Valmiki

“ Time is the sovran lord of all, and equally terrible to all things. He is ever ready to devour all visible beings.
6. Time as master of all, spares not even the greatest of us for a moment. He swallows the universe within himself, whence he is known as the universal soul.
7. Time pervades all things, but has no perceptible feature of his own, except that he is imperfectly known by the names of years, ages and kalpas (millenniums) .
8. All that was fair and good, and as great as the mount of Meru, have gone down in the womb of eternity, as the snakes are gorged by the greedy Garuda. ”

“ He was the gentle breeze to the vacillation of the playful creepers, and as the god Hari in his valour and energy. He shone as the moon on the florets of good manners, and as wildfire to the brambles of licentiousness.
25. His consort was the happy Líla, playful as her name implied, and fraught with every grace, as if the goddess of prosperity, had appeared in person upon earth.
26. She was gentle with her submissiveness to her lord, and was sweet in her speech without art; she was always happy and slow in her movements, and ever smiling as the moon. ”

“ Greediness is as an actress in the stage of the world; she is as a bird flying out of the nest of our houses; as a deer running about in the desert of our hearts; and as a lute making us sing and dance at its tune.
38. Our desires like billows toss us about in the ocean of our earthly cares; they bind us fast to delusion as fetters do the elephant. Like the ficus indicus they produce the roots of our regeneration, and like moon beams they put our budding woes to bloom. ”

“ Time like a wild elephant uproots all proud living beings in this world, as the other pulls up the trees of the forest with their tusks.
14. This creation of God is like a forest, having Brahmá for its foundation and its trees full of the great fruits of gods. Time commands it throughout its length and breadth.
15. Time glides along incessantly as a creeping plant, composed of years and ages as its parts, and the sable nights as black bees chasing after them.
16. Time, O sage, is the subtlest of all things. ”

“ Ráma said:—O sage! this seemingly pleasing but actually unpleasant world, has nothing in it that is productive of such a thing as can afford tranquility to the soul.
2. After the playful boyhood is over, the mind wastes itself in the society of women like the deer fallen in a cavern, then the body bends down under old age, and the man has only to grieve (for his folly) .
3. As the body is stricken with the frost of old age, its beauty flies afar from it like the bloom of the fading lotus, and then the fountain of man’s worldliness is at once dried up. ”

“ He who has filled the skies with vacuity and the rocks with solidity; who has dissolved the waters to fluidity, and concentrated all light and heat in the sun.
14. He who has spread these wonderful scenes of the world, as the clouds sprinkle the charming showers of rain; both as endless and incessant, as they are charming and dulcet to sight.
15. He who causes the appearance and disappearance of worlds in the sphere of his infinity like waves in the ocean; and in whom these phenomena rise and set like the running sands in the desert. ”

“ The man receiving the light leading to his liberation, will never fall into the darkness of error or gloom of death.
20. So long will chill frost of penury continue to contract the lotus of humanity, as the clear light of reason does not shine upon the mind like the sun.
21. One must know the true nature of the soul both from his preceptor and the evidence of the Sástras, as also from friends like ourselves, for the sake of liberating himself from the misery of the world. ”

“ As long, O Bráhman! as the cloud of egoism overspreads (the region of our minds) , so long our desires expand themselves like the buds of kurchi plants (in the rains) .
13. But when the cloud of egoism is dispersed, the lightning of avarice vanishes away, just as the lamp being extinguished, its light immediately disappears.
14. The mind vaunts with egoism, like a furious elephant in the Vindhyan hills, when it hears the thunder-claps in the clouds.
15. Again egoism residing like a lion in the vast forest of all human bodies, ranges about at large throughout the whole extent of this earth. ”

“ As the spangled heavens appear like a forest full of brilliant gems in it, so the world appears as full of the glory of God to the contemplative mind, and not as composed of earth or other material bodies in it.
32. It is intelligence alone, that shines in the form of world in the intelligent soul, and not any material body, which was never brought into being before.
33. As billows in the lake, rise and set and rise again, so the rising and falling days and nights present these various scenes to our knowledge. ”

“ Ráma! it now becomes you to have your mind properly purified from its doubts, as it was done in the case of the son of Vyása.
2. You see, O great sages! how perfectly the knowable is known to Ráma, whose good understanding has learnt to feel a distaste for worldly enjoyments, as if they were diseases unto him.
3. You well know that the fixed principle in the mind of one knowing the knowable, is to have an aversion to all the enjoyments of life.
4. It is the desire of fruition that chains down a man fastly to the earth; but the knowledge of the frailties here serves to dispel his darkness. ”

“ The lightnings are the bracelets and armlets of Destiny, which move to and fro as she dances along. The clouds are her wrappers that fly about her in the air.
26. Death is furnished with many weapons, as clubs, axes, missiles, spears, shovels, mallets and sharp swords, all of which are sure weapons of destruction.
27. Mundane enjoyments are no other than long ropes dropped down by the hand of death, and keeping all mankind fast bound to the world; while the great thread of infinity (ananta) is worn by him as his wreath of flowers. ”

“ It overcasts the equanimity of mind as an eclipse overshadows the moon; it destroys our virtues as a frost destroys the lotus flowers; it dispels the peace of men as the autumn drives away the clouds. I must therefore get rid of this egoistic feeling.
8. I am not Ráma the prince, I have no desire nor should I wish for affluence; but I wish to have the peace of my mind and remain as the self-satisfied old sage Jina.
9. All that I have eaten, done or offered in sacrifice under the influence of egoism, have gone for nothing; it is the absence of egoism which (I call) to be real good. ”

“ It is equanimity alone that can cool this dryness as the moistening beams of the moon.
52. It is quiescence which leads to all good and is reckoned the best state of being. Quietism is felicity, it is peace and the preventive of error.
53. The man who lives content with his quiet and a calm clearness of his soul, with a mind fraught with stoicism, makes friends of his enemies.
54. Those whose minds are adorned with the moon light of quietism, feel a flux of the beams of purity rising in them like the hoary waves of the milky ocean. ”

“ Vasishtha said:—The world is a void and as null as the pearls in the sky (seen by optical delusion) . It is as unreal as the soul in the vacuity of the intellect.
2. All its objects appear, as unengraven images on the column of the mind, which is without any engraving or engraver of it.
3. As the intermotion of the waters in the sea, causes the waves to rise of themselves, so the visibles as they appear to us, are as waves in the calm spirit of the Supreme. (The variety of the waves, with the pearls, shells and froth they pour out, resemble the multiformity of worldly productions) . ”

“ Time is like a reservoir in which the nights are as mud, the days as lotuses, and the clouds as bees.
35. As a covetous man, with worn out broom sticks in hand, sweeps over a mountain to gather the particles of gold strewn over it, so does time with his sweeping course of days and nights, collect in one mass of the dead all living beings in the world.
36. As a miserly man trims and lights a lamp with his own fingers, to look into his stores at each corner of the room; so does time light the lamps of the sun and moon to look into the living beings in every nook and corner of the world. ”

“ The man of right judgment has a soul as deep as the ocean and as firm as a mountain, and a cool serenity always shines within him like that of moon-light.
19. It is he who arrives slowly at what is called “living-liberation;” who remains calm amidst the endless turmoils (of the world) , and is quite aloof from common talk (i.e. unnoticed by the world) .
20. His mind is calm and cool at every thing; it is pure and full of heavenly light; shining serenely as the autumnal night with the radiance of moon-beams. ”

“ It presents before him the circle of the sky and its sides with the cycle of its seasons and times, and shows him the deeds of his pious and secular acts, as they were to continue to eternity.
3. Objects never seen nor thought of before, also offer themselves to his view, as the sight of his own death in a dream, and as they were the prints in his memory.
4. But the infinity of objects, appearing in the empty sphere of the immaterial intellect, is mere illusion, and the baseless city of the world, like an aerial castle, is but the creation of imagination. ”

“ Ráma has displayed the wonder of his knowledge, as the moon displays her cooling beams and good trees their clusters of blossoms, and as the flowers diffuse their fragrance all about.
43. It is very difficult to get the essence of true knowledge in this accursed world, which is constructed by the ungovernable and dominant predestination (of our past acts for misleading us to error and misery) .
44. Those only are reckoned the best of men, and leaders of the good, who try their best to gain the essence of truth, and whose minds are fixed on glory as their best treasure. ”

“ Hear now how this vacuous living soul, comes to be embodied in the human body, after its detachment as a spark from the totality of vital spirits, in the empty sphere of divine Intellect.
19. The soul thinks itself as “a minute particle of light” at first, and then it considers itself as growing in the sphere of its consciousness.
20. The unreal appearing as real, proves to be unreal at last; as the fictitious moon becomes a nullity afterwards; so the soul continues to view itself subjectively and objectively both as the viewer and the view. ”

“ Until the mind can enjoy the contentment rising spontaneously in the soul of itself, so long will troubles continue to grow in it as briars and brambles in a bog.
8. The mind cooled by calm contentment, and purified by the light of philosophy, is always in its full bloom as the lotus under sun-beams.
9. The ungoverned mind which is under the subjection of desires and devoid of contentment, does not receive the light of knowledge, as a soiled mirror takes no reflection of the face. ”

“ Avarice is like the great valley of the Vindhyá hills, that is beset with deserts and impenetrable forests, is terrible and full of snares laid by the hunters, and filled with the dust and mist (of delusion) .
52. One single avarice has every thing in the world for its object, and though seated in the breast, it is imperceptible to all. It is as the undulating Milky ocean in this fluctuating world, sweeping all things yet regaling mankind with its odorous waves. ”

“ Knowledge is an encumbrance to the unthinking, and wisdom is cumbersome to the passionate; intellect—is a heavy load to the restless, and the body is a ponderous burden to one ignorant of his soul.
14. A goodly person possessed of life, mind, intellect and self-consciousness and its occupations, is of no avail to the unwise, but seem to be his over-loadings as those upon a porter.
15. The discontented mind is the great arena of all evils, and the nestling place of diseases which alight upon it like birds of the air: such a life is the abode of toil and misery. ”

“ Tell me O sage, how the mist of our desires, which darkens the moon of our intellects, is to be dispelled from our minds, so as to make it shine forth in its full brightness.
11. How are we to deal in this wilderness of the world, knowing well that it is destructive both of our present and future interest?
12. What man is there that moves about in this ocean of the earth, who has not to buffet in the waves of his passions and diseases, and the currents of his enjoyments and prosperity. ”

“ Time plucks the gods and demigods as ripe fruits, from their great arbor of existence, at the end of the world (to make them his food) .
27. Time resembles a large fig tree (Ficus religiosus) , studded with all the worlds as its fruits, and resonant with the noise of living beings like the hissing of gnats about them.
28. Time accompanied by Action as his mate, regales himself in the garden of the world, blossoming with the moon-beams of the Divine Spirit.
29. As the high and huge rock supports its body upon the basis of the earth, so does time rest itself in endless and interminable eternity. ”

“ Vasishtha replied:—The erroneous conception of the creation of the world, resembles the false impression of colours in the clear sky; wherefore it is wrong, O Ráma! to take a thing as real, of which there is an absolute privation in nature.
28. It is the knowledge of Brahma that constitutes his form, or else there is no act of his whereby he may be known to us (the universe being but a development of himself) . He is entirely devoid of any visible form, and therefore there is no better course for any one than to know him as truth. ”

“ He sees the soul within him though it be without him; just as the mirror reflects the distant hill in itself; and the soul remains confined within him, as a body is confined in a well, and as a sound is shut up in the hollow of a cave.
26. The consciousness of our dreams and desires, is but a particle (attribute) of the living soul, whose real form is that of a star waking (keeping watch) within us. (Consciousness of external objects in our dream and desire, is compared to the reflection of outward images in a glass or bubble of water, and to the echo of a distant sound in a hollow cave) . ”