41. Know that as a precious stone is polished, by gentle abrasion of its rubbish; so the mind comes to its reasoning, by the rubbing off of the dross of its prejudice. 42. Tell me what you desire to know, and how you want to abandon the world; it is in my opinion done by practice of what one is taught by his preceptor, or by interrogatories of what he does not know or understand. 43. It is said that whoso has a mind, to go across the doom of future birth or transmigration of his soul, should be possessed of good and pure desires in his mind, and an understanding inclined to reasoning under the direction of his spiritual guide. Such a person is verily entitled to attain to the state, which is free from future sorrow and misery. CHAPTER XXIV. INDIFFERENCE OR INSOUCIANCE OF MANKI TO WORLDLINESS. Argument:—Manki’s relation of the miseries of his life and of this world, together with the evils attendant on Human body and its senses and understanding. Vasishtha said:—Being thus accosted by me, Manki fell at my feet (in salutation); and then shedding the tears of joy from both his eyes, spoke to me on our way, with due respect (to my rank). 2. Manki said:—O venerable sir, I have been long travelling in all the ten sides of the earth; but I have never met a holy man like yourself, who could remove the doubts arising in my mind. 3. Sir, I have gained today the knowledge which is the chief good of the body of a Bráhmana, whose sacred person is more venerable and far more superior in birth and dignity, than the bodies of all other beings in heaven and on earth; but sir am sorry at heart, at seeing the evils of this nether world. 4. Repeated births and deaths, and the continued rotations of pleasure and pain, are all to be accounted as painful, on account of their terminating in pain. (Pain is pain, and pleasure too ends in pain). 5. And because pleasure leads to greater pain (at its want), it is better, O sage, to continue in one’s pain (which becomes a pleasure by long habit). The sequence of fleeting pleasure being but lasting pain, it is to be accounted as such even as long as it lasts. 6. O friend! all pleasures are as painful to me, as my pains have become pleasurable at this advanced age of mine; when my teeth and the hairs of my body, are falling off with the decay and wearing out of my internal parts also. 7. My mind is continually aspiring to higher stations in life, and is not persevering in its holy course; and the germ of my salvation, is choked by the thorns and thistles of my evil and worldly desires. 8. My mind is situated amidst its passions and affections, within the covert of my body, as the banian tree stands amidst its falling leaves in the interior of a rustic village; and the desires are flying like hungry vultures all over its body, in search of their abominable sustenance.