bodily and mental suffering. Listen now to the means of allaying it as I
indicate them both briefly and in detail. Disease, contact with painful
things, toil and want of objects desired.--these are the four causes
that induce bodily suffering. And as regards disease, it may be allayed
by the application of medicine, while mental ailments are cured by
seeking to forget them by _yoga_-meditation. For this reason, sensible
physicians first seek to allay the mental sufferings of their patients
by agreeable converse and the offer of desirable objects. And as a hot
iron bar thrust into a jar maketh the water therein hot, even so doth
mental grief bring on bodily agony. And as water quencheth fire, so doth
true knowledge allay mental disquietude. And the mind attaining ease,
the body findeth ease also. It seemeth that affection is the root of all
mental sorrow. It is affection that maketh every creature miserable and
bringeth on every kind of woe. Verily affection is the root of all
misery and of all fear, of joy and grief of every kind of pain. From
affection spring all purposes, and it is from affection that spring the
love of worldly goods! Both of these (latter) are sources of evil,
though the first (our purposes) is worse than the second. And as (a
small portion of) fire thrust into the hollow of a tree consumeth the
tree itself to its roots, even so affection, ever so little, destroyeth
both virtue and profit. He cannot be regarded to have renounced the
world who hath merely withdrawn from worldly possessions. He, however,
who though in actual contact with the world regardeth its faults, may be
said to have truly renounced the world. Freed from every evil passion,
soul dependent on nothing with such a one hath truly renounced the
world. Therefore, should no one seek to place his affections on either
friends or the wealth he hath earned. And so should affection for one's
own person be extinguished by knowledge. Like the lotus-leaf that is
never drenched by water, the souls of men capable of distinguishing
between the ephemeral and the everlasting, of men devoted to the pursuit