Study a Verse

• The nine doors leading into and out of the body are the two eyes, the two nostrils, the mouth, the two ears, the genitals and the anus.
• Just as bamboo can be immediately burned to ashes or chopped into pieces, similarly, the material body, which is constantly deteriorating, may at any moment be crushed into powder, cut into pieces, drowned, burned, suffocated, and so on.
• Eventually the body must disintegrate, and therefore there is certainly no one as unfortunate as one who has dedicated himself heart and soul to this flimsy body, which is filled with unpleasant elements.

The purport's own sentences, chosen from the purport as its central points. Read the full purport on Vedabase to see them in place.

Grief and dependence → Detachment. The temporary world becomes a source of spiritual instruction.

Chapters 7–9 of Canto 11: The avadhuta's twenty-four teachers. An editorial reading of the story's mood, not the text itself. See the emotional arc

Chapter 8: The Story of Piṅgalā

From the chapter summary, the lines nearest this verse:

Similarly, the man who becomes attached to the form of woman falls down into the deep well of material life and is destroyed. The instruction received from the honey thief is that just as he steals the honey collected with great effort by the honeybee, a person in the renounced order of life has the privilege of enjoying before anyone else the food and other valuable things purchased by the hard-earned money of the householders.