I ask."

On this that twice-born (Brahman) in reply explained in succession all
the modes of painful discipline, and the fruits expected as their
result. How some ate nothing brought from inhabited places but that
produced from pure water, others edible roots and tender twigs, others
fruits and flowers fit for food, each according to the rules of his
sect, clothing and food in each case different; some living amongst
bird-kind, and like them capturing and eating food; others eating as the
deer the grass and herbs; others living like serpents, inhaling air;
others eating nothing pounded in wood or stone; some eating with two
teeth, till a wound be formed; others, again, begging their food and
giving it in charity, taking only the remnants for themselves; others,
again, who let water continually drip on their heads and those who offer
up with fire; others who practise water-dwelling like fish; thus there
are Brahmakarins of every sort, who practise austerities, that they may
at the end of life obtain a birth in heaven, and by their present
sufferings afterwards obtain peaceable fruit.

The lord of men, the excellent master, hearing all their modes of
sorrow-producing penance, not perceiving any element of truth in them,
experienced no joyful emotion in his heart; lost in thought, he regarded
the men with pity, and with his heart in agreement his mouth thus spake:
"Pitiful indeed are such sufferings! and merely in quest of a human or
heavenly reward, ever revolving in the cycle of birth or death, how
great your sufferings, how small the recompense! Leaving your friends,
giving up honorable position; with a firm purpose to obtain the joys of
heaven, although you may escape little sorrows, yet in the end involved
in great sorrow; promoting the destruction of your outward form, and
undergoing every kind of painful penance, and yet seeking to obtain
another birth; increasing and prolonging the causes of the five desires,
not considering that herefrom birth and death, undergoing suffering and,
by that, seeking further suffering; thus it is that the world of men,
though dreading the approach of death, yet strive after renewed birth;
and being thus born, they must die again. Although still dreading the
power of suffering, yet prolonging their stay in the sea of pain.
Disliking from their heart their present kind of life, yet still
striving incessantly after other life; enduring affliction that they may
partake of joy; seeking a