8. (Prose) Thus Ráma! it is quite evident and there is no doubt in it. The mind is the active and passive agent of all kinds of actions and their sequences.
(a). Therefore rub out the dirt of your heart, and polish the gem of your mind; and having melted it down like the particle of an icicle, by the fire of your reason, attain to your chief good summum bonum at last.
(b). Know the mind as self-same with ignorance (avidyá), which presents these multitudes of beings before you, and produces the endless varieties of things by its magical power.
(c). There is no difference in the meanings of the words ignorance, mind, understanding and living soul, as in the word tree and all its synonyms.
(d). Knowing this truth, keep a steady mind freed from all its desires; and as the orb of the clear sun of your intellect has its rise, so the darkness of your nolens and volens flies away from you.
(e). Know also this truth, that there is nothing in the world which is not to be seen by you, and which can not be made your own, or alienated from you. Nothing is there that does not die or what is not yours or others. All things become all at all times. (This dogma is based on a dictum of the Vedánta given in the Madhu Bráhmana. That nothing is confined in any place or person at all times, but passes from one to another in its turn and time).
9. The multitudes of existent bodies and their known properties, meet together in the substantiality (of the self-same Brahma); as the various kinds of unburnt clay vessels, are melted down in the same watery substance.
10. Ráma said:—You said sir, that it is by weakening the desires of our mind, that we can put an end to our pleasures and pains; but tell me now, how is it possible to stop the course of our naturally fickle minds.
11. Vasishtha replied:—Hear, O thou bright moon of Raghu’s race! the proper course that I will tell thee for quieting the restless mind; by knowing this thou shalt obtain the peace of thy mind, and be freed from the actions of thy organs of sense.
12. I have told you before of the triple nature of the production of beings here below, which I believe, you well remember.