CHAPTER XXXVIII. Disquisition of Nirvána—Quietism.
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Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
40. Remain if you can as a silent sage, unseen and unknown by men, and without any desire, thought or effort on your part; remain as a lifeless thing, and this is the extinction of a living being. (The torpidity of the body combined with mental inactivity constitutes the coolness of the soul).
41. Be freed from your thoughts and desires, and remain fixed in the eternal One without any care for anything; you may be busy or sit easy, like the air when it breathes or is calm and still.
42. Let your manliness be above the feelings of desire and affections, and let your thoughts be directed by rules of the sástras, and your action by the motion of a clock or watch, which act their outward movement.
43. Look on all beings, without the show of fondness or disfavour (or love or hatred) to any one; be you an inconspicuous light of the world, resembling a lighted lamp in a picture (which never burns). (Here the hidden light is opposed to the sacred text. No one lights a lamp to put it under a bushel).
44. The man that has no desire nor any object in view, and has no relish in carnal and sensual enjoyments; can have no other delight except in his inquiries after truth by the light of the sástras. He who has his mind purified by the teachings of the sástras and the precepts of holy men, finds the inscrutable truth shining vividly in his consciousness of it.