st this question
hangs in suspense, why should a man give up his present pleasure? If
perchance there is 'hereafter,' we ought to bear patiently what it
brings; if you say, 'Hereafter is not,' then there is not either
salvation! If you say, 'Hereafter is,' you would not say, 'Salvation
causes it.' As earth is hard, or fire is hot, or water moist, or wind is
mobile, 'Hereafter' is just so. It has its own distinct nature. So when
we speak of pure and impure, each comes from its own distinctive nature.
If you should say, 'By some contrivance this can be removed,' such an
opinion argues folly. Every root within the moral world has its own
nature predetermined; loving remembrance and forgetfulness, these have
their nature fixed and positive; so likewise age, disease, and death,
these sorrows, who can escape by strategy? If you say, 'Water can put
out fire,' or 'Fire can cause water to boil and pass away,' then this
proves only that distinctive natures may be mutually destructive; but
nature in harmony produces living things; so man when first conceived
within the womb, his hands, his feet, and all his separate members, his
spirit and his understanding, of themselves are perfected; but who is he
who does it? Who is he that points the prickly thorn? This too is
nature, self-controlling. And take again the different kinds of beasts,
these are what they are, without desire on their part; and so, again,
the heaven-born beings, whom the self-existent (Isvara) rules, and all
the world of his creation; these have no self-possessed power of
expedients; for if they had a means of causing birth, there would be
also means for controlling death, and then what need of
self-contrivance, or seeking for deliverance? There are those who say,
'I' (the soul) is the cause of birth, and others who affirm, 'I' (the
soul) is the cause of death. There are some who say, 'Birth comes from
nothingness, and without any plan of ours we perish.' Thus one is born a
fortunate child, removed from poverty, of noble family, or learned in
testamentary lore of Rishis, or called to offer mighty sacrifices to the
gods, born in either state, untouched by poverty, then their famous name
becomes to them 'escape,' their virtues handed down by name to us; yet
if these attained their happiness, without contrivance of their own, how
vain and fruitless is the toil of those who seek 'escape.' And you,
desirous of deliverance, purpose to practise some high expedient, whilst