RÁMA’S REPLY.
Válmíki related:—Being thus asked with soothing words by the chief of
the sages, Ráma made his answer in a soft and graceful speech replete
with good sense.
2. Ráma said, Oh venerable sage! I will tell thee in truth, untutored
though I am, all the particulars as asked by thee; for who would
disobey the bidding of the wise?
3. Since I was born in this mansion of my father I have all along
remained, grown up and received my education (in this very place).
4. Then O leader of sages! being desirous to learn good usages (of
mankind), I set out to travel to holy places all over this sea-girt
earth.
5. It was by this time that there arose a train of reflections in my
mind of the following nature which shook my confidence in worldly
objects.
6. My mind was employed in the discrimination of the nature of things
which led me gradually to discard all thoughts of sensual enjoyments.
7. What are these worldly pleasures good for, (thought I), and what
means the multiplication (of our species) on earth? Men are born to
die, and they die to be born again.
8. There is no stability in the tendencies of beings whether movable
or immovable. They all tend to vice, decay and danger; and all our
possessions are the grounds of our penury.
9. All objects (of sense) are detached from each other as iron rods or
needles from one another; it is imagination alone which attaches them
to our minds.
10. It is the mind that pictures the existence of the world as a
reality, but the deceptiveness of the mind (being known) we are safe
from such deception.
11. If the world is an unreality, it is <a> pity that ignorant men
should be allured by it, like the deer tempted by a distant mirage
(appearing) as water.
12. We are sold by none (to any one) and yet we remain as if enslaved
to the world; and knowing this well, we are spellbound to riches, as it
were by the magic wand of Sambara.
13. What are the enjoyments in this quintessence (of the world) but
misery; and yet we are foolishly caught in its thoughts, as if clogged
in honey (like bees).
14. Ah! I perceive after long that we have insensibly fallen into
errors, like senseless stags falling into caverns in the wilderness.
15. Of what use is royalty and these enjoyments to me? What am I and
whence are all these things? They are but vanities, and let them
continue as such without any good or loss to any body.
16. Reasoning in this manner Oh Bráhman, I came to be disgusted with
the world, like a traveller in (his journey through) a desert.
17. Now tell me, O venerable sir! whether this world is advancing to
its dissolution, or continued reproduction, or is it in course of its
endless progression.
18. If there is any progress here, it is that of the appearance and
disappearance of old age and decease, of prosperity and adversity by
turns.
19. Behold how the variety of our trifling enjoyments hastens our
decay, they are like hurricanes shattering the mountain trees.
20. Men continue in vain to breathe their vital breath as hollow-bamboo
wind-pipes having no sense.
21. How is (human) misery to be alleviated, is the (only) thought that
consumes me like wild fire in the hollow of a withered tree.
22. The weight of worldly miseries sits heavy on my heart as a rock,
and obstructs my lungs to breathe out. I have a mind to weep, but am
prevented from shedding my tears for fear of my people.
23. My tearless weeping and speechless mouth, give no indication of my
inward sorrow to any body, except my consciousness the silent witness
in my solitude.
24. I wait to think on the positive and negative states (of worldly
bliss), as a ruined man bewails to reflect on his former state of
affluence (and present indigence).
25. I take prosperity to be a seducing cheat, for its deluding the
mind, impairing the good qualities (of men), and spreading the net of
our miseries.
26. To me, like one fallen into great difficulties, no riches,
offspring, consorts or home afford any delight, but they seem to be (so
many sources of) misery.
27. I, like a wild elephant in chains, find no rest in my mind, by
reflecting on the various evils of the world, and by thinking on the
causes of our frailties.
28. There are wicked passions prying at all times, under the dark mist
of the night of our ignorance; and there are hundreds of objects, which
like so many cunning rogues, are about all men in broad day-light, and
lurking on all sides to rob us of our reason. What mighty champions can
we delegate (now) to fight with these than our knowledge of truth?