33. Life is but a breath of air, and overhung by the clouds of calamities, and is as frail as a drop of falling water; our enjoyments are a series of clouds interspersed by fickle and flickering lightnings; youth is fleeting and its pleasures are as the gliding waters, and the body is as transient as a moment; therefore O my child! attain thy felicity while in this world, and expect thy _nirvána_-extinction at the end. CHAPTER CXXXVII. DESCRIPTION OF THE STATES OF WAKING, SLEEPING AND DREAMING. Argument:--The Hunter’s Inquiry into the means of salvation and the sage’s instruction about them. The Huntsman said:--Instruct me now, O sage, the way to my salvation from misery; and teach me the best mode of conduct, which may neither be too difficult nor too facile to practice. 2. The sage replied:--Now be submissive to me, and throw away your bow and arrows; and betaking yourself to taciturnity and conduct of sages, be free from trouble and remain herein. 3. Vasishtha related:--Being thus advised by the sage, the huntsman threw away his bow and arrows; and betaking himself to the conduct of sages, remained still even without asking for food. 4. In course of a few days, his mind turned to the investigations of sástras; as a full blown flower enters into the minds of men, by means of its far smelling fragrance. 5. Once he asked his preceptor, O Ráma, to tell him, how and in what manner, outward objects come to be seen within us in our dream. 6. The sage said:--This very question, O my good fellow, had also arisen at first under my scrutiny; how these shadows of things beyond us, rise like the bodies of clouds in our sleeping hours in the sphere of our minds. 7. I then applied to my meditation, and practiced the closeness of my attention for my introspection into this matter; and steadily sat in my _padmásana_ posture of folded legs, and intensely intent upon investigation of this incident. 8. Sitting in this manner, I stretched my thought all about and afar; and then retracted them, into the recess of my mind; as the rising sun stretches out his beams in the morning, and afterwards draws them back into its disc in the evening. 9. I sent forth my breathings in quest of knowledge, and then called to myself; and thus continued in exhaling and inhaling my breaths, as flowers let out and contract their fragrance by turns. 10. My breath being accompanied with my mind, was reposed in the air before me; and then it was with the air inhaled by the pupil sitting before me, and intromitted into his nostrils. 11. Thus my breath being mixed with his, was admitted into his heart; as a snake is drawn in by the breath of a bear, sitting with his wide open mouth at the entrance of his hole. 12. Thus I entered into his heart, by means of my vehicle of my breath; and was put into difficulty of being confined therein, by my folly of following my breath in its passage into his breast.