39. The evils of death and decrepitude, and the weeds of continued woes, are the produce of secret seed of desire, which to be burnt betimes by the fires of equanimity and insouciance.
40. Wherever there is inappetency, the liberation from bondage is found to be even there also; therefore suppress always your rising desires, as you repress your fleeting breath (in the practice of ajapá or suppression of breathings).
41. Wherever there is appetence, even there is our bondage in this world; and all our acts of merit or demerit and all our distresses and diseases, are the invariable companions of our worldly wishes.
42. The dominant desire being deprived of its province, and the indifferent saint being freed from its bondage; it is made to weep and wail, as when a man is robbed by a robber.
43. As much as a man’s desire is decreased in his breast, so much so does his prosperity increase, leading him onward towards his liberation.
44. A foolish man that is ignorant of himself (i.e. of his soul and spirit), and fosters his fond desire for anything; is as if he were watering at the root of the poisonous arbour of this world, only to bring his death by its baneful fruits.
45. There is the tree of desire growing in the human heart and yielding the two seeds (fruits) of happiness and misery (i.e. of good and evil); but the latter being fanned by the breeze of sin, bursts out in a flame which burns down the other, and together with it its possessor also. (The evil desire supercedes the good one).
CHAPTER XXXVII.
A Lecture on the Visibles and Visible World.
Arguments:—Arguments to show that the world is no production of Divine will or volition, but a reproduction of Brahma himself.
Vasishtha continued:—Hear me explain to you more fully, O Ráma! what I have already told you in brief, regarding the treatment of the malady of desire, which forms also an article of the practice of yoga asceticism.