CHAPTER XXIX.
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Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
Pantheism.
or
Description of the World as full with the Supreme soul.
Argument.—Elucidation of the same subject, and further Instruction to Ráma.
VÁLMIKI relates:—Hearing this discourse of the sage, Ráma remained sedate with the coma (sama) of his mind, his spirits were tranquil, and his soul was full of rapture.
2. The whole audience also that was present at the place, being all quiet, calm and silent (comatose-upasánta), the sage withheld his speech for fear of disturbing their spiritual repose: (which converted them to stock and stone).
3. The sage stopped from distilling the drops of his ambrosial speech any more, after the hearts of the audience were lulled to rest by their draughts, as the clouds cease to rain drops, having penetrated into the hearts of ripened grains.
4. As Ráma (with the rest of the assembly) came to be rose from their torpor after a while; the eloquent Vasishtha resumed his discourse in elucidation of his former lecture. (On spirituality).
5. Vasishtha said:—Ráma! you are now fully awakened to light, and have come to and obtained the knowledge of thyself; remain hence forward fixed to the only true object, wherein you must rely your faith, and never set your feet on the field of the false phenomenal world.
6. The wheel of the world is continually revolving round the centre of desire, put a peg to its axis, and it will stop from turning about its pole.
7. If you be slack to fasten the nave (nábhi) of your mind, by your manly efforts (purushártha; it will be hard for you to stop the wheel of the world, which runs faster as you slacken your mind.)
8. Exert your manly strength (courage), with the aid of your mental powers and wisdom, stop the motion of your heart, which is the centre of the wheeling course of the world.
9. Know, that everything is obtainable by means of manly exertion, joined with good sense and good nature, and assisted by a knowledge of the sástras; and whatever is not obtained by these, is to be had nowhere by any other.
10. Relinquish your reliance on destiny which is a coinage of puerile imagination; and by relying on your own exertions, govern your heart and mind for your lasting good.
11. The unsubstantial mind which appears as a substantiality, has had its rise since the creation of Brahmá; and taken a wrong and erroneous course of its own. (The human understanding is frail from first to beginning, it is a power, and no positive reality).
12. The unreal and erroneous mind, weaves and stretches out a lengthening web of its equally unreal and false conceptions, which it is led afterwards to mistake for the substantial world.
13. All these bodies that are seen to move about us, are the products of the fancies and fond desires of the mind; and though these frail and false bodies cease to exist forever, yet the mind and its wishes are imperishable; and either show themselves in their reproduction in various forms, or they become altogether extinct in their total absorption in the supreme spirit. (The doctrine of eternal ideas, is the source of their perpetual appearance in various forms about bodies).
14. The wise man must not understand the pain or pleasure of the soul from the physiognomy of man, that a sorrowful and weeping countenance is the indication of pain; and a clear (cheerful) and tearless face is the sign of pleasure. (Because it is the mind which moulds the face in any form it likes).
15. You see a man in two ways, the one with his body and the other in his representation in a picture or statues, of these the former kind is more frail than the latter; because the embodied man is beset by troubles and diseases in his fading and mouldering, decaying and dying body, whereby the other is not. (The frame of the living man, is frailer than his dead resemblance).
16. The fleshy body is assuredly doomed to die, notwithstanding all our efforts for its preservation; but a body in the portrait being taken good care of, lasts for ages with its undiminished beauty.
17. As the living body is sure to die in despite of all your care for it, the pictured body must be deemed far better, than the false and fancied fleshy body, produced by will of the mind (sankalpa deha).
18. The quality and stability which abide in a pictured body, are not to be found in the body of the mind; wherefore the living body of flesh, is more insignificant than its semblance in a picture or statue.
19. Think now, O sinless Ráma, what reliance is there in this body of flesh; which is a production of your long fostered desire, and a creature of your brain (Your mind makes it seem as such).
20. This body of flesh is more contemptible than those ideal forms, which our dreams and desires produce in our sleeping and waking states; because the creature of a momentary desire, is never attended with a long or lasting happiness or misery. (Because the products of the variable will, are of short duration, and so are their pains and pleasures also).
21. The bodies that are produced by our long desire, continue for a longer time, and are subjected to a longer series of miseries in this world. (So it is said, a "long life is a long term of woes and calamities").
22. The body is a creature of our fancy, and is neither a reality or unreality in itself; and yet are the ignorant people fondly attached to it, for the prolongation of their misery only.
23. As the destruction of the portrait of a man, does no harm to his person; and as the loss of a fancied city is no loss to the city, so the loss of the much desired body of any one, is no loss to his personality in any wise.
24. Again as the dis-appearance of the secondary moon (halo), is no deprivation of the primary satellite (moon), and as the evanescence of the visionary world, is no annihilation of the external world. (So there is no loss of the soul, as the loss of the shadow, is no loss of the substance).
25. As the dis-appearance of water in the sunny banks of rivers, is no deprivation of the river's water; so the creations of fancy which are not negative in their nature, cannot be destructive of what is positive, nor any damage done to the machine of the body, can ever injure the dis-embodied soul.
26. The body is a piece of work wrought by the architect of the mind, in its dreaming somnambulation over the sleeping world; wherefore its decoration or disfigurement, is of no essential advantage or dis-advantage to inward soul.
27. There is no end of the Intellect in its extent, nor any motion of the soul from its place; there is no change in the Divine spirit of Brahma, nor do any of these decay with the decline of the body.
28. As the inner and smaller wheel, makes the outer and larger wheel to turn about it, so the inner annulus of the mind, sees in its delirium spheres over spheres revolving in empty air.
29. The mind views by its primitive and causeless error, the constant rotation of bodies both in the inside and out side of it; and some as moving forward and others as falling down, and many as dropped below.
30. Seeing the rise and fall of these rotatory bodies, the wise man must rely on the firmness of his mind, and not himself to be led away by these rotations in repeated succession.
31. Fancy forms the body and it is error that makes the unreal appear as real; but the formation of fancy, and the fabrications of untruth, cannot have any truth or reality in them.
32. The unreal body appearing as real, is like the appearance of a snake in a rope; and so are all the affairs of the world quite untrue and false, and appearing as true for the time being.
33. Whatever is done by an insensible being, is never accounted as its action (or doing); hence all what is done by the senseless bodies (of man), is not recounted as done by it. (But by the impulse of the actuating mind).
34. It is the will which is the active agent of its actions, and this being so, neither the inactive body nor the unchanging soul is the actor of any action. (The soul being the witness of the bodily actions done by the impelling mind. gloss).
35. The inert body being without any effort, is never the doer of any act, which is desired by its presiding soul; it is only a viewer of the soul, which witnesses it also. (The body is attendant or dependant to the soul, as the other is a resident in it, they are both devoid of action, and unstained by those done by the will of the mind).
36. As the lamp burns unshaken and with its unflickering flame, in the breathless air and in itself only; so doth the silent and steady soul dwell as a witness, in all things and of all acts existing and going on in the world. (So doth the human soul abide and inflame itself in the body, unless it is shaken and moved by the airy mind).