RAMA'S VAIRAGYA ^

When I consider how from utter emptiness it takes its birth,
and grows and flourishes therein, and how from its vacuity
there Hows full store of miseries and evils for all men, I
have no heart to speak of I at all, and wish to give up even
food and drink, and nourish not, but starve to death, this
ever-yawning, all-devouring- I.

^This Mind that makes such willing slaves of us, and
flings us ceaselessly from place to place, itself not resting
for a single moment in the heart—I have no wish to serve
this tyrant any more, and yet know not how to subdue its
giant strength. Easy it were to drink up all the ocean ;^f
easier to pluck Mount M6ru(1) by the roots ; far easier to|
eat the flames of fire; it is not easy to restrain the mind.

"And stronger than the mind is Trshna(2). Burning
quenchlessly within, it consumes me as the sun^s glare kills
the morning's moistures. The highest reaches of perfection,
whereon I try to give my faith a resting place, it undermines
and tumbles down like some strong-toothed burrower of the
earth. Like dead leaves in the swirl of the waters ; like
light straws in the sweep of the storm ; like pale clouds in
the skies of autumn ; helplessly I whirl about in the race-
grounds of Desire. I have only heard the wonder that the
wise cut through its adamantine firmness with the flawless
sabre of Viv6ka(3). But yet it seems to me that even the
edge of the sword, or the spark from the forge of iron, or
even the tongue of the lightning, is not so strong and keen
as the Trshna that rules in the heart.

(1) The great mountain, the axis of the earth, the emblem of
stability and permanence.

(2) Desire; literally thirst; the will to live as an individual
separate from other individuals; tanha, in Buddhist Pali literature.

(3) Discrimination—between the real and the not-real, the Self
and the not-Self, the Eternal and the Transient.