Philosophy and Religion / Yoga Vāsistha / Yoga-Vāsistha (5): Upaśama-Khanda

Válmiki

Yoga-Vāsistha, Book 5: Upaśama-Khanda (On Quietism). Chapter 52 - Ratiocination of Uddālaka

Vasistha resumed- The saintly Uddālaka then entered in that grotto of Gandha-mādana mountain, as the sauntering bee enters into the lotus-cell, in the course of its romantic peregrination.

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.

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.

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.

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 Rsya-śrnga mountain. ¹

He sat firmly in the posture of padmāsana 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 Brahmā.

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.

O my senseless mind! said he, why is it, that you are occupied in your worldly acts to no purpose; when the sensible never engage themselves, to what proves to be their bane afterwards.

He who pursues after pleasure, by forsaking his peaceful tranquility; is as one who quits his grove of mandara flowers, and enters a forest of poisonous plants. ²

You may hide yourself in some cave of the earth, and find a place in the highest abode of Brahmā, then yet you can not have your quiet there, without the quietism of your spirit.

Cease to seek your objects of your desire, which are beset by difficulties, and are productive of your woe and anxiety; fly from these to lay hold on your chief good, which you shall find in your solitary retirement only.

These sundry objects of your fancy or liking, which are so temporary in their nature; are all for your misery, and of no real good at any time: ³.

Why follow you 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. ⁴

You have been roving all this time with your froggish heart, in the blind pursuit after your profit and pleasure; but tell me what great boon has booted you; in all your ramblings about the earth.

Why does you not fix your mind to that quietism, which promises to give you some­thing as your self-sufficiency; and wherein you may find your rest as the state of your liberation in your life time.

O my foolish heart! why are you roused at the sound of some good which reaches unto your ears, and being led by your deluded mind, in the direction of that sound; you fall a victim to it, as the deer is entrapped in the snare, by being beguiled by the hunter's horn.

Beware, O foolish-man! to allow the carnal appetite to take possession of your breast, and lead you to your destruction, as the male elephant is caught in the pit, by being beguiled by the artful koomki to fall into it. ⁵

Do not be misled by your 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.

Nor let your fondness for bright and beautiful objects, bewitch you to your ruin; as the appearance of a bright light or burning fire, invites the silly moth to its consumption.

Let not your ardour for sweet odor, tempt you to your ruin; nor entice you 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.

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.

O my heart! it is you yourself, that does stretch the snare of your desires for your own entanglement; as the silk worm weaves its own cell (cuckoon) by its saliva, for its own imprisonment.

Be cleansed of all your impure desires, and become as pure and clear as the autumnal cloud, ⁶; and when you are fully purged and are buoyed up as a cloud, you are then free from all bondage.

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.

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: ⁷.

But as long as gross ignorance continues to reign over the mind, so long is the heart kept in its state of dullness; as the nether earth is covered with mist and frost, as long as the upper skies are shrouded by the raining clouds.

But no sooner is the mind cleared of its ignorance, than the heart also becomes lighter ⁸; as the disappearance of the rainy clouds disperses the frost covering the nether earth.

As the heart becomes lighter and purer by means of the mind's act of reasoning; so I weep its desires to grow weaker and thinner, like the light and fleeting clouds of autumn.

Admonition to the unrighteous proves as fruitless, as the blowing of winds against the falling rain. ⁹

I shall therefore try to rid myself of this false and vacant ignorance; as it is the admonition of the śāstras, to get rid of ignorance by all means.

I find myself to be the inextinguishable lamp of intellect, and without my egoism or any desire in myself; and have nor relation with the false ignorance, which is the root of egoism.

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.

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. ¹⁰

I cannot follow the dictate of my heart, which is a wide and deep cave, containing the desires causing all our misery.

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, you, he and other personalities.

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 personalily. ¹¹

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.

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: ¹².

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.

This is the flesh of my body and this its blood! these are the bones and this the whole body; these are my breaths, but where is that I or ego situated?

Its pulsation is the effect of the vital breath or wind, and its sensation is the action of the heart; there are also decay and death concomitant of the body; but where is its "I" situated in it.

The flesh is one thing and the blood another, and the bones are different from them; but tell me, my heart, where is the "I" said to exist.

These are the organs of smelling and this the tongue; this is skin and these my ears; these are the eyes and this the touch-tvac; but what is that called the soul and where is it situated.

I am none of the elements of the body, nor the mind nor its desire; but the pure intellectual soul, and a manifestation of the divine intellect.

That I am everywhere, and yet nothing whatever that is anywhere, is the only knowledge of the true reality that we can have, and there is no other way to it: ¹³.

I have been long deceived by my deceitful ignorance, and am misled from the right path; as the young of a beast is carried away by a fierce tiger to the woods.

It is now by my good fortune that I have come to detect this thievish ignorance nor shall I trust any more this robber of truth.

I am above the reach of affliction, and have no concern with misery, or has it anything to do with me. This union of mine with these is as temporary, as that of a cloud with a mountain.

Being subject to my egoism, I say I speak, I know, I stay, I go, etc.; but on looking at the soul, I lose my egoism in the universal soul.

I verily believe my, eyes, and other parts of my body, to belong to myself; but if they be as something beside myself, then let them remain or-perish with the body, with which I have no concern.

Fie for shame! What is this word I, and who was its first inventor? This is no other than a slip slop and a namby pamby of some demoniac child of earth. ¹⁴

O! for this great length of time, that I have been grovelling in this dusty den; and roving at large like a stray deer, on a sterile rock without any grass or verdure.

If we let our eyes to dry into the true nature of things, we are at a loss to find the true meaning of the word I, which is the cause of all our woe on earth. ¹⁵

If you want to feel your in being by the sense of touch, then tell me how you find what you call I, beside its being a ghost of your own imagination.

You set your I on your tongue, and utter it as an object of that organ, while you really relish no taste whatever of that empty word, which you so often give utterance to.

You often hear that word ringing in your ears, though you feel it to be an empty sound as air, and cannot account whence this rootless word had its rise.

Our sense of smelling, which brings the fragrance of objects to the inner soul, conveys no scent of this word into our brain.

It is as the mirage, and a false idea of something we know not what; and what can it be otherwise than an error, of which we have no idea or sense whatever.

I see my will also is not always the cause of my actions, because I find my eyes and the other organs of sense are employed in their respective functions, without the direction of my volition.

But the difference between our bodily and wilful acts is this, that the actions of the body done without the will of the mind are unattended with feeling of pain or pleasure unto us. ¹⁶

Hence let your organs of sense perform their several actions, without your will of the same; and you will by this means evade all the pleasure and pain ¹⁷.

It is in vain that you blend your will with your actions, ¹⁸; while the act of your will is attended with a grief similar to that of children, upon the breaking of the dolls of their handy work in play. ¹⁹

Your desires and their productions are the face-similes of your mind, and not different from them; just as the waves are composed of the same water from which they rise. Such is the case with the acts of will.

It is your own will that guides your hand to construct a prison for your confinement as the silly silkworm is confined in the pod of its own making.

It is owing to your desires that you are exposed to the perils of death and disease, as it is the dim sightedness of the traveller over the mountainous spots that hurls him headlong into the deep cavern below.

It is your desire only, that is the chief cause of your being attached to one another in one place; as the thread passing through the holes of pearls, ties them together in a long string round the neck. ²⁰

What is this desire, but the creation of your false imagination, for whatever you think to be good for yourself; ²¹; and no sooner you cease to take a fancy for anything, than your desire for it is cut off as by a knife.

This desire- the creature of your imagination- is the cause of all your errors and your ruin also; as the breath of air is the cause both of the burning and extinction of lamps and lightening the fiery furnaces.

Now therefore, O my heart! that are the source and spring of your senses, do you join with all your sensibility, to look into the nature of your unreality, and feel in yourself the state of your utter annihilation-nirvāna at the end.

Give up after all your sense of egoism with your desire of worldliness, which are interminable endemics to you in this life. Put on the amulet of the abandonment of your desires and earthliness, and resign yourself to your God to be free from all fears on earth.

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