34. He is tolerant and magnanimous, bounteous and charitable; he is pliant and gentle, sweet in his speech and handsome in his look, and famed for his pious acts.
35. Such is the character of enlightened men of their own nature, and no practice nor education can ever make any one as such; as the sun and moon and fire are bright by themselves, and there is none and nothing else, that can ever make them shine.
CHAPTER CLXXI.
Meditation of Pure Vacuum.
Argument:—On the nihility of the Phenomenal, and substantiality of the Noumenal vacuum.
Vasishtha resumed and said:—It is the manifestation of our vacuous consciousness, that exhibits the phenomenal world unto us; whereas there is in reality no such thing as this world, or its appearance, or a vacuum in nature or a thing as consciousness in ourselves.
2. Whatever is apparent before us, is the manifestation of the Intellect, and vainly styled the world; just as the open air called the sky, is no other than the air itself. (So the vacuum known as the world, is not otherwise than the very vacuum).
3. As a man going from one place to another, sees a gap and blank between; and yet thinks of the place he has seen and left behind, so is the world a mere gap and thought of the mind.
4. Before creation there was nothing, how then could this something appear from that nothing; the latter having no material cause, is no material or visible thing. (Ex nihilo nihil fit. So the sruti: sat eva asit, na kinchit idam agra asit).
5. Then there was not an atom—the origin of the world in existence; how then and from where, could this revolving world, have its rise and form?
6. Therefore this formal and visible world, could not have sprung from it, as no child could ever be born of a barren woman. Hence there is nothing as the visible world, and the conception thereof must be entirely false (as that of a ghost or goblin).