DEPRECIATION OF HUMAN LIFE.
Human life is as frail as a pendant drop of water tripling on the tip
of a leaflet; and as irrepressible as a raving madman, that breaks
loose from its bodily imprisonment out of its proper season.
2. Again the lives of those whose minds are infected by the poison of
worldly affairs, and who are incapable of judging for themselves, are
(verily) but causes of their torment.
3. Those knowing the knowable, and resting in the all-pervading spirit,
and acquiescing alike to their wants and gains, enjoy lives of perfect
tranquility.
4. We that have certain belief of our being but limited beings, can
have no enjoyment in our transient lives, which are but flashes of
lightenings amidst the cloudy sky of the world.
5. It is as impossible to keep the winds in confinement, to tear
asunder the sky to pieces, and wreathe the waves to a chaplet, as to
place any reliance in our lives.
6. Fast as the fleeting clouds in autumn, and short as the light of
an oilless lamp, our lives appear to pass away as evanescent as the
rolling waves in the sea.
7. Rather attempt to lay hold on the shadow of the moon in the waves,
the fleeting lightenings in the sky, and the ideal lotus blossoms in
the ether, than ever place any reliance upon this unsteady life.
8. Men of restless minds, desiring to prolong their useless and
toilsome lives, resemble the she-mule conceiving by a horse (which
causes her destruction abortion or unfructification).
9. This world (Sansára) is as a whirlpool amidst the ocean of creation,
and every individual body is as (evanescent) as a foam or froth or
bubble, which can give me no relish in this life.
10. That is called true living, which gains what is worth gaining,
which has no cause of sorrow or remorse, and which is a state of
transcendental tranquility.
11. There is a vegetable life in plants, and an animal life in beasts,
and birds: man leads a thinking life, but true life is above (the
succession of) thoughts.
12. All those living beings are said to have lived well in this earth,
who being once born herein have no more to return to it. The rest are
no better than old asses (of burthen).
13. Knowledge is an encumbrance to the unthinking, and wisdom is
cumbersome to the passionate; intellect—is a heavy load to the
restless, and the body is a ponderous burden to one ignorant of his
soul.
14. A goodly person possessed of life, mind, intellect and
self-consciousness and its occupations, is of no avail to the unwise,
but seem to be his over-loadings as those upon a porter.
15. The discontented mind is the great arena of all evils, and the
nestling place of diseases which alight upon it like birds of the air:
such a life is the abode of toil and misery.
16. As a house is slowly dilapidated by the mice continually burrowing
under it, so is the body of the living gradually corroded by the
(pernicious) teeth of time boring within it.
17. Deadly diseases bred within the body, feed upon our vital breath,
as poisonous snakes born in caves of the woods consume the meadow air.
18. As the withered tree is perforated by minutest worms residing in
them, so are our bodies continually wasted by many inborn diseases and
noxious secretions.
19. Death is incessantly staring and growling at our face, as a cat
looks and purrs at the mouse in order to devour it.
20. Old age wastes us as soon as a glutton digests his food; and it
reduces one to weakness as an old harlot, by no other charm than her
paint and perfumes.
21. Youth forsakes us as soon, as a good man abandons his wicked friend
in disgust, after his foibles come to be known to him in a few days.
22. Death the lover of destruction, and friend of old age and ruin,
likes the sensual man, as a lecher likes a beauty.
23. Thus there is nothing so worthless in the world as this life, which
is devoid of every good quality and ever subject to death, unless it is
attended by the permanent felicity of emancipation.