16. Without assuetude you cannot concentrate your vagrant mind into your heart; nor can you without the practice of constant reflexion attain the acme of wisdom.
17. It is impossible to attain the summit of perfection, without your habitual observance of wisdom; as it is incapable for a block of wood to contain any water in it, unless it is scooped out in the form of a wooden vessel.
18. Habitual reliance in sapience and constant attendance to the precepts of the sástras and preceptors, tend to the removal of the mind’s suspense between unity and duality (i.e. between God and the world), and set the mind to its ultimate bliss of nirvána—anaesthesia in quietism.
19. Insensibility of one’s worth and state and inertness to all worldly affections, refraining from the evils of bad associations, and abstaining from all earthly desires and cravings of the heart—
20. These joined with one’s deliverance from the fetters of dualities, and enfranchisement from all pleasurable and painful associations, are the surest means that lead the learned to the state of unalterable bliss—nirvána (which is ever attendant on the Deity).
CHAPTER CLV.
Relation of Future Fortune.
Argument:—The sage relates the elevation of the Huntsman to heaven by means of his austere devotion.
The God Agni said:—Upon hearing all this the huntsman was lost in wonder, and remained as dumfoundered as a figure in painting in the very forest.
2. He could not pause to fix his mind in the supreme being, and appeared to be out of his senses and wits, as if he was hurled into a sea.
3. He seemed to be riding on the wheel of his reverie, which pushed him onward with the velocity of a bicycle; or appeared to be caught by an alligator, which bore him with rapidity, up and down the current of his meditation.