================================
What is your nature(स्वभाव)? Swine like or Swan like?
================================
Some people have swine tendency of interacting with environment. Like swine, they cannot distinguish between mud and matter of concern and intake everything. They read everything. They watch everything. They talk on everything. Good, bad, grotesque – don’t matter to them. Perceptions created by muddy inputs – don’t matter to them. They love to remain chaos and diseased state. Mutations are normal conditions for them.
Strikingly different, unlike swine, some have Swan tendency. They are skilled in identifying pollutants and stay away from pollutants. They remain in company of good. They ignore bad. They have discrimination power.
**How do you eat? Like swine (Fast food, trite food) or swan (Satvik ,pure, fresh and nutritive food, irrespective of tastes)?
**How do you breathe? Like swine (irregular, unscientific) or like Swan (Rhythmic, scientific, accordance with nature of respiratory system)
**What do read? Like swine (anything, junk newspapers, gossip crap on page 3) or like swan (editorials, research papers)?
**What do you watch? Like swine (anything and everything that comes on channels, Cricket (or Football) or like Swan (Selective, helpful, light entertainment which cannot carry your mind out after watching)?
Intake determines perceptions. Enquire before intake. Like swan, unlike swine.
An endless science, as we know, is grammar.
And life is short; the hindrances are many.
Essentials keep, leaving the non-essential,
As swans drink up the milk, but leave the water
-पंचतंत्र
” By him who is free from passion what is to be left [i. e. Nature] is left, and what is to be taken [i. e. Soul] is taken; as in the case of the swan and the milk.”‘
– Samkhya aphorism
“Others see not the difference when water is mixed with milk, but the
swan at once separates the milk and the water; so too when the
souls are absorbed in the supreme Brahman, the Lord,-the faithful,
who have received the Guru’s words, can at once draw a difference between them.”
-Tattva Muktavali
श्रेयश्च प्रेयश्च मनुष्यमेत: तौ सम्परीत्य विविनक्ति धीर: |
श्रेयो हि धीरोभिप्रेयसो वॄणीते प्रेयो मन्दो षोगक्षेमाद् वॄणीते ||
-कठ उपनिषद्
Both the good (Shreyas) and the pleasant (Preyas) approch the man. The wise man pondering over them, makes his choice. The wise(Swan) chooses the good (Shreyas) in preference to the pleasant (Preyas). The fool (simple-minded swine) for the sake of worldly-being prefers the pleasant (preyas)
-Katha Upanishad
This is the reason; iconography of Maa Saraswati – goddess of knowledge – is not completed without swan – the discriminative ability described by Bhagwad Gita.
===================
The aquatic bird swan lives on lakes that abound in lotuses, and subsists in a measure upon the underground stalk of the lotus plant (such a stalk is called bisa), whose joint (granthi), when crushed (bhagna), exudes a juice designated by the word ksira, which is also a common name for milk. Thus the bird, as it floats on the lake, may be said to drink ksira or milk out of water.
