29. It makes the ever moving time, to revolve in its rotation of years and cycles and Yuga—ages; and causes the tide of creation to roll on in its waves of worlds, on its bosom of the ocean of eternity.
30. Its decrees remain fixed with a wonderful stability, and the earth (terra or dhara), continues firm (dhíra or sthira), with its quality of containing all things. (In this sloka there is both a homonym and paronym of similar sound and sense in the word dhará derived from the root dhri: namely, dhírá, dhará, = sthirá, terra and dharana and dharini).
31. It made the universe teem with fourteen kinds of beings in its as many worlds of the chaturdasa-bhuvanas; and these are as different in their modes of life as in their forms and figures. (The Atharvan or last Veda reckons tri-sapta or thrice seven worlds).
32. These are repeatedly produced from and reduced to nothing, and move in their wonted courses for ever, as bubbles in the waterless ocean of eternity.
33. Here the miserable multitudes, moving mad in vain struggles after their desired objects, and in their imbecility under the subjection of disease and death. They are incessantly coming to life and going away in their exits, remaining in their living states and acquiring their ends, and for ever running to and fro, in their repeated births and deaths in this world.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
UPASAMA. THE SAMENESS OR QUIETISM OF THE SOUL.
Argument:—The sameness of the Spirit from its want of perturbation by worldly matters; and equanimity of the mind in all circumstances.
Vasishtha added:—In this manner are these series of worlds, revolving in their invariable course, and repeatedly appearing and disappearing in the substantiality of Brahma.
2. All this is derived from the one self-existence, and have become the reciprocal causes of one another, by their mutual transformations; and again they are destroyed of themselves by their mutual destructiveness of one another.
3. But as the motion of the waters on the surface, does not affect the waters in the depth of the sea; so the fluctuations of the changing scenes of nature, make no alteration in the ever tranquil spirit of Brahma.