The means of conquering the senses

'I shall now describe to you the means of conquering the senses as seen with the eye of the scriptures. A person, O king, will attain to the highest and by shaping his conduct accordingly.

Amongst all living creatures man is said to be the foremost. Among men, the twice-born, persons well read in the Vedas are the foremost.

These last are considered as the souls of all living creatures. Indeed, those Brahmanas who have mastered the Vedas are considered as allseeing and omniscient. They are persons who have become conversant with Brahma.

As a blind man, without a guide, meets with many difficulties on a road, so has a person shorn of knowledge to meet with many impediments in the world. Therefore those who are endued with knowledge arc considered as superior to the rest.

Those who wish to acquire virtue practise various rites according to the scriptural injunctions. They do not, however, attain to Liberation. They only acquire those good qualities which I shall presently mention.

Purity of speech, of body, and of mind, forgiveness, truth, firmness and intelligence,-these good qualities are shown by pious persons who observe both kinds of religion.

What is called Brahmacharya is considered as the means of attaining to Brahma. That is the foremost of all religions. It is by the practice of that religion that one acquires the highest end.

Brahmacharya has no connection with the five vital airs, mind, understanding, the five senses of perception, and the five senses of action. It is, therefore, free from all the perceptions that the senses give. It is heard only as a word, and its form, is not seen, but can only be conceived.

It is a state of existence only on the mind. It has no connection with the senses. That pure state should be attained to by the understanding alone.

He who practises it duly attains to Brahma; he who practises it half and half, attains to the status of the gods; while be who practises it indifferently, is born among Brahmanas and possessed of learning attains to eminence.

Brahmacharya is highly difficult to practise. Listen now to the means thereof. That twiceborn one who follows it should subdue the quality of Darkness as soon as it begins to show itself or as soon as it begins to be powerful.

One who has taken that yow should not speak with women. He should never look at a naked woman. The sight of women, under even indifferent circumstances, excites the passion of all weak-minded men.

If a person feels a desire for women rising in his heart, he should observe the vow called Krichcchra and also pass three days in water. If desire is formed even in a dream, one should, diving in water, mentally repeat for three times the three Riks by Aghamarshana.

That wise man who follows this VOW should, with a liberal and enlightened mind, consume the sins in his mind which are created by the quality of Darkness.

As the passage that carries away the refuge of the body is very closely connected with the body, so the embodied Soul is very closely connected with the body that confines it.

The different sorts of juices, passing through the network of arteries, nourish men's wind, bile, phlegm, blood, skin, flesh, intestines, bones, marrow, and the whole body.

Know that there are ten principle canals. These help the functions of the five senses. From those ten issue out thousands of other passages that are minuter in form.

Like rivers filling the ocean at the proper time, all these channels, containing juices, nourish the body.

There is a channel leading to the heart called Manovaha. It draws from every part of the human body the seminal fluid which is born of desire.

Numberless other channels issuing from that principal one extend into every part of the body and bearing the element of heat cause the sense of vision (and the rest).

As the butter that lies within milk is churned up by churing rods, so the desires that are created in the mind draw together the vital sced that lies within the body.

In the midst of even our dreams passion originating in imagination attacks the mind, with the result that the passage already named, viz., Manovaha, throws out the seminal fluid born of desire.

The great and divine Rishi Atri is a inaster of the subject of the generation of the vital secd. The juices that are produced by food, the passage called Manovaha, and the desire that is born of imagination,-these three are the causes which create the seminal fluid which has Indra for its presiding god. The passion that helps the passing out of this fluid is, therefore, called Indriya.

Those persons, who know that the course of seminal fluid is the cause of intermixture of castes, are men of controlled passions. Their sins are considered to have been consumed, and they are never subjected to re-birth.

He who performs action simply for the purpose of maintaining his body, reducing with the help of the mind the qualities into a state of equilibrium, and brings at his last moments the vital airs to the channel called Manovaha, is freed from re-birth.

The Mind is sure to acquire Knowledge. It is the Mind which assumes the form of all things. Acquiring success through meditation, the minds of all great persons, become freed from desire, eternal, and shining.

Therefore, for destroying the mind, one should perform only pure deeds, and frecing himself from the qualities of Darkness and Ignorance, one is sure to acquire a very desirable end.

Knowledge (ordinarily) acquired in younger days becomes weakened with decrepitude. Through the good effects of past lives, a person, however, of ripe understanding succeeds in killing his desires.

Such a person, by getting over the fetters of the body and the senses like a traveller crossing a path full of impediments, and transgressing all faults he sees, succeeds in testing the ambrosia (of Liberation.)