NO. 62. — 1909.] JNANA VASISHTAM. 



311 



and, instead of taking his usual place in the assembly, seats 

 himself on the floor to the consternation of the king and his 

 courtiers. Vasishta, the guru or spiritual preceptor of the 

 royal family, who was present, and the visitor Visvamitra 

 speak to Rama and beg him to explain the cause of his 

 melancholy. Unable to disobey them, he breaks silence and 

 answers : 



" Born of this king, reared by him, trained in the knowledge 

 of various arts and sciences, I duly performed my religious 

 and royal duties. I have now returned from a pilgrimage to 

 sacred shrines, and straightway all desire for the things of the 

 world hath ceased in me. There is no pleasure in them. We 

 die but to be born, and are born but to die. All, all, are fleeting. 

 What good is there in the fictitious things which constitute 

 wealth ? What good in worldly enjoyment, in royalty ? 

 Who are we ? Whence this body ? All false, false, false. 1 

 One who reflects and asks himself ' Who hath obtained what ? 5 , 

 will have no desire for them, even as a wayfarer desires not 

 to drink water which he knows to be a mirage. I burn, I choke, 

 seeking away out of this delusion and sorrow." 



Rama then proceeds to analyse worldly things and makes 

 them out, one and all, to be worthless. Wealth, he says, like 

 kings, favours its courtiers without regard to merit, dissipates 

 energy by manifold acts, harbours the snakes " like " and 

 "dislike," shuns the teaching of the wise and good. Whom 

 doth wealth not corrupt ? It is like the flower of a plant in a 

 snake-encircled pit. Life is like a water-drop at the tip of a 

 pendent leaf, a mad man rushing out at unexpected, un- 

 seasonable times, a flash of lightning in the cloud desire, 

 a stumbling-block to the unwise. Life is harder to guard 

 than to cleave space, to grasp the air or to string the waves 

 of the sea. Unstable as a rain cloud, as the light of an oil-less 

 lamp, as a wave, life cause th pain to those who desire it, as the 

 pearl is the death of its oyster- mother. The life, except of 

 the wise man, the Jndni, is the life of an old donkey. No 

 enemy so great as egoism. All acts, religious and other, 

 mixed with it are false. As the ego-cloud grows, so doth the 



1 Cf. Bossuet : On trouve au fond de tout le vide et le neant. 



