Part 12: Attainment of disgust with existence

While the citizens were playing there in this way, the Master thought, “Is there such sport anywhere else?” Then by clairvoyant knowledge the Master knew the very highest pleasure of heaven and that pleasure of Anuttara-heaven formerly enjoyed by hi m self. His bonds of delusion dropping away, again he reflected thus: “Alas! these people, overcome by sense-objects, do not know their own good. Ah! in this well of saṃsāra, jīvas from their karma perform actions that are nothing more than coming and going like a jar on a water-wheel. Alas! alas! for creatures whose minds are blinded by delusion this birth always passes in vain like the night for those asleep. Love, hate, and delusion cut down people’s dharma at the root, even though it is shooting up, like rats a tree. Ah! anger is made to grow by the foolish like a banyan-tree which will entirely consume even its own cultivator.^[1] Men mounted on conceit consider nothing, like elephant-drivers mounted on elephants crossing a boundary. Evil-hearted creatures do not abandon deceit which always causes trouble like the seed-vessel of the kapikacchū. Even a spotless collection of virtues is spoiled by greed alone, like milk by sour gruel, or a white cloth by collyrium. So long as the four passions dose at hand watch like guards in the prison of worldly existence, whence will mokṣa come to men? Persons, engaged in the embraces of women, as if afflicted by bhūts, do not know themselves completely ruined. The intoxication of oneself by oneself is produced by various kinds of food for the sake of worthless things, like the cure of a lion by herbs. Saying, “This is fragrant; this is fragrant. Which shall I choose?” a greedy fool, wandering like a bee, never takes pleasure. People deceive themselves by material objects such as beautiful women, pleasant for the moment, alas! like a child by its playthings. Their ears given to the sounds of flutes, lutes, etc., they are tom away from their own good, like one who wishes to sleep from meditation on the śāstras. At the same time the consciousness of creatures, alas! alas! is bewildered by these sense-objects all together, as if by wind, bile, and phlegm that have become very strong.”

While in this way the Supreme Lord’s mind was woven with the threads of continuity of disgust with saṃsāra, then the Lokāntika-gods who have nine sub-divisions—Sārasvatas, Ādityas, Vahnis, Aruṇas, Gardatoyas, Tuṣitas, Avyābādhas, Maruts, and Riṣṭas, living at the end of Brahmaloka, having additional ornaments made by folded hands like lotus-buds on their heads, came to the feet of the Lord of the World. They spoke as follows: “O you who have lotus-feet sunk in the water of light from the crest-jewels of Śakra, O light for the path of mokṣa lost in Bharatakṣetra, just as the first laws for the people have been established, O Lord, likewise establish a dharmatīrtha. Remember your own task.” After making this request of the Lord, the gods went to their respective abodes in the Brahmaloka. The Master also went at once to his own palace from the garden Nandana with the desire to be a wandering mendicant.