51. Avarice is like the great valley of the Vindhyá hills, that is beset with deserts and impenetrable forests, is terrible and full of snares laid by the hunters, and filled with the dust and mist (of delusion). 52. One single avarice has every thing in the world for its object, and though seated in the breast, it is imperceptible to all. It is as the undulating Milky ocean in this fluctuating world, sweeping all things yet regaling mankind with its odorous waves. CHAPTER XVIII. OBLOQUY OF THE BODY. This body of ours that struts about on earth, is but a mass of humid entrails and tendons, tending to decay and disease, and to our torment alone. 2. It is neither quiescent nor wholly sentient, neither ignorant nor quite intelligent. Its inherent soul is a wonder, and it is reason (and its absence) that makes it graceful or otherwise. 3. The sceptic is doubtful of its inertness and intellection: and the unreasonable and ignorant people are ever subject to error and illusion. 4. The body is as easily gratified with a little, as it is exhausted in an instant, hence there is nothing so pitiable, abject and worthless as our bodies. 5. The face is as frail as a fading flower: now it shoots forth its teeth like filaments, and now it dresses itself with blooming and blushing smiles as blossoms. 6. The body is as a tree, having its arms resembling the branches, the shoulder-blades like stems, the teeth as rows of birds, the eye-holes like its hollows, and the head as a big fruit. 7. The ears are as two wood-peckers, the fingers of both hands and feet as so many leaves of the branches, the diseases as (parasite) plants, and the acts of the body are as axes felling this tree, which is the seat of the two birds the soul and intelligence. 8. This shady arbor of the body, is but the temporary resort of the passing soul, what then whether it be akin to or apart from anybody, or whether one would rely in it or not. 9. What man is there, O venerable fathers! that would stoop to reflect within himself, that this body is repeatedly assumed only to serve him as a boat to pass over the sea of the world. 10. Who can rely any confidence in his body, which is as a forest full of holes, and abounds in hairs resembling its trees? 11. The body composed of flesh, nerves and bones, resembles a drum without any musical sound, and yet I sit watching it as a cat (for the squeaking of mice). 12. Our bodies are as trees growing in the forest of the world, bearing the flowers of anxiety, and perforated by the worms of woe and misery, and mounted upon by the apish mind. 13. The body with its smiling face appears a goodly plant, bearing the fruits both of good and evil; but it has become the abode of the dragon of avarice, and a rookery of the ravens of anger.