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Válmiki
Yoga-Vāsistha, Book 5: Upaśama-Khanda (On Quietism). Chapter 11 - Subjection of the Mind
Vasistha related: Having thought so, Janaka rose up for performance of his daily rites as usual, and without the sense of his agency in them. He did his duty in the same manner as the sunrises everyday to give the morn, without his consciousness of it.
He discharged his duties as they presented themselves to him, without any concern or expectation of their rewards. He did them awaking as if it were in his sleep. 1
Having discharged his duties of the day and honoured the gods and the priests, he passed the night absorbed in his meditations.
His mind being set at ease, and his roving thoughts repressed from their objects, he thus communed with his mind at the dead of night, and said:
O my mind that are roving all about with the revolving world, know that such restlessness of your, is not agreeable to peace of the soul; therefore rest you in quiet from your wanderings abroad.
It is your business to imagine many things at your pleasure, and as you think you has a world of thoughts present before you every moment. 2
You shoot forth in innumerable woes by the desire of endless enjoyments, as a tree shoots out into a hundred branches, by its being watered at the roots.
Now as our births and lives and worldly affairs, are all productions of our wistful thoughts, I pray you therefore, O my mind! to rest in quiet by abandonment of your earthly desires.
O my friendly mind! weigh well this transient world in your thoughts, and depend. upon it, should you find aught of substantiality in it.
Forsake you fond reliance on these visible-phenomena; leave these things, and rove about at your free will without caring for anything.
Whether this unreal scene, may appear to or disappear from your sight, you should not suffer yourself to be affected by it in either case.
You canst have no concern with the visible objects 3; for what concern can one have with any earthly thing which is inexistent of itself as an unsubstantial shadow?
The world is an unreality like yourself, hence there can be no true relations between two unrealities. It is but a logomachy to maintain the relation of two negatives to one another.
Granting, you are a reality and the world is unreal, still there can be no agreement between you, as there is none between the living and the dead, and between the positive and negative ideas.
Should the mind and the world be both of them realities and co-existent forever, then there can be no reason for the joy or sorrow of the one at the gain or loss of the other.
Now therefore avoid the great malady of worldliness, and enjoy the silent joy in yourself, like one sitting in the undisturbed depth of the Ocean, with the rolling tide and waves above his head.
Do not consume like a puppet in pyrotechnics with the fiery remorse of worldliness, nor be burnt down to the darkness of despair in this gloomy scene of the world.
O wicked mind! there is nothing here so good and great, whereby you may attain your high perfection, except by the forsaking of all frivolities and dependence on your entire resignation to the unchangeable One.
Footnotes
1. He did his acts by rote, but wot not what he did in his insensibility of them; and such acts of insensibility are free from culpability or retribution.
2. For all things are but creations of the imaginative mind.
3. phenomenal world
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