Sri Vasista

1. O Rāma, Great are the people who overcome the soft delight of ignorance and conquer the mind driven by the senses.

2. Restraining and subduing the mind is the only way to quell the grief giving calamities of ‘samsara’. 

3. Listen and internalise the essence of knowledge.  Love of pleasures is bondage.  Giving up that love is liberation.

4. Why worry about all scriptural learning!  Act only on this idea – look upon all that appears attractive and sweet as poison and fire.

5. Remember that all sensuous pleasures are vexat.. and calamitous.   They are to be enjoyed without any indulgence.

6. Thorny bush will emerge out of thorny-bush-seed.  In a similar way, vice and crime will yield only a mind full of vasanas.

7. A settled mind, which is not enveloped by vāsanas, will not countenance attachment and hatred.  It will slowly, in course of time, reach perfect peace.

8. Decline of happiness and sorrow will result from good qualities.  It is like good sprouts coming out from good seeds.

9. Mind will settle down to a delightful state when united with good thoughts.  Cloud of false knowledge will blow over in time.

10. A discerning mind will then become generous and compassionate like the moon during the white fortnight.  From ‘viveka’, virtue and merit will increase like the effulgence of sun.

11. Courage and steadiness will increase inside like a pearl kept inside a bamboo, without being rattled by strong winds.  He abides with a feeling of accomplishment in his heart.  It will be like moon in spring (cool, stable and pleasant).

12. With such a person, cool, shady tree of association with noble people will yield proper fruit.  Bliss will drip from the tree of samadhi.

13. Mind rises beyond the opposites.  It becomes free of desire.  It is liberated from all outrages.  It will become quiet without any instability, incoherences, grief, delusions and fears.

14. It will be free from all doubts about scriptures.  There will not be any undue curiosity about things and purposeless conjectures and imaginations.  It will be unattached and free from delusions.

15. It will be free from all expectations.  It will not revile against anything or anyone.  There will not be any sense of superiority.  The dew of grief will melt in the heat of disinterest.  There will mot any knots in the mind.

16. With all the offsprings, called doubts, eliminated, with the cage of wife called fierce desire, broken off this (liberated) mind attains lordship over the supreme purpose of (attaining truth).

17. Because of the attained strength and wideness, mind discards all distortions.  Reminded (remembering) its lordly character, it throws away its form(s).

18. Decline in the progress in the rise of the mind is essentially annihilation of mind (manonasam).  From then start the great beginnings.  Mind gets annihilated in a gnani – in an ignorant it blossoms.

19. Mind alone is this world-cycle.  Mind alone is this expansive mountain range.  Mind is sky.  Mind is god.  Mind is friend and foe.

20. Mind forgets its origins (from self) due to distortions and deformations.  Vāsanās of this worldly life are called ‘mind’.

21. The essential mind-stuff is called ‘Siva’ when the Transcendent Pure Intelligence is possessed by the objective nature and is polluted by distortions and deformations (gripped by the sense of change).

22. (When the Transcendent Intelligence) is seized by objective tendencies, established and settled identities, develop leading to loss of Truth/knowledge.  This depletes the Pure Intelligence of its essential nature and creates the mind stuff (in a being).

23. Self is neither body nor a person of the mutable world.  It is not blood.  All these are inconscient.  The spirit enshrined in the body (dehi, the soul) is unattached and disinterested.

24. Body is made of cells.  There is nothing else in that except blood and such.  It is like the layers in a banana trunk.

25. Know that mind is Siva.  Mind alone takes that shape.  The Self accepts its own self-made changes and deformations.

26. Siva weaves a web of self-made deformations and binds himself in that (web).  It is like a silkworm breeding its own cocoon.

27. Mind (a Siva) discards the illusion about the present body and takes up another again in course of time.

28. Whatever is the vasana(s) (of the present), mind takes birth in accordance with that.  It is like a dream which one sees guided by the state of the mind at the time of sleep.

29. When a seed is soaked in nectar (and sown in the soil) sweet fruit yielding plants come out of it.  If soaked in poison, poisonous plants will sprout from it.

30. Because of good vasanas mind stuff acquires greatness and might in a glorious manner.  It is like one becomes Indra of his mental kingdom in a dream.

31. By mean, vile and sordid vāsanas mind becomes lowly, vile and weak.  When one is possessed with the thought of ghosts, he will see ghosts in dreams and at mights.

32. In a large lake of clear waters, even if pollution occurs, it will not stay.  When pollution is very widespread even if some clean condition occurs, it will not stay/be sustained.

33. If mind is polluted extensively/intensely, then (that pollution) will take shape and be born as such.  If a mind is clean, pure and clear extensively/ intensively, then that purity will take shape and be born as such.

34. Best of people will never give up their generous nature even in times of declining fortunes.  Moon never gives up hope of remaining full (even when he is on the wave).

35. There is neither bondage nor liberation.  All is a myth, a sleigh of ‘māya’.

36. All is like a city-in-clouds, a mirage, something similar to the appearance of two moons.  There is neither duality nor oneness.

37. All is the manifestation of Brahman.  This is the Supreme Truth.  This world is void of any essence.  It is totally unreal.

38. Bad convictions and assertions lie ‘I am not infinite, (I am limited), I am petty and low’ will get dissolved by (good) assertions like ‘I am infinite, I am Divine’.

39. ‘I am all pervading.  I am pure’ – such thoughts and feelings are restrained by one’s own imagined distortions of such feelings.

40. Supreme Truth is:  ‘there is neither bondage nor liberation.  There is neither oneness nor duality.  All is that manifestation of Brahman’.

41. The gift of purity of mind is relief from all kinds of perceptions about the world afflicted by mental perceptions.  Such a pure mind sees Brahman and in no other way.

42. When mind becomes pure, it is wetted by the waters of auspicious and good feelings.  Mind then gains the Brahman view.  It is like a white cloth being touched by colours.

43. ‘I am everything and all’ – with such a state of mind and feeling, the feelings of agreeable and disagreeable will weaken.  One becomes liberated from ideas of bondage and liberation.

44. One can realise with pure mind and body and with a mind, which develops a detachment through study of scriptures, that this world is a mere reflection as in a crystal.

45. When mind develops unity with matter, it cannot become one with ‘soul’.  Know that ignorant perceptions will destroy one in a trice.

46. That Supreme State is obtained when mind abides absorbed in that rejecting all distinctions of external phenomena and internal perceptions.

47. If observation and observed are distinct from each other, that state of mental absorption is a mere form of mind and unreal.  Know that it is nothing else.

48. Even if both beginning and end are lost (to our recognition) the middle part is unreal and nonexistent.  If this is not know, such a mind will have grief on its hand.

49. ‘This world is Self alone’ – without this realization all other mental states about worldly phenomena will create sorrow.  The feeling of world as Self will cause liberation and happiness.

50. ‘Waves are distinct from water’ – this thought is ignorance.  ‘Water and waves are one and the same’ – this thought is knowledge.

51. ‘Grief is Coming’ such unreal feelings are nothing but forms of ‘agreeable and disagreeable’ type condition.  Knowledge will occur when such feelings are eliminated or absent.

52. The various forms of mind are unreal as they are caused by its (mental) resolutions, determinations and fancies.  When such unreality is annihilated where is sorrow.  Tell me O Rāma.

53. A relative who is not particularly affectionate is treated without any particular attachment or hatred.  In the same way look upon this cage of body with a neutral eye.

54. Such a neutral relative does not touch any of our griefs or happiness.  Similarly on knowing the Truth, this body will not relate to us.

55. Central to the knowledge about the Infinite lie phenomenon and observer.  Once this is realized, mind becomes quiet.  It is like dust which settles down when wind stops.

56. When the wind of mind becomes quiet, the dust of body settles down.  Fog will not envelop the city of world.

57. When the shower of vāsanas declines, delight ensues sins, will dry up.  Sluggishness, stupidity and heart quivering will cease.

58. When tree of intense desire dries up, the forest of the heart will become quiet.  When ‘kadamba’ tree of senses decline false knowledge will get annihilated.

59. The fog of delusion will dissolve as fog on an autumn morning.  Disease of delusion takes flight as if driver away by a ‘mantra’.

60. Then the cascades of fear will not run down the mountain of body.  The peacock with broad fans will not dance in joy.

61. The great Siva will shine like sun effulgently in the sky of consciousness and transcendence.

62. Shorn of the clouds of delusion, the sky of vast expanse shines bright, clear and white with all wisdom attaining the state of perfection.

63. The mental sky will be pure and clear like the moon in an autumn sky.

64. It displays and shines with all prosperity’s and gives delight and joy (to everyone).  The earth of wisdom yields many fruits (of knowledge and joy). 

65. The entire universe will look beautiful to view with all its mountains and cool forests and shades.

66. The lake of heart will swell with clean and pure lotus concourses and displays a vast crystal shape enclosing huge beds of flowers.

67. The bee of ego, which is breezing in the heart lotus with flee away to some unknown quarters, never to return.

68. Then the all pervading, lord of everything will abide peacefully lording over his own city of body devoid of all vāsanas.

69. Having obtained light of Self, the Lord of the body, the Self abides with all wisdom and intelligence regarding the world around with detachment and delight.