2. Ráma asked:—How do you say, Sir, that the quality of benevolence sprang in the mind of the sage, after it had been wholly absorbed in itself by its rationality? (since the total insensibility of one if himself, cannot have any regard for others). 3. Tell me Sir, that art the best of speakers, how can the feelings of universal love and friendliness, arise in the heart which is wholly cold and quiet, or in the mind which is entranced in the divine spirit? 4. Vasishtha replied:—There are two kinds of mental numbness, the one being its coma in the living body; and the other its deadliness after the material body is dead and gone. (The one is _swarúpa_ and the other _arúpa_; the first having its formal existence, and the other being a formless one). 5. The possession of the mind is the cause of woe, and its extinction is the spring of happiness; therefore one should practise the abrasion of the essence of his mind (or personality), in order to arrive to its utter extinction. 6. The mind that is beset by the net of the vain desires of the world, is subject to repeated births, which are the sources of endless woes. (The world is a vale of tears, and worldlimindedness is the spring of misery). 7. He is reckoned as a miserable being, who thinks much of his person, and esteems his body, as the product of the good deserts of his past lives; and who accounts his foolish and blinded mind as a great gift to him. (Human life is usually esteemed as the best of all living beings; and the Sástra says “the human body is the best gain after millions of transmigrations in other forms”). 8. How can we expect the decrease of our distress, as long as the mind is the mistress of the body? It is upon the setting down of the mind, that the world appears to disappear before us. (As the setting sun hides the world from our sight). 9. Know the mind to be the root of all the miseries of life, and its desires as the sprouts of the forest of our calamities. 10. Ráma asked:—Who is it, Sir, whose mind is extinct, and what is the manner of this extinction; say also how its extinction is brought on, and what is the nature of its annihilation? 11. Vasishtha replied:—O support of Raghu’s race! I have told you before of the nature of the mind; and you will hear now, O best of inquirers! the manner of extinguishing its impulses. 12. Know that mind to be paralysed and dead, which is unmoved from its steadiness by pleasure and pain; and remains unshaken as a rock at the gentle breath of our breathing. (_i.e._ the man that lives and breathes, but moves not from his purposes). 13. Know also that mind, to be as dull as dead, which is devoid of the sense of its individuality from others; and which is not degraded from the loftiness of its universality, to the meanness of its personality.