Yoga Vasistha [English], Volume 1-4

by Vihari-Lala Mitra | 1891 | 1,121,132 words | ISBN-10: 8171101519

The English translation of the Yoga-vasistha: a Hindu philosophical and spiritual text written by sage Valmiki from an Advaita-vedanta perspective. The book contains epic narratives similar to puranas and chronologically precedes the Ramayana. The Yoga-vasistha is believed by some Hindus to answer all the questions that arise in the human mind, an...

Chapter IV - Want of anxiety in the way of salvation

Argument: Vasishtha exposes the evils of selfish views parag-drishti, and exalts the merit of elevated views pratyag-drishti.

Vasishtha continued:—

1. [Sanskrit available]
Rama! knowing your mind, understanding, egoism and all your senses, to be insensible of themselves, and deriving their sensibility from the intellect; say how can your living soul and the vital breaths, have any sensation of their own.

2. [Sanskrit available]
It is the one great soul, that infuses its power to those different organs; as the one bright sun dispenses his light, to all the various objects in their diverse colours.

3. [Sanskrit available]
As the pangs of the poisonous thirst after worldly enjoyments, come to an end; so the insensibility of ignorance, flies away like darkness at the end of the night.

4. [Sanskrit available]
It is the incantation of spiritual knowledge only, that is able to heal the pain of baneful avarice;as it is in the power of autumn only, to dispel the clouds of the rainy-season.

5. [Sanskrit available]
It is the dissipation of ignorance, which washes the mind of its attendant desires; as it is the disappearance of the rainy weather, which scatters the clouds in the sky.

6. [Sanskrit available]
The mind being weakened to unmindfulness, loses the chain of its desires from it; as a necklace of pearls being loosened from its broken string, tosses the precious gems all about the ground.

7. [Sanskrit available]
Rama! they that are unmindful of the sastras, and mind to undermine them; resemble the worms and insects, that mine the ground wherein they remain.

8. [Sanskrit available]
The fickle eye-sight of the idle and curious gazer on all things, becomes motionless after their ignorant curiosity is over and has ceased to stir; as the shaking lotus of the lake becomes steady, after the gusts of wind have passed away and stopped.

9. [Sanskrit available]
You have got rid, O Rama! of your thought of all entities and non-entities, and found your steadiness in the ever-steady unity of God;as the restless winds mix at last with the calm vacuum (after their blowing and breathing over the solid earth, and in the hollow sky).

10. [Sanskrit available]
I ween you have been awakened to sense, by these series of my sermons to you; as kings are awakened from their nightly sleep, by the sound of their eulogists and the music of timbrels.

11. [Sanskrit available]
Seeing that common people of low understandings, are impressed by the preachings of their parish parsons; I have every reason to believe that my sermons must make their impression, upon the good understanding of Rama.

12. [Sanskrit available]
As you are in the habit of considering well, the good counsel of others in your mind;so I doubt not, that my counsel will penetrate your mind, as the cool rain-water enters into the parched ground of the earth.

13. [Sanskrit available]
Knowing me as your family priest, and my family as the spiritual guides of Raghus race for ever; you must receive with regard my good advices to you, and set my words as a neck-chain to your heart.

Like what you read? Consider supporting this website: