CHAPTER LII. RATIOCINATION OF UDDÁLAKA:—
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Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
Argument. Uddálaka’s Remonstration with himself, amidst the reveries of his meditation.
Vasistha resumed:—The saintly Uddálaka then entered in that grotto of Gandhamádana mountain, as the sauntering bee enters into the lotus-cell, in the course of its romantic peregrination.
2. It was for the purpose of his intense meditation, that he entered the cave and sat therein; as when the lotus-born creator, had retired to and rested in his seclusion, after termination of his work of creation.
3. There he made a seat for himself, by spreading the unfaded leaves of trees on the floor; as when the god Indra spreads his carpet of the manifold layers of clouds.
4. He then spread over it his carpet of deerskin, as the bedding of stars, is laid over the strata of the blue clouds of heaven.
5. He sat upon it in his meditative mood, with the watchfulness of his mind; as when an empty and light cloud alights on the top of the Rishyasringa mountain. (i.e. His mind was as fleet, as a fleeting cloud).
6. He sat firmly in the posture of padmásana like Buddha, with his face turned upwards; his two legs and feet covered his private parts, and his palms and fingers counted the beads of Brahmá.
7. He restrained the fleet deer of his mind, from the desires to which it ran by fits and starts; and then he reflected in the following manner, for having the unaltered steadiness of his mind.
8. O my senseless mind! said he, why is it, that thou art occupied in thy worldly acts to no purpose; when the sensible never engage themselves, to what proves to be their bane afterwards.
9. He who pursues after pleasure, by forsaking his peaceful tranquility; is as one who quits his grove of mandára flowers, and enters a forest of poisonous plants. (Thoughts of pleasure poisons the mind).
10. Thou mayst hide thyself in some cave of the earth, and find a place in the highest abode of Brahmá, then yet thou canst not have thy quiet there, without the quietism of thy spirit.
11. Cease to seek thy objects of thy desire, which are beset by difficulties, and are productive of thy woe and anxiety; fly from these to lay hold on thy chief good, which thou shalt find in thy solitary retirement only.
12. These sundry objects of thy fancy or liking, which are so temporary in their nature; are all for thy misery, and of no real good at any time (either when they are sought for, or enjoyed or lost to thee).
13. Why followest thou like a fool, the hollow sound of some fancied good, which has no substantial in it? It is as the great glee of frogs, at the high sounding of clouds that promise them nothing. (Hence the phrase “megha mandukika”, that is, the frogs croaking in vain at the roaring of clouds; answering the English phrases “fishing in the air and milking the ram, or pursuing a shadow &c.”).
14. Thou hast been roving all this time with thy froggish heart, in the blind pursuit after thy profit and pleasure; but tell me what great boon has booted thee; in all thy ramblings about the earth.
15. Why dost thou not fix thy mind to that quietism, which promises to give thee something as thy self-sufficiency; and wherein thou mayst find thy rest as the state of thy liberation in thy life-time.
16. O my foolish heart! why art thou roused at the sound of some good which reaches unto thy ears, and being led by thy deluded mind, in the direction of that sound; thou fallest a victim to it, as the deer is entrapped in the snare, by being beguiled by the hunter’s horn.
17. Beware, O foolish man! to allow the carnal appetite to take possession of thy breast, and lead thee to thy destruction, as the male elephant is caught in the pit, by being beguiled by the artful koomki to fall into it. (The female elephant is called koomki in elephant-catching).
18. Do not be misled by thy appetite of taste, to cram the bitter gall for sweet; or bite the fatal bait that is laid, to hook the foolish fish to its destruction.
19. Nor let thy fondness for bright and beautiful objects, bewitch thee to thy ruin; as the appearance of a bright light or burning fire, invites the silly moth to its consumption.
20. Let not thy ardour for sweet odor, tempt thee to thy ruin; nor entice thee like the poor bees to the flavour of the liquor, exuding from the frontal proboscis of the elephant, only to be crushed by its trunk.
21. See how the deer, the bee, the moth, the elephant and the fish, are each of them destroyed by their addiction to the gratification of a single sense; and consider the great danger to which the foolish man, is exposed by his desire of satisfying all his refractory senses and organs.
22. O my heart! it is thou thyself, that dost stretch the snare of thy desires for thy own entanglement; as the silk worm weaves its own cell (cocoon) by its saliva, for its own imprisonment.
23. Be cleansed of all thy impure desires, and become as pure and clear as the autumnal cloud (after it has poured out its water in the rains); and when thou art fully purged and are buoyed up as a cloud, you are then free from all bondage.
24. Knowing the course of the world, to be pregnant with the rise and fall of mankind, and to be productive of the pangs of disease and death at the end; you are still addicted to it for your destruction only.
25. But why do I thus upbraid or admonish my heart in vain; it is only by reasoning with the mind that men are enabled to govern their hearts (i.e. to repress all their feelings and passions).
26. But as long as gross ignorance continues to reign over the mind, so long is the heart kept in its state of dulness; as the nether earth is covered with mist and frost, as long as the upper skies are shrouded by the raining clouds.
27. But no sooner is the mind cleared of its ignorance, than the heart also becomes lighter (and cleared of its feeling); as the disappearance of the rainy clouds disperses the frost covering the nether earth.
28. As the heart becomes lighter and purer by means of the mind’s act of reasoning; so I ween its desires to grow weaker and thinner, like the light and fleeting clouds of autumn.
29. Admonition to the unrighteous proves as fruitless, as the blowing of winds against the falling rain. (i.e. Counsel to the wicked is as vain, as a blast of wind to drive the pouring rain).
30. I shall therefore try to rid myself of this false and vacant ignorance; as it is the admonition of the sástras, to get rid of ignorance by all means.
31. I find myself to be the inextinguishable lamp of intellect, and without my egoism or any desire in myself; and have no relation with the false ignorance, which is the root of egoism.
32. That this is I and that is another, is the false suggestion of our delusive ignorance; which, like an epidemic disease, presents us with such fallacies for our destruction.
33. It is impossible for the slender and finite mind to comprehend the nature of the infinite soul; as it is not possible for an elephant to be contained in a nut shell. (Lit.: in the crust of a bilva or bel fruit).
34. I cannot follow the dictate of my heart, which is a wide and deep cave, containing the desires causing all our misery.
35. What is this delusive ignorance, which, like the error of injudicious lads, creates the blunder of viewing the self-existent one, in the different lights of I, thou, he and other personalities.
36. I analysed my body at each atom from the head to foot, but failed to find what we call the “I” in any part of it, and what makes my personality. (It is the body, mind and soul taken together, that makes a person).
37. That which is the “I am” fills the whole universe, and is the only one in all the three worlds; it is the unknowable consciousness, omnipresent and yet apart from all.
38. Its magnitude is not to be known, nor has it any appellation of its own; it is neither the one nor the other, nor an immensity nor minuteness (but is greater than the greatest, and minuter than the minutest).[21]
39. It is unknowable by the light of the Vedas, and its ignorance which is the cause of misery is to be destroyed by the light of reason.