(Rama's) Contempt for Life

Sri Rama

1. Life is very transient. It is like the dew drop on the tip of a tendril.It flees from this body like a man in frenzy.

2. For people who have a decaying mind due to the serpent of sensual things, and to the unintelligent people, life is wearisome.

3. Life is a giver of happiness to those who are composed and reposed, knowing the state of the Supreme Brahman and those who are equally comfortable with becomings and non-becomings, having and not having.

4. We realize, O Muni, that this body-form is limited (in terms of truth). And so, we do not feel any fulfillment in this lightning of the cloud of life.

5. We do not wish to use life to gather around us air, to split the sky into pieces or stitch the waves together (others may do it).

6. Life is like a thin autumn cloud. It is like a lamp without oil. It is unstable like a wave.It is better to think of it as lost (spent).

7. I can accept a reflection of moon in a wave, a mass of lightnings, a lotus in the sky - but not life.

8. Foolish people with a restless mind desire to prolong life.This is like "Aswatari" desiring to remain in the womb.

9. O knower of Brahman, a body suitable for moving about in this changing, transient world, is like foam on the ocean of creation. I have no interest in it.I do not relish such a life.

10. That by which one can obtain what is to be obtained, is called life.That by which nothing needs to be lamented is called life. That by which one can attain that Supreme state is called life.

11. Trees are living. Birds are living.But those are not really living. Those who live by proper thinking are really living.

12. In the world, animals are born and they die.Only those of realized souls do not have to come back to life. They are the real gentle lives. The rest are all old buffaloes.

13. For the non-discriminating unintelligent people, scriptural learning is a big burden. For those bewildered and attached , knowledge is a burden. Disquiet is a burden to the mind. For those who are not aware of Self, the body itself is a burden.

14. The way big loads are a burden to the carriers of those loads, handsome appearance, life, mind, intelligence, ego - all such are burdens causing unhappiness to wicked minds.

15. Restless minds are perfect abodes for calamities. They are nests for diseases. For them, life is really very burdensome.

16. Residing restfully in the cave of body, the diseases give out poisonous heat like vicious serpents which breathe away the air in a forest and dessicate and squeeze out life from the body.

17. -18. Like the "ghrina" insect which drills away a tree from inside, diseases devour one's life.

19. Like a cat which feverishly seeks a rat, death eyes constantly a person, with interest, to swallow his life.

20. Old age is like a bedecked prostitute, scented to make people swoon. It however devours life like a man who digests huge amounts of food.

21. -28.Youth abandons even a good man who does not understand life's purposes. Like a bad man who is left by a good man, having been discovered (of his bad nature in a short time).

22. God of death, a friend of old age and death always courts the friendship of destruction, the way a paramour likes a beautiful form.

23. Life is always flowing towards death. In terms of stability, happiness, and qualities, life is to be abandoned.There is no other (useless) thing like life.