31. Your instructions are sweet and graceful in the first place (by the elegance of their style); they are edifying in the midst (by their good doctrines); and they are sacred by the holiness they confer at the end.
32. Your flowery speech is ever delightsome to us, by the quality of its blooming and unfading beauty, and by virtue of its conferring our lasting good to us.
33. O sir, that are learned in all sástras, that art the channel of the holy waters of divine knowledge, that art firm in thy protracted vows of purity, do thou expurgate us of the dross of our manifold sins by your purifying lectures.
CHAPTER V.
LECTURE ON TRANQUILLITY OF THE SOUL AND MIND.
Argument. The existence of the world in ignorant minds, and tranquility of the spirit.
Vasishtha said:—Now listen with attention the subject of quietism for your own good, wherein you will find the best solutions (of many questions adduced before).
2. Know Ráma, this world to be a continuous illusion, and to be upheld by men of rájasa and támasa natures, consisting of the properties of action and passions or ignorance, that support this illusory fabric, as the pillars bear up a building.
3. Men born with the sátwika nature of goodness like yourself, easily lay aside this inveterate illusion, as a snake casts off its time-worn skin (slough).
4. But wise men of good dispositions (or sátwika natures), and those of the mixed natures of goodness and action (rájasa-sátwika), always think about the structure of the world, and its prior and posterior states (without being deluded by it).
5. The understandings of the sinless and which have been enlightened by the light of the sástras, or improved in the society of men or by good conduct, become as far sighted as the glaring light of a torch.