiful for a few years only, young girls
sixteen, seventeen are very beautiful, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-
two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, then finished. She's
not beautiful any more. So this is a fleeting moment only. It's
the same with a man, a man is beautiful, sixteen, seventeen,
eighteen, nineteen then the beauty is gone.
If we are attracted by the skin only, the beauty of the skin, we
are bound to be dissatisfied because the person, I, the self, I am
different from the body. Krishna describes in another verse in
Bhagavad-gita:
dehino 'smin yatha dehe kaumaram yauvanam jara
tatha dehantara-praptir dhiras tatra na muhyati
Here Krishna says the soul, even in this life, is changing bodies.
In the beginning we have a child's body, then we get a boy's body,
then a man's body then we get an old man's body, so the time of
death is simply another change of body. A self-realized soul can
understand this, he can see this. This is a fact. Our bodies are
always changing. You can see. No one can argue with this. It's
simply a statement of a very plain fact. I have this man's body
now, previously I had a boy's body, prior to that I had a child's
body and before that a babies body. They are all different bodies.
I can see, my parents have the pictures and they can show you I
had these different bodies. Now those bodies have gone. Now I have
this man's body and in due course it will also be finished and
I'll have an old man's body and ultimately that old mans body will
be gone and I will be taken away to another body at the time of
death.
This is the process of life in the material world. The bodies are
changing but the soul is not changing. I the person, I am the same
person I was in the babies body, I'm the same person I was in the
child's body, I'm the same person I was in the boys body. I can
remember things, I can remember my childhood body, I can remember
my boys body. I can remember the activities I performed in these
bodies. These activities are performed by me, but the body I had
then is gone. So we can understand that I, the self, the person, I
am permanent, I am eternal, but the body is always changing. I am
not this body, I am the occupier of this body, I am the driver of
this body, I am the controller of this body, but I am not the
body. The body is a machine.
Hare Krishna.
Thank you. Hare Krishna!
Madhudvisa dasa
(madhudvisa@krishna.org) /sudarsana
All glories to His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada!
Sudarsana Home madhudvisa@krishna.org