CHAPTER LXXXVI. Government of Bodily Organs.
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Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
40. I have now betaken myself to my indifference, and want to thrive therein; and pray of thee, O thou restless concupiscence! to have no more any concern with me.
41. And I bid my last farewell to thee, O thou deity of piety and pious deeds! that I may no more engage myself to the performance of acts (because acts are attended with temporary and no lasting resultants).
42. I am lifted from the pit of hell and placed in heaven, and bid adieu to the arbour of pleasures, growing in the soil of wicked acts, and bearing as its fruits the torments of hell.
43. I bid farewell to the tree of sin, bearing the flowers of our punishment, whereby I was doomed to repeated transmigrations in lower births. (Does the passage allude to the forbidden tree, which brought death on earth, and its sequence of repeated births in endless misery?)
44. I bow down to that unseen form of delusion, which uttered the sweet voice of a sounding bamboo, and covered itself with a garment of leaves. (Does it mean the deluded Adam hiding his nudity under the leaves of trees?)
45. I bow to thee my holy cell, that art my associate in this devout devotion; and art the only refuge of this weak body of mine, after its weary journey in the rugged paths of the world.
46. Thou wast my kind companion, and remover of all my desires; and hast been my only shelter, after I fled from all the dangers and difficulties of the world.
47. And thou my pilgrim’s staff, that wast the support of my aged body and arm; I have found my best friend in thee, for thy relieving my fatigue, and guiding my footsteps in this dangerous and cavernous retreat.
48. I thank thee also, O my aged body! that art the prop of my life, even in this old age of thine; when thou art reduced to thy ribs, covering thy bloodless entrails, and thy shrivelled veins and arteries.
49. Depart now my dilapilated body, with the pith and marrow that there yet remain in thee; and away ye excrements that were in need of my repeated ablutions and purifications.
50. I bid adieu to all my acts and dealings in the world, which had been the destined causes and my connate companions, in all my transmigrations in this world. (Human actions being causes of their repeated births, for the sake of reaping their proper retributions).
51. I next bid you farewell, O my vital airs! who kept company with me through all my various births, and from whom I (i.e. my soul) will soon fly away.
52. How oft have I passed with you to foreign parts, and reposed in the dales and groves of mountainous tracts; how long have we sported about the cities, and how often have we dwelt in mountain retreats. (i.e. The soul with its subtile body, is sempiternal and ubiquious).
53. How many times have we run to different directions, and were engaged in various avocations of life. In fact there was no time and place in the space of the universe, when and where we did not live together.
54. In truth I have never done nor seen, nor given nor taken anything apart from you; and now I bid you adieu my friend, as I must soon part from you.
55. All things in the world have their growth and decay, and are destined to rise and fall by turns; and so also are the union and separation of things, the unavoidable course of nature.
56. Let this light which is visible to sight, reenter in the sun whence it proceeds, and let these sweet scents which come to my smelling, mix with the flowers from which they are breathed and blown.
57. Let my vital breath and oscillation, join with the etherial air; and let all the sounds I hear, return from my ears to the vacuous sphere. (Lit. Let me lose my audibility in vacuity which is receptacle of sounds).
58. Let my taste or sapidity, revert to the orb of the moon whence it has sprung; and let me be as quiet as the sea after its churning by the Mandara mount; and as the cool hour of the evening after the sun has set. (Gustation or flavour—rasa comes from the moon. Sruti. Dinánta-ramya the cooling evening. Kalidása).
59. Let me be as silent as the dumb cloud in autumn, and as still as the creation, after the great deluge at the end of a Kalpa; let me remain thoughtless, as when the mind is concentrated in the dot of om or on, and when my soul rests in supreme soul. Let me be as cold as when the fire is reduced to ashes, and as extinct as the extinguished and oilless lamp.
60. Here I sit devoid of all actions, and removed from the sight of all living beings; I am freed from the thoughts of worldly things, and am resting in the peace of my soul, which is seated in my cranium.