On the Incessant perversity of All Aspects of Life

Sri Rāma

1. -4. O knower of Brahman, this visible and manifest world of mobiles and immobiles is totally unstable and transient like a dream.O muni, what is now seen as a deep dried up sea, can tomorrow, change into a tall cloud-covered mountain. What is today a great forest touching the sky heights, can get razed to the ground or become a huge well in a few days. A body which today is decorated with silks, unguents and garlands can tomorrow become naked and thrown off into a distant pit with broken limbs.

5. -10. A city vibrant today with diverse activities may take the charecter of the forest in a few days. A king who is radiantly sitting on a throne today can become a heap of ashes in a few days. A fierce and dense forest with tall trees can, in course of time, become a great city with sky-high constructions. The same forest can later become a cemetry. In this world of wood, water and grass, water can become land and vice-versa. All of this is constantly changing.All is changing - existence to nonexistence. Childhood is changing to youth and youth to old age. All things are moving relentlessly from existence to non existence, like waves in water.

11. -12. Life in this world is like a lamp in breeze. All occulence of physical things is like the effulgence of a lightning. All things in this world are changing constantly like seeds.

13. -14. The state of this world gives the impression of a dancer dancing in ecstasy in a tumultuous tune, whirling and stamping. She is bedecked by the dust, called beings, raised by the breeze of mind. The great calamities and perversions are her dance-gestures and gesticulations and expressions of moods.

15. -16. The graceful generous glances are the transient activities of the world. Her glances are fickle like lightning. They create an illusion of reality of the world. The design of this world resembles this dance.

17. -20. Yesteryears, great men of yore, riches and works, and activities in bygone years - all have slipped into oblivion. We will also suffer the same fate in an instant. Everyday wanes and waxes. There is no end to this phenomenon of dying and rising in this changing world. O lord, animals and becoming humans and vice-versa. Gods are loosing their godliness. Where then, is steadiness in this world. Sun creates with his sun beams day and night, again and again. With that, he awaits the end of time.

21. 26. Even Brahma, Vishnu and Rudra, chase their own destruction, the way waters in a sea seek ocean-fire. The heavens, earth, sky and air, mountains, rivers and quarters - all are mere fuel for the marine fire of destruction. For a person afraid of death, wealth, friends, relatives, servants, prosperity, all are sapless and distasteful. As long as the feeling of loss and destruction do not enter the mind, people enjoy the above feelings (about riches, etc.). Wealth is here in one instant, and in another arrives poverty. At one instant one is in good health and in the next moment arrives disease. Is there an intelligent person who is not charmed by the illusion about this ever-transient world ?

27. -31. At one instant the sky appears to be mud-smeared. At another, it appears golden hued. At another, it appears like a tree-hollow covered by blue lotus-like clouds. Once it roars and another instant, remains completely silent, like a dumb thing. Once it is star-studded. At another, it is bedecked with sun. Once it is delightful withmoon. At once, it is totally empty. Whoever is not afraid of such a world which is so transient? Now calamity; next moment great wealth; now birth; next death - then o muni, what is not transient?

32. -35. O Bhagavan, nothing is steady. In this world, a thing does not remain the same before and after birth. A cloth appears to be a pot and vice-versa. What is seen is not what it is. Change is the norm in the world. What declines, rises up again. What is destroyed is created again. Like day and night, this cycle repeats in the case of a human being. A weak man is killing a strong person even though ordinary people of lowly charecter are rising up to become kings. All is constantly changing in this world.

36. -40. Being born, a thing changes continuously, like waves which arise due to the vibration of water. Even when a body remains the same, childhood remains for a while only. Youth arrives later, yielding place to old age. (If such is the case with the same body) What to talk of other things! One moment there is joy; one moment there is sorrow. Next moment everything calms down. Mind plays the actor in everything. Here something, there something - the creator goes on playing like a child, without any fatigue. The creator creates and devours relentlessly, like day and night, the cycle of beings goes on eternally.

41. -43. The beings, participants in this world of change, are born and are dying. There is nothing steady or constant for them, even in the case of riches and calamities. Time plays with people throwing them into catastrophes - may they be intelligent and manipulative. It makes them confused and unstable. The fruits, called beings, hanging from the tree of the three worlds fall as they ripen, shaken by the winds of time.