Canto XXXVIII - The conversation between the Father and Son (continued): A series of questions

Battātraya moralizes on the consciousness of Self and its results, under the parable of a tree, and asserts the nonmateriality of the Soul. Alarka asks for instruction about Toga or religious devotion.

Jaḍa spoke:

Then the king prostrating himself before the magnanimous brāhman Dattātreya, renewed his speech, bending respectfully before him.

“No whit of affliction have I, O brāhman, when I look on things in a proper frame of mind: those who look on things amiss are always sunk in a sea of unhappiness. In whatever thing a man’s intellect becomes self-engrossed, he receives woes therefrom and pays them back. There is not so much pain when a cat eats an unselfish sparrow or mouse, as when it eats a domestic fowl. I then feel neither pain nor pleasure, since I am beyond the material world.^[1] Whoever is subject to created things by means of created things, is indeed sensitive to pleasure and pain.”

Dattātreya spoke:

“It is even so, O tiger-hero! as thou hast just declared. The thought ‘it is mine’ is the root of pain; and the thought ‘it is naught of mine’ is the root of calmness. From my question indeed has this sublime knowledge sprung up in thee, who hast cast off the conviction ‘It is mine’, as if it were the cotton of the seemul tree.”^[2]

“With the thought ‘it is I’ the germ has sprung up; with the thought ‘it is mine,’ the germ has grown shoulder-high: and home and lands are its topmost boughs; children and wife and other relations are its young shoots; wealth and com are its great leaves; it has developed not once only; and merit and demerit are its outmost flowers; pleasure and pain are its full-grown fruit. There it fills the path of final emancipation; it oozes out at the commingling of fools; it is rich with festoons of bees which are the desire to be doing; knowledge of what ought to be done is the full-grown tree. Those who, wearied with the road of worldly existence, betake themselves to its shade are dominated by error, knowledge and happiness; where is their superiority? But those, who hew down the tree of selfishness with the axe of learning, which is sharpened on the whet-stone of association with the good, travel along that path. Reaching the cod, dustless, thornless grove of religious knowledge, the wise, ceasing from action, attain supreme emancipation from existence.

“Neither art thou, O king, nor am I a gross object consisting of the elements and of organs: neither must I declare we are an elementary rudiment, nor that we both have a soul as an eternal organ. Or, whom O king do I see the chief of us two, since the conscious soul^[3] is sublime, and the personal aggregate consists of qualities. Just as mosquitoes, the dumbur trees,^[4] reeds, muñja grass,^[5] fish and water have separate existences though they dwell together, so is it with the body and the soul, O king.”

Alarka spoke:

“Adorable Sir! through thy favour has sublime knowledge of this kind been revealed to me, which causes one to discern the power of the Supreme Intellect; but no stability remains here in my mind which is assailed by objects of sense; nor moreover do I see how I may be delivered from the bonds of Nature, or how I may cease to exist again, or how I may attain in perpetuity to this state of being devoid of qualities and to one-ness with Brahma. Therefore, O brāhman, mighty in knowledge! expound religious devotion^[6] properly to me, who thus beseech thee, prostrate before thee, for association with the good is beneficial to men.”

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Prakṛti.

[2]:

The capsules when ripe burst, and the silky cotton inside is scattered over the ground for many yards around.

[3]:

Kṣetrajña.

[4]:

Udumbara, Ficus glomerata, Roxb, the modern dumbur, (p. 646) not in Hooker.

[5]:

Saccharum muñja, Roxb. (p. 82).

[6]:

Yoga.