38 - The conversation between the Father and Son (continued). A series of questions.

Dattátraya moralizes on the consciousness of Self and its resulte under the parable of a tree, and asserts the non-materiality of the Soul. Alarka asks for instruction about Yoga or religious devotion. 

Jada spoke.

1 Then the king prostrating himself before the magnanimous braman Dattátreya, renewed his speech, bending respectfully before him. 

2 “No whit of affliction have I, O bráhman, when I look on things in a proper frame of mind: those who look on things 

3 amiss are always sunk in a sea of unhappiness. In whatever thing a man’s intellect becomes self-engrossed, he receives

4 woes therefrom and pays them back. There is not so much pain when a cat eats an unselfish sparrow or mouse, as when

5 it eats a domestic fowl. I then feel neither pain nor pleasure, since I am beyond the material world.* Whoever is subject to created things by means of creatod things, is indeed sensitive to pleasure and pain.” 

* Prakriti. 

Dattatreya spoke.

6 “It is even so, O tiger-hero! as thou hast just declared. The thought ‘it is mine is the root of pain; and the thought

7 it is naught of mine’ is the root of calmness. From my question indeed has this sublime knowledge sprung up in thee, who hast cast off the conviction ‘It is mine’, as if it were the cotton of the seemul tree.”†

†The capsules when ripe burst, and the silky cotton inside is scattered over the ground for many yards around. 

8       “With the thought it is I’ the germ has sprung up; with the thought it is mine,’ the germ has grown shoulder-high: and home and lands are its topmost boughs; children and

9 wife and other relations are its young shoots; wealth and corn are its great leaves; it has developed not once only; and merit and demerit are its outmost flowers; pleasure and pain

10 are its full-grown fruit. There it fills the path of final emancipation; it oozes out at the commingling of fools; it is rich with festoons of bees which are the desire to be doing;

11 knowledge of what ought to be done is the full-grown tree. Those who, wearied with the road of worldly existence, betake themselves to its shade are dominated by error, knowledge

12 and happiness; where is their superiority? But those, who hew down the tree of selfishness with the axe of learning which is sharpened on the whet-stone of Association with the

13 good, travel along that path. Reaching the cool, dustless thornless grove of religious knowledge, the wise, ceasing from action, attain supreme emancipation from existence.

14     “Neither art thou, O king, nor am I a gross object consisteing of the elements and of organs: neither must I declare we are an eleniontary rudiment, nor that we both have a soul as

15 an eternal organ. Or, whom O king do I see the chief of us two, since the conscious soul* is sublime, and the personal aggregate

* Kshetrajna. 

16 consists of qualities. Just as mosquitoes, the dumbur trees, † reeds, munja grass,†† fish and water have separate existences though they dwell together, so is it with the body and the soul, O king.” 

† Udumbara, Ficus glomerata, Roxb, the modern dumbur, (p. 646) not i Hooker, 

†† Saccharum munja, Roxb. (p. 82).

Alarka spoke.

17     “Adorable Sir! through thy favour has sublime knowledge of this kind been revealed to me, which causes one to discern

18 the power of the Supreme Intellect; but no stability remains here in my mind which is assailed by objects of sense; no Moreover, do I see how I may be delivered from the bonds of

19 Nature, or how I may cease to exist again, or how I my attain in perpetuity to this state of being devoid of qualities an

20 to one-ness with Brahma. Therefore, O bráhman, mighty knowledge! expound religious devotiong§ properly to me, who thus beseech thee, prostrate before thee, for association with the good is beneficial to men.” 

§ Yoga