The Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana of Valmiki, Vol. 3 (of 4), Part 2 (of 2)Valmiki
Religion
The Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana of Valmiki, Vol. 3 (of 4), Part 2 (of 2)
Valmiki
Hinduism -- Doctrines -- Early works to 1800; Religious life -- Hinduism -- Early works to 1800
6. The apána wind passing downward evacuates the bowels, but the samána
wind of the abdominal part serves to sustain the body; and the udána
rising upward and being let out, inflates and invigorates the frame.
7. If after all your efforts, you are unable to repress the passing
off of the downward wind; then the person is sure to meet his death,
by the forcible and irrepressible egress of the _apána_ wind (this
irrepressible egress is called _abishtambhá_). (The translator
regrets for his inability to give the English terminology of these
psychological words in the original).
8. And when one with all his attempts, is unable to suppress his rising
breath of life; but it forces of his mouth or nostrils, it is sure to
be followed by his expiration.
9. If one by his continual attention, can succeed to repress the
outward and inward egress of his vital breath, and preserve calm quiet
of his disposition, he is sure to have his longevity accompanied with
his freedom from all diseases.
10. Know that the decomposure of the smaller arteries, is attended with
distempers of the body, but the disturbance of the greater arteries is
followed by serious consequences. (There are a hundred great arteries,
attached to the main conduit of Kundaliní, besides hundreds of small
veins and nerves diverging from them throughout the body. The yogi has
the power of stopping the current of his breath and blood into these by
his restraint of respiration--pránáyáma).
11. Ráma said:--Tell me, O holy sage! how our health and sickness
connected with the organs and arteries of the body (rather than with
the blood and humours circulating through them).
12. Vasishtha replied:--Know Ráma, that uneasiness and sickness, are
both of them the causes of pain to the body; their healing by medicine
is their remedy, which is attended with our pleasure; but the killing
of them at once by our liberation (from the sensations of pain and
pleasure), is what conduces to our true felicity. (Because both health
and sickness are attended with but short lived pleasure and pain, and
cannot give us the lasting felicity to our souls).
13. Some times the body is subject both to uneasiness and sickness
also, as the causes of one another; sometimes they are both alleviated
to give us pleasure, and at others they come upon us by turns to cause
our pain only.
14. It is ailing of the body, that we call our sickness, and it is the
trouble of the mind that we term our uneasiness. Both of them take
their rise from our inordinate desires, and it is our ignorance only of
the nature of things, that is the source of both. (Our intemperance
and covetousness, which are dispelled by our right knowledge).
15. Without the knowledge of the natures and virtues of things, and the
want of the government of our desires and appetites, that the heart
string loses its tenuity and even course; and is swollen and hurried on
by the impulse of passions and inordinate desires.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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