36. As a pot made of earth long before, continues in the same state at all times, so the body which has long ago come to existence, still continues and will continue the same. (The body being made of earth, remains in and returns to the earth again).
37. The beginning and end of billows is mere water and moisture, and the intermediate part only presents a figure to view; so the beginning and end of bodies is mere earth and water, and the intermediate state is one of bustle and commotion.
38. It is the ignorant only that trust in this temporary and fluctuating state of the body; which, like the billow, is hastening to subside, in its original liquid and quiet state.
39. What reliance is there in any body, which makes a figure in the middle, and is an unreality both in its prior and latter states.
40. So the heart also is as quiet as the intellect, both at first and in the end; and remains immerged in itself, both when it exists in the body or not. What then if it heaves for a little while in the midst? (i.e., the palpitation of the heart between its prior and latter states of inaction).
41. As it comes to pass in our dreams, and in our deluded sights, of marvellous things; and as it happens in the giddiness of ebriety, and in our journeying in boats:—
42. And as it turns out in cases of our vitiated humours, and delusion of senses, and also in cases of extreme joy and grief, and under some defect of the mind or body:—
43. That some objects come to sight, and others disappear from it; and that some appear to be smaller or larger than they are and others to be moving; so do all these objects of our vision, appear and disappear from our sight in the course of time.
44. O my heart! all thy conduct is of the same nature, at the different times, of thy joy and grief; that it makes the long of short and the short of long; as the short space of a single night, becomes as tedious to separated lovers as an age; and an age of joyous affluence as short as a moment.
45. Or it is my long habit of thinking that makes the untruth appear as truth to me; and like the mirage of the desert, our mirage of life, presents its falsehoods as realities unto us.