Explation

Niyamsara

Chapter VIII

Expiation (Prayaschitta)

113. Thought-activity of observing (five) vows, (five kinds of) carefulness, character and self-control; or attentiveness to the restraint of senses, is expiation (Pryashchitta). It should be practised constantly.

114. Being engaged, in the contemplation of destroying (or subsiding), etc., one’s own (impure) thought-activities, anger, etc., as well as, meditation upon the attributes of one’s own soul, is said to be expiataion from the real point of view.

115. (A saint) verily, conquers the four kinds of passions (thus), anger with forgiveness, pride with self humility, deceit with straightforwardness, and greed with contentment.

116. A saint who is constantly absorbed in the supreme knowledge, comprehension or conciousness of his own soul (is said to) have expiation.

117. What more need be said, know the complete observance of the best austerities by great saints to be expiation alone. It is the cause of destruction of various karmas (in larger number and quantity).

118. Group of meritorious and demeritorious karmic molecules accumulated (by a soul), during its infinite (number of previous) lives, is destroyed by the observance of austerities; so (practising) austerities (is) expiation.

119. A soul, with the thought-activity of being under the shelter of its own (true) nature, is capable of renouncing all (other foreign) thought-activities. So self-concentration is the complete (expiation).

120. He, who avoiding good and bad forms of speech, and being free from (impure) thought-activities, such as attachment, etc., meditates upon his own soul, (is said), as a matter of fact, to observe the rule (of expiation).

121. He, who discarding the idea of the durability of other objects, such as body, etc., meditates upon his own soul, with concentrated, mind (is said) to have a “withdrawal of attachment from body” (Kayotsarga). (It is also expiation).