n your charity to
the poor and helpless. The name you possess widespread and famous, the
just reward of former merit, the deeds you now perform are done of
charity: done with the fullest purpose and of single heart. Now,
therefore, take from me the charity of perfect rest, and for this end
accept my rules of purity. My rules are full of grace, able to rescue
from destruction, and cause a man to ascend to heaven and share in all
its pleasures. But yet to seek for these is a great evil, for lustful
longing in its increase brings much sorrow. Practise then the art of
'giving up' all search, for 'giving up' desire is the joy of perfect
rest. Know then! that age, disease, and death, these are the great
sorrows of the world. Rightly considering the world, we put away birth
and old age, disease and death; but now because we see that men at large
inherit sorrow caused by age, disease, and death, we gather that when
born in heaven, the case is also thus; for there is no continuance there
for any, and where there is no continuance there is sorrow, and having
sorrow there is no 'true self.' And if the state of 'no continuance' and
of sorrow is opposed to 'self,' what room is there for such idea or
ground for self? Know then! that 'sorrow' is this very sorrow and its
repetition is 'accumulation'; destroy this sorrow and there is joy, the
way is in the calm and quiet place. The restless busy nature of the
world, this I declare is at the root of pain. Stop then the end by
choking up the source. Desire not either life or its opposite; the
raging fire of birth, old age, and death burns up the world on every
side. Seeing the constant toil of birth and death we ought to strive to
attain a passive state: the final goal of Sammata, the place of
immortality and rest. All is empty! neither 'self,' nor place for
'self,' but all the world is like a phantasy; this is the way to regard
ourselves, as but a heap of composite qualities."

The nobleman, hearing the spoken law, forthwith attained the first
degree of holiness: he emptied as it were, the sea of birth and death,
one drop alone remaining. By practising, apart from men, the banishment
of all desire, he soon attained the one impersonal condition, not as
common folk do now-a-day who speculate upon the mode of true
deliverance; for he who does not banish sorrow-causing samskaras does
but involve himself in every kind of question; and though he reaches to
the highest form of being, yet grasps