312 



JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). [Vol. XXI. 



jasmin- creeper desire. The ego is the seed of desire, the 

 breeding ground of fatal delusion and ignorance. 



Thought wanders in vain like a feather tossed in a storm or 

 like an ownerless dog ; it is like water flowing from a broken 

 pot. Mind, a dog running after the bitch desire, tears me, 

 says Rama, to pieces, drives me about as if I were possessed 

 with a devil, entangles me in vain acts as though I tried with 

 a rotten rope to pull a beam from the bottom of a well. The 

 mind-devil is fiercer than fire, more impassable than 

 mountains, harder to control than to pull the Himalayas 

 by their roots, to dry up the ocean, or swallow the submarine 

 fire. If thought dies, the universe dies. If thought springs, 

 the universe springs. Gladness and sorrow thrive in the 

 mind as forests on mountains, and with the mind disappear. 



These strictures on the mind may seem extravagant. But 

 what is here condemned is not the use but the abuse of mind, 

 the tyranny of thought of which we are the victims. What 

 reflecting person but is conscious of the difficulty of the habit 

 of undivided concentration on the thing in hand, conscious of 

 the wandering of the mind, of its division and distraction, its 

 openness to attack by brigand cares and anxieties ? Man 

 prides himself on mastery of sea and land and air, but how rare 

 the mastery of the mind ? The weary and care-worn faces of 

 thousands, especially among the wealthy and educated classes, 

 with their projects and plans and purposes, bear eloquent 

 witness to the fever of thought by which man is dominated 

 and over-ridden, a miserable prey to the bat- winged phantoms 

 that flit through the corridors of his brain. Until one is 

 able to expel a thought from his mind as easily as he would 

 shake a pebble out of his boot, it is absurd to talk of man 

 as the heir of all the ages and master of nature. A slave 

 rather. But if while at work you can concentrate your 

 thought absolutely on it, pounding away like a great 

 engine, with great power and perfect economy, no wear 

 and tear of friction, and then when the work is finished and 

 there is no more occasion for the use of the machine, you 

 can stop it equally absolutely, no worrying, as if a parcel of 

 boys were allowed to play their devilments with a locomotive 

 as soon as it was in the shed,— if you have gained this 



