CHAPTER XLVII. The First Step towards Liberation.
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Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
40. One cannot have a distaste to sensual enjoyments, as long he thinks on the objects of sense; and so long as he has a craving for riches, which are the spring of all evils and bane of human life.
41. He who has got a relish for his highest heavenly bliss, looks upon the world as a heap of straw, and riches as the fire that kindles them to a flame. Avoid this fire and be cool and quiet.
42. The meaning of wealth is known to be the source of all evils in the world, and as the cause of all wants and disorders and even of diseases and death. It is also the cause of oppression and plunder, of incendiarism and the like, and their consequent poverty and famine.
43. In this mortal world of the death and diseases of living beings, there is one elixir which confers perpetual health and life to man, and this is his contentment only. (Hence called the ambrosia of life, santoshámritang).
44. The vernal season is charming, and so are the garden of paradise, the moon-beams and fairies, but all combine in contentment only, which is alone capable of yielding all the delights.
45. The contented soul likens a lake in the rains, when it is full as it is deep, and as clear and cooling as the nectarious beverage of the gods.
46. The honest man is strengthened by his contentment and flourishes with full glee, as a flower tree is decked with blooming blossoms in the flowering season.
47. As the poor emmet is likely to be crushed under the foot of every passer, in its ceaseless search and hoarding of food; so the greedy and needy man is liable to be spurned, for his incessant wanderings after paltry gains and lucre.
48. The deformed and disfigured beggar, is as a man plunged in a sea of troubles, and buffeting in its waves without finding a support for rest, or any prospect of ever reaching to the shore.
49. Prosperity like a beauty, is as frail and fickle as the unstable waves of the ocean; what wiseman is there that can expect to find his reliance in them, or have his rest under the shade of the hood of hideous serpent? (This simile is borrowed in the Nyáya wherein world is said kupita phani phaná chháyeva).
50. He who knowing the pains attending on the gaining, keeping and losing of money, still persists to pursue in its search, is no better than a brute, and deserves to be shunned by the wise as unsociable.
51. He who mows down at once the growing grass of his internal and external appetites, from the field of his heart, by the means of the scythe of insouciance, gets it prepared for reception of the seeds of Divine knowledge.
52. Ignorant people take the world for a reality, and wise men also conduct themselves under this supposition though they are well aware of its unreality; and this owing to their neglect of practicing what they are taught to believe. (The wise and foolish are in the same footing, by equally unwise conduct in life).
53. The sum of the whole is that, it is the resignation of the world which leads men to the society of sages and study of the scriptures; and then by reliance in the holy precepts, one abandons his worldliness, and at last his firm dislike of the temporal, leads him to seek his spiritual bliss.