27. Men are as straws carried here and there by the current of their desire, and whirled about in its eddy; they are overtaken by and overwhelmed in an endless series of difficulties which <are> impossible for me to enumerate. (The Sanskrit _na párjate_ is the Bengali _párájáyaná_). 28. Men being cast like a ball flung from the palm of fate, are hurried onward by their ardent desires till they are hurled headlong into the depth of hell; where being worried and worn out with hell torments, they take other forms and shapes after lapses of long periods (to undergo fresh toils and troubles on earth). CHAPTER XXVI. MANKI’S ATTAINMENT OF FINAL EXTINCTION OR NIRVÁNA. Argument:—The vanity of Human wishes, and the Tranquility of Rational and spiritual speculation. Vasishtha said:—Thus the living soul, being let fall in the mazy path of his world, is encompassed by calamities and accidents as countless as the animalcules, which are generated in the rainy season. 2. All these accidents though unconnected with one another, follow yet so fast and closely upon each other, as the detached stone lying scattered and close together in the rocky desert, and linked in a lengthening chain of thought in the mind of man. 3. The mind blinded of its reason, becomes a wilderness overgrown with the arbour of its calamities, and yet appearing to be smiling as a vernal grove before men, by its feigned merriment and good humour. (Mirth and sorrow are both of them the effects of unreasonableness). 4. O how pitiable are all those beings! Who being bound to their subjection to hope, are subjected to divers states of pain and pleasure, in their repeated births in various forms on earth. 5. Alas for those strange and abnormal desires, which subject the minds of men, to the triple error of taking the non-existent to be actually present before them. (The triple error (_Triputi bhrama_) consists in the belief of the visibles, their vision and the viewer of them, that is, in the subject, act and objects of sight, which are all viewed as unreal in the light of vedánta). 6. Those who have known the truth, are delighted in themselves, they are immortal in their mortal life, and are diffusers of pure light all about them. What then is the difference between the sapient sage who is coldhearted in all respects, and the cooling moon (who cools and enlivens and enlightens the world with her ambrosial beams?). 7. And what is the difference between a whimsical boy and a covetous fool, who covets anything whatever at hand without any consideration of the past and future (good or evil which attends upon it). 8. What is the difference between the greedy fool and voracious fish or whale, that devour the alluring bait of pleasure or pain; and will not give up the line until they are sure to give up their lives for the same. (All seeming pleasure is real pain, and bane of both the body and soul of men).