rath, cupidity, fear, and sleep. Wrath is conquered by
tranquillity of disposition. Desire is conquered by giving up all
purposes. By reflecting with the aid of the understanding upon topics
worthy of reflection,[967] one endued with patience succeeds in
abandoning sleep. By steady endurance one should restrain one's organs of
generation and the stomach (from unworthy or sinful indulgence). One
should protect one's hands and feet by (using) one's eyes. One should
protect one's eyes and ears by the aid of one's mind, one's mind and
speech by one's acts. One should avoid fear by heedfulness, and pride by
waiting upon the wise. Subduing procrastination, one should, by these
means, subdue these impediments of Yoga. One should pay one's adorations
to fire and the Brahmanas, and one should bow one's head to the deities.
One should avoid all kinds of inauspicious discourse, and speech that is
fraught with malice, and words that are painful to other minds. Brahma is
the effulgent seed (of everything). It is, again, the essence of that
seed whence is all this.[968] Brahma became the eye, in the form of this
mobile and immobile universe, of all entities that took birth.[969]
Meditation, study, gift, truth, modesty, simplicity, forgiveness, purity
of body, purity of conduct, subjugation of the senses, these enhance
one's energy, which (when enhanced) destroys one's sins. By behaving
equally towards all creatures and by living in contentment upon what is
acquired easily and without effort, one attains to the fruition of all
one's objects and succeeds in obtaining knowledge. Cleansed of all sins,
endued with energy, abstemious in diet, with senses under complete
control, one should, after having subdued both desire and wrath, seek to
attain to Brahma.[970] Firmly uniting the senses and the mind (having
drawn them away from all external objects) with gaze fixed inwards, one
should, in the still hours of evening or in those before dawn, place
one's mind upon the knowledge. If even one of the five senses of a human
being be kept unrestrained, all his wisdom may be seen to escape through
it like water through an unstopped hole at the bottom of a leathern bag.
The mind in the first instance should be sought to be restrained by the
Yogin after the manner of a fisherman seeking at the outset to render
that one among the fish powerless from which there is the greatest danger
to his nets. Having first subdued the mind, the Yogin should then pro