Reading section 42

37. “You have truly come to the knowledge of the knowable, whereby your great soul has desisted from its attachment to objects of enjoyment and vision.

38. “You must be a hero to have overcome your desire in the lengthening chain of attractive enjoyments from your early youth. What more do you want to hear?

39. “Even your father, with all his learning in every science, and devotedness to austerities, has not arrived to the state of perfection like you.

40. “I am a pupil of Vyása, and you are his son; but you are greater than both of us, by your abandonment of the taste for the enjoyments of life.

41. “You have obtained whatever is obtainable by the comprehensiveness of your mind; and as you take no interest in the outer and visible world, you are liberated from it, and have nothing to doubt of.”

42. Being thus advised by the magnanimous Janaka, Suka remained silent with his mind fixed in the purely supreme object.

43. Then being devoid of sorrow and fear, and released from all efforts, exertions and doubts, he repaired to a peaceful summit of the mount Meru to obtain his final absorption.

44. There he passed ten thousands of rains in a state of unalterable meditation, till at last he broke his mortal coil, and was extinguished in the supreme soul like a lamp without oil.

45. Thus purified from the stain of transmigration by abstaining from earthly desires, the great souled Suka sank into the holy state of the Supreme Spirit, as a drop of water mixes with the waters or merges into the depth of the ocean.

CHAPTER II.

SPEECH OF VISWÁMITRA.

Viswámitra said:—

Ráma! it now becomes you to have your mind properly purified from its doubts, as it was done in the case of the son of Vyása.

2. You see, O great sages! how perfectly the knowable is known to Ráma, whose good understanding has learnt to feel a distaste for worldly enjoyments, as if they were diseases unto him.

3. You well know that the fixed principle in the mind of one knowing the knowable, is to have an aversion to all the enjoyments of life.

4. It is the desire of fruition that chains down a man fastly to the earth; but the knowledge of the frailties here serves to dispel his darkness.

5. Know Ráma that it is the curtailing of desires which the wise call liberty, and the fastening of our desires to earthly objects, is what is termed our confinement here.

6. Spiritual knowledge is easily obtainable by most men here, but a distaste to (pleasurable) objects is hard to be had (however painful it is to procure them).

7. He who fully comprehends a thing, is said to know it, and who so knows what is knowable, is called a learned man; no earthly enjoyments can be delectable to such high minded men.

8. The mind that has no zest for earthly pleasures, except the glory of disinterested deeds, is said to be liberated even in the present life.

9. As there grows no vegetable in a sterile soil, so there grows no disinclination to worldliness, until one comes to know the knowable reality (_i.e._ to say: neither the godly can be worldly, nor the worldly be godly).

10. Hence know this supporter of Raghu’s race to have verily known the knowable, which has made him disgusted with his princely enjoyments.

11. I tell you great sages that, whatever Ráma has come to know by his intuition, requires to be confirmed by Vasishtha for the tranquility of his mind.

12. It is only a reliance in the Unity, that Ráma now requires for his repose, just as the beauty of autumn depends on the clearness of the firmament.

13. Let the venerable Vasishtha then reason with the high minded Ráma, and restore the peace of his mind.

14. For he is the master and family preceptor of the whole race of the Raghus; besides he is all knowing and all seeing; and has a clear insight (into all things) of the three times (present, past and future).

15. Then addressing himself to Vasishtha he said:—you _well remember sir_, the instruction given us of old, for pacifying our mutual enmity, and promoting the welfare of the high minded sages.

16. When our lord the lotus-born Brahmá, seated on the table land of Nishadha mountain, and shaded by the Sarala trees, delivered his wise lectures to us and the sages.

17. It is by means of that knowledge of liberation that our worldly desires are dispelled like the darkness of night by sun-beams.

18. Please now, O Bráhman, to communicate that rational knowledge of the knowable to your pupil Ráma, whereby he may gain the peace of his mind.

19. It will be no difficult task for you to teach the spotless Ráma, whose mirror-like mind is quite clear to take the reflection.

20. The wisdom of the holy, their learning of the Sástras, and the scholarship of the learned, are then only praiseworthy, when they are communicated to a good student, and those who are disgusted with the world.

21. But instruction given to one who is no student nor disgusted with the world, becomes as polluted as milk put in a hide vessel.

22. Again the instruction imparted by one devoid of passions and affections, fear and anger, pride and sin, serves to infuse tranquility into the mind.

23. At these words of Viswámitra the son of Gadhi, the assembled sages Vyása, Nárada and others, honoured his saying with the exclamation “bravo”, “well said” &c.

24. Then the venerable Vasishtha brilliant as Brahmá his father, and seated by the side of the king, spoke in reply:

25. O sage, I will perform without fail, what you have commanded me to do, for who, though mighty, can refuse to perform the behests of the good and wise?

26. I will destroy the mental darkness of the princes Ráma and others by the light of knowledge, as we dispel the gloom of night by the light of a lamp.

27. I well remember the instructions which were given of yore by the lotus-born Brahmá on the Nishadha mountain, for dispelling the errors of the world.

28. Having said so, the high-minded Vasishtha made up his mind as one girds up his loins, to deliver his lecture to Ráma for dispelling his ignorance, and showing him the state of supreme felicity.

CHAPTER III.

ON THE REPEATED CREATIONS OF THE WORLD.

Vasishtha said:—

“I will now expound to you Ráma! the knowledge that was imparted of old by our lord the lotus-born (Brahmá), after creation of the world, for the peace of mankind.”

2. Ráma said:—I know sir, you will expound to me the subject of liberation in full length; but remove first my fallacy about the frailty of this world.

3. And how it was that, the great sage Vyása—the father and guide of Suka, did not attain to disembodied emancipation (after his death) with all his omniscience, while his son did so.

4. Vasishtha said:—(Hear me Ráma), there is no counting of the atoms proceeding from the spirit and forming the three worlds both before and after the birth of the glorious sun.

5. There is no body even who can count the millions of orbs which at present form the three worlds.

6. Nor can any one say by calculation, what numbers of creation will rise from the (unlimited) ocean of divine existence, like its interminable waves (for ever).

7. Ráma said:—It is needless to talk of worlds gone by or yet to come; say what you will of the present (state of existence).

8. Vasishtha said:—This world consists of brute, human and heavenly beings, whose lives when they are said to perish in any part of it are really existent in the same part.

9. The mind is called to be ever-fluctuating, and gives rise to (all things in) the three worlds in itself. It resides in vacuity in the form of the heart, and the increate (God) also residing in the vacuous soul (gives the mind the power to realize the latent ideas of the soul).

10. The millions of beings that are dead, those that are dying and will die hereafter, are all to be reborn here according to the different desires in their minds.

11. The external world appearing as a reality, is in truth but a creation of our desires; it is an ideal castle in the air, and a magic view spread before us.

12. It is as false as an earthquake in a fit of delirium, as a hobgoblin that is shown to terrify children, as a string of pearls in the clear firmament, and as the moving trees on the bank to a passenger in the boat.

13. It is an illusion as the phantom of a city in a dream, and as untrue as the imagination of a flower growing in the air. The unreality of the world best appears to one at the point of and after his death.

14. But this knowledge of (the unreality of the world) becomes darkened upon one’s being reborn on earth, when the shadow of this world falls again on the mirror of his sentient soul.

15. Thus there is a struggle for repeated births and deaths here, and a fancy for the next world after one’s death.

16. After one’s shuffling off his body, he assumes another and then another form, and thus the world is as unstable as a stool made of plantain leaves and its coatings.

17. The dead have no sensation of the earth and other elementary bodies, nor of the course of the world; but they fall again to these errors upon their being reborn here.