You walked into a field full of thistles and you get a thorn lodged in your foot. You now try to pull it out with your bare hands but to no avail. So you find a sharper, longer, sturdier thorn to remove the one that is lodged. Similarly, you remove the thorn of ignorance and pain with the thorn of knowledge. Tell me, will you after getting rid of the painful thorn, stick the larger thorn into your foot? No you won’t. You will throw it away. So it is the thorn of knowledge used for removing the thorn of ignorance. Both of them are discarded by the yogi, the seeker, whose aim is liberation.
