12. The best boon of your egoism which has fallen to your lot, is still unforsaken by you; you must get rid of this, in order to be freed from the cares and sorrows of this sublunary world of woes.
13. If none of these things is mine, then my hermit's cell and grove, which I own as mine are what I am willing to resign, if that would make my total abnegation.
14. Vasishtha said:—The self-governed Sikhidhwaja being awaked to his sense, by these admonitions of Kumbha—the Bráhman boy; he remained silent for a moment, with the light that shone within him.
15. His pure conscience returned to his mind, and the blaze of his right knowledge, burnt away the dross of his attachment to the hermitage; as a gust of wind drives the dusts from the ground.
16. Sikhidhwaja said:—Know me sir, to have now taken away my heart from this hermitage, and forsaken my attachment to all its sacred bowers and arbours; now therefore consider me to have resigned my all and every thing in world.
17. Kumbha replied:—How can I consider you as fully resigned, by your resigning these groves and arbours and everything appertaining to them; none of which belong to you, nor are you their master or deserter in anyway. (Know there is but one being, who is the sole master of all).
18. Thou hast another thing to be forsaken by thee, and that is the greatest and best thing that has fallen to thy lot in this world; it must be by your resignation of that thing, that you can set yourself free from all. (The prince was so very infatuated with his knowledge of the gross sensibles, that he would never come to know what egoism meant).
19. Sikhidhwaja said:—If this even be not the all that I have, and which you want me to resign; then take these earthen pots and basins, these hides and skins and this my cell also, and know me to forgo all these forever and betake myself elsewhere.
20. Vasishtha said:—So saying the dispassionate prince rose from his seat, with his composed and quiet mind; as when an autumnal cloud rises on the top of a mountain, and disperses elsewhere.