Reading section 28

36. I am disposed to think, that you are not the person to be troubled with those evils and distempers, to which the base and vile alone are subject.

37. Tell me the craving of your heart, O sinless Ráma! and they will be requited in a manner, as will prevent their recurrence to you.

38. Ráma—the standard of Raghu’s race having listened to the reasonable and graceful speech of the good-intentioned sage, shook off his sorrowing, like the peacock at the roaring of a cloud, in the hope of gaining his object.

CHAPTER XII.

RÁMA’S REPLY.

Válmíki related:—Being thus asked with soothing words by the chief of the sages, Ráma made his answer in a soft and graceful speech replete with good sense.

2. Ráma said, Oh venerable sage! I will tell thee in truth, untutored though I am, all the particulars as asked by thee; for who would disobey the bidding of the wise?

3. Since I was born in this mansion of my father I have all along remained, grown up and received my education (in this very place).

4. Then O leader of sages! being desirous to learn good usages (of mankind), I set out to travel to holy places all over this sea-girt earth.

5. It was by this time that there arose a train of reflections in my mind of the following nature which shook my confidence in worldly objects.

6. My mind was employed in the discrimination of the nature of things which led me gradually to discard all thoughts of sensual enjoyments.

7. What are these worldly pleasures good for, (thought I), and what means the multiplication (of our species) on earth? Men are born to die, and they die to be born again.

8. There is no stability in the tendencies of beings whether movable or immovable. They all tend to vice, decay and danger; and all our possessions are the grounds of our penury.

9. All objects (of sense) are detached from each other as iron rods or needles from one another; it is imagination alone which attaches them to our minds.

10. It is the mind that pictures the existence of the world as a reality, but the deceptiveness of the mind (being known) we are safe from such deception.

11. If the world is an unreality, it is <a> pity that ignorant men should be allured by it, like the deer tempted by a distant mirage (appearing) as water.

12. We are sold by none (to any one) and yet we remain as if enslaved to the world; and knowing this well, we are spellbound to riches, as it were by the magic wand of Sambara.

13. What are the enjoyments in this quintessence (of the world) but misery; and yet we are foolishly caught in its thoughts, as if clogged in honey (like bees).

14. Ah! I perceive after long that we have insensibly fallen into errors, like senseless stags falling into caverns in the wilderness.

15. Of what use is royalty and these enjoyments to me? What am I and whence are all these things? They are but vanities, and let them continue as such without any good or loss to any body.

16. Reasoning in this manner Oh Bráhman, I came to be disgusted with the world, like a traveller in (his journey through) a desert.

17. Now tell me, O venerable sir! whether this world is advancing to its dissolution, or continued reproduction, or is it in course of its endless progression.

18. If there is any progress here, it is that of the appearance and disappearance of old age and decease, of prosperity and adversity by turns.

19. Behold how the variety of our trifling enjoyments hastens our decay, they are like hurricanes shattering the mountain trees.

20. Men continue in vain to breathe their vital breath as hollow-bamboo wind-pipes having no sense.

21. How is (human) misery to be alleviated, is the (only) thought that consumes me like wild fire in the hollow of a withered tree.

22. The weight of worldly miseries sits heavy on my heart as a rock, and obstructs my lungs to breathe out. I have a mind to weep, but am prevented from shedding my tears for fear of my people.

23. My tearless weeping and speechless mouth, give no indication of my inward sorrow to any body, except my consciousness the silent witness in my solitude.

24. I wait to think on the positive and negative states (of worldly bliss), as a ruined man bewails to reflect on his former state of affluence (and present indigence).

25. I take prosperity to be a seducing cheat, for its deluding the mind, impairing the good qualities (of men), and spreading the net of our miseries.

26. To me, like one fallen into great difficulties, no riches, offspring, consorts or home afford any delight, but they seem to be (so many sources of) misery.

27. I, like a wild elephant in chains, find no rest in my mind, by reflecting on the various evils of the world, and by thinking on the causes of our frailties.

28. There are wicked passions prying at all times, under the dark mist of the night of our ignorance; and there are hundreds of objects, which like so many cunning rogues, are about all men in broad day-light, and lurking on all sides to rob us of our reason. What mighty champions can we delegate (now) to fight with these than our knowledge of truth?

CHAPTER XIII.

VITUPERATION OF RICHES.

Ráma said:—It is opulence, Oh sage! that is reckoned a blessing here; it is even she that is the cause of our troubles and errors.

2. She bears away as a river in the rainy season, all high-spirited simpletons overpowered by its current.

3. Her daughters are anxieties fostered by many a malpractice, like the waves of a stream raised by the winds.

4. She can never stand steady on her legs any where, but like a wretched woman who has burnt her feet, she limps from one place to another.

5. Fortune like a lamp both burns and blackens its possessor, until it is extinguished by its own inflammation.

6. She is unapproachable as princes and fools, and likewise as favourable as they to her adherents, without scanning their merits or faults.

7. She begets only evils in them by their various acts (of profligacy), as good milk given to serpents, serves but to increase the poignancy of their poison.

8. Men (by nature) are gentle and kind hearted to friends and strangers, until they are hardheartened by their riches, which like blasts of wind, serve to stiffen (the liquid) frost.

9. As brilliant gems are soiled by dust, so are the learned, the brave, the grateful, the mild and gentle, corrupted by riches.

10. Riches do not conduce to one’s happiness, but redound to his woe and destruction, as the plant aconite when fostered, hides in itself the fatal poison.

11. A rich man without blemish, a brave man devoid of vanity, and a master wanting partiality, are the three rarities on earth.

12. The rich are as inaccessible as the dark cavern of a dragon, and as unapproachable as the deep wilderness of the _Vindhyá_ mountain inhabited by fierce elephants.

13. Riches like the shadow of night, overcast the good qualities of men, and like moon-beams brings to bloom the buds of their misery. They blow away the brightness of a fair prospect as a hurricane, and resemble a sea with huge surges (of disquiet).

14. They bring upon us a cloud of fear and error, increase the poison of despondence and regret, and are like the dreadful snakes in the field of our choice.

15. Fortune is (as a killing) frost to the bondsmen of asceticism, and as the night to the owls of libertinism; she is an eclipse to the moonlight of reason, and as moonbeams to the bloom of the lilies of folly.

16. She is as transitory as the Iris, and alike pleasant to view by the play of her colours; she is as fickle as the lightening, which vanishes no sooner it appears to sight. Hence none but the ignorant have reliance in her.

17. She is as unsteady as a well born damsel following a base-born man to the words; and like a (deceptive) mirage that tempts the run-aways to fall to it as the doe.

18. Unsteady as the wave, she is never steady in any place; (but is ever wavering to all sides) like the flickering flame of a lamp. So her leaning is known to nobody.

19. She like the lioness is ever prompt in fighting, and like the leader of elephants favourable to her partizans. She is as sharp as the blade of a sword (to cut off all obstacles), and is the patroness of sharp-witted sharpers.

20. I see no felicity in uncivil prosperity, which is full of treachery, and replete with every kind of danger and trouble.

21. It is pity that prosperity, like a shameless wench will again lay hold on a man, after being abandoned by him in his association with (her rival) Poverty.

22. What is she with all her loveliness and attraction of human hearts, but momentary thing obtained by all manner of evil means, and resembling at best a flower shrub, growing out of a cave inhabited by a snake, and beset by reptiles all about its stem.

CHAPTER XIV.

DEPRECIATION OF HUMAN LIFE.

Human life is as frail as a pendant drop of water tripling on the tip of a leaflet; and as irrepressible as a raving madman, that breaks loose from its bodily imprisonment out of its proper season.